Talk:Captain Trips

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[edit] Ch-ch-ch-changes...

Considering going into detail about the effects of the disease and the aftermath, but that's all covered in the Stand article. This goes into more detail about the disease itself.

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Atlant 14:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A recently-inserted and -excised line

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Ironically, had there been an explosion it probably would have killed the disease in the wild.

This isn't true. King makes it clear that Campion and his family were infecting people along their way on their trip from Project Blue to Arnette, TX.

Atlant 14:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm in the midst of re-reading The Stand and I think I'll take exception to my own comment above :-). King actually leaves it pretty ambiguous as to whether the superflu had a multi-focal breakout or whether its breakout was confined to Arnette, TX. He includes one sentence that suggests that Campion and his family stopped several times on their way to their crash-landing in Arnette, and with 99.4% transmissivity, one must assume that Campion et al. infected essentially all the people they met, but in a later chapter, he describes a long chain of infection orginating solely from the State Trooper who came by and warned Hap, et al. about the quarantine. So I think we could argue it either way and the ambiguity may actually reflect a sort of continuity error in the book.

Atlant 14:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

The book is not free of continuity errors, that's for sure! For one thing, every town and city mentioned seems to have far fewer than 6 survivors per 1000 population. He doesn't give population statistics for the fictional towns of Shoyo AR, Arnette TX, and Ogunquit ME, but none of them has as many as 6 survivors although all of them seem from his description to be larger than only 1000 residents. New York City has about 8 million inhabitants, so there should be 48,000 survivors, but it sure doesn't seem that way when Larry and Rita are together. User:Angr 22:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Tony 09:02, 13 October 2006 (UTC)Many other survivors would have been indoors, hiding or caring for flu sufferers not yet dead.

There was also collateral damage, as evidenced by all the gunfire in Manhattan. After a catastrophe such as the Superflu, you can bet people would respond by killing even more people as they defended their property or tried to loot others' property.

Atlant 13:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Genetic issue

The double recessive gene theory, unfortunately, does not hold water. If it were that direct and simple a trait there would have been lots of people in both Boulder and Vegas with surviving siblings and other first degree relatives. For example, Harold Lauder's sister Amy would have had a 1 in 4 chance of being immune. Extend this over the thousands of refugees in both cities and surely sibling pairs would have been mentioned. If immunity is genetic, maybe it requires multiple genes to give immunity, thereby lowering the odds of siblings surviving?

Or perhaps, it was a combination of the right genes and some environmental factor, like previous exposure to the original flu virus Captain Trips was developed from. This, however, seems unlikely since no particular age group seemed more likely to survive. Besides, siblings would often be exposed to the same viruses in the home.

It seems highly unlikely that whatever traits cause vivid dreaming would have an impact on influenza susceptibility, and remember our sample is definitely not random. The people we meet in the story are people who responded to the dreams from Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg. Those survivors who do not dream vividly and remember those dreams would simply have not responded. Instead of heading toward Boulder or Vegas and becoming part of the story, they would spend the length of the novel wandering Manhattan or Memphis or Minneapolis, oblivious to the passion play unfolding around them.

Am I the only one, btw, who noticed the recurring motif of blood in the story? Several characters received lacerations shortly before having contact with another character early in the spreading phase. Nick was attacked along the side of the road before meeting the sheriff. Larry was hit by a one night stand's spatula before chatting with a cabbie. Frannie bit her tongue before rendezvousing with Jess. Perhaps you need genetic immunity and to have the flu introduced directly into the bloodstream via an open cut rather than by inhalation? This could also explain why it seemed to kill a whole lot more people than 99.4%. Perhaps that's the percentage of the population with the gene, but that does not guarantee you'll cut yourself shaving the morning you receive your first exposure.Nosimplehiway--Nosimplehiway 13:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)