The Rage Virus is a virus appearing in the 2002 film 28 Days Later, and in the 2007 film 28 Weeks Later. It also appears in the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath.
Origin
In the graphic novel 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, two Cambridge University scientists named Clive and Warren were trying to isolate the specific neurochemicals that cause anger and excessive aggression in humans in order to develop an inhibitor that regulates anger control issues.
Warren decided that it was waste of time to experiment on volunteers from the school for the experiment because Cambridge students obviously didn't have uncontrollable rage. So he manages to get a contact at a police station to give him a violent criminal as a test subject. There was a problem with the delivery system. The injections were too diluted so Warren increased the dosage. However, the inhibitor still had no effect and when the test subject was about to attack Warren and Clive, Warren was forced to kill him. He then immediately decided they would experiment on chimpanzees, as Clive had been suggesting.
As Warren and Clive were burying the criminal, Clive sneezed - giving Warren an idea. They had known that delivering widespread with a pill wouldn't do, neither would an aerosol. He decided that they should use a contagion as a delivery system. He located a certain genome in a strain of the Ebola virus. Using this new delivery system, the two exposed a chimpanzee to the inhibitor. However, the inhibitor mutated. In the chimpanzee, it had the opposite effect of what is was supposed to do. That is, it caused the chimpanzee to be full of uncontrollable rage. Warren had "created a rage virus."
Clive was so disgusted by this that he quit. He later informed an animal rights eco-terrorist organization about the experimenting on animals and then shot himself. A group of those eco-terrorist would later break into the lab and free the infected rage filled chimpanzee. That chimpanzee attacked and infected them and Warren. From them, the rage virus spread throughout the island of Britain.[1]
Characteristics
After the virus enters the characters' bloodstream, the virus would be usually very quick to manifest itself in the victim's behavior (see below), from the films it is shown that only 10 to 20 seconds is required for the virus symptoms to become noticeable though infection time is possibly determined by the amount of infected blood that has gotten into the bloodstream and the overall mass of the person in question. As the Human changes to Rage Victim he twitches madly in an almost Spasm Manner, this is a sad time for the human in hand as he cannot control the state he will live in or die as after the rage virus takes over his being. The virus can also pass through bodily fluids and has an almost 100% communicability rate, though it may be noted that some characters posses a hereditary immunity, allowing them to become infected with the virus without exhibiting any of its usual symptoms (save the bloodshot eyes). These characters remain carriers of the infection, and can transmit it through saliva and blood transmission.
Danny Boyle has stated that in the films, primates are the only animals that can carry the virus (a fact that is further touched upon in the second film in the series)[2].
Rage Zombies
Symptoms of Infected Characters
The Rage virus does not directly cause the death of its host, but because the host is solely focused on infecting or killing the non-Infected it causes those infected to become disinterested in self-nourishment, which will eventually cause death by starvation. Since the virus causes those infected to act with no regard for self-preservation they will not act to evade mortal danger, such as fire or chemical gas.
The Rage virus shuts down all parts of the host's brain except those that control anger, aggression and violent impulses as well as basic organ and muscle functions, movement and coordination. The Infected are reduced to an animalistic state of permanent hostility and aggression, driving them to attack non-infected with no concern for their own safety and no moral or other inhibitions that could control their actions and behaviour. In this state of permanent and extreme psychosis, the brain is continuously pumping adrenaline into the host's system, giving the Infected huge powers of endurance and super-human strentgh, but at the same time placing enormous stress on their metabolism, which alongside their disregard for their own safety, leads to eventual death through physical exhaustion, coma and/or starvation. The permanent damage done to the victim's brain, nervous system and vital organs makes a cure virtually meaningless since the extensive organ and brain damage would only leave the host in a permanent vegetative state or coma. The Infected experience spasms in the extremities, and their irises become blood red. They also vomit copious amounts of infected blood as well as violently gibbering, possibly due to their loss of control of the vocal cords. However in 28 Days Later, Jim comes under attack from a boy who, when being stood on by Jim, screams "I hate you!" at Jim.
In 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, a character wonders how the Infected are able to track the uninfected down and know not to attack each other. After seeing them sniff the air he concludes that they are attracted by the smells of the uninfected, or maybe just able to smell something other than their own rotten flesh. Disease, anxiety, even rage affects the way people smell. In addition, the Infected have a very pungent odor. Even though the survivors hadn't bathed in weeks, they were still saturated with deodorants and shampoos. The Infecteds' sense of smell is how they find the uninfected.[3]
Carriers
In the film 28 Weeks Later it is shown that there are certain people who, while not immune to the virus in the truest sense, can carry the virus without any physiological or psychological changes, except for one - a reddening of parts of the eyes. These people are classified as "asymptomatic carriers" (possibly incorrectly by the scientists in the film, as the eye change is technically a symptom). A carrier will not become uncontrollably violent like other Infected and will otherwise be unaffected by the prescence of the virus. A carrier can, of course, still spread the virus and its homicidal mania, as is shown in several scenes of the film. The audience is lead to believe that whatever traits the carriers biology uses to resist the full effects of the virus may be harnassed to develop a cure or vaccine.
The Infected
- See Main Article: The Infected
The Infected are distinct from almost all cinematic zombies; they are not the revived dead. Also, films such as the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead, and Resident Evil series portray zombies as creatures that desire to consume living flesh. By contrast, the Infected chase non-Infected with the simple desire to kill them in a fit of rage, NOT necessarily to spread the virus. This characteristic is seen most clearly when the Infected make the use of tools to aid their killing of non-Infected. For example, Don used Major Scarlet Ross's own rifle to beat her to death. Another example was when Don inflicted extreme pain and cruelty upon his wife by forcing his thumbs through her brain via the eye sockets, which suggests some sort of sadistic thought process. It is unknown if this desire to cause suffering is why a specimen will sometimes interrupt their attack to intentionally vomit blood into the face of their prey. While somewhat uncommon, this method has been known to quickly transform the human into a fellow Infected attacker.
Another change would seem to be that adrenaline is constantly being produced and utilized by the infected body, as even days after the change, an infected specimen can perform display extraordinary feats of strength, agility, endurance (especially in pursuit of the unifected), and also to ignore wounds such as explosive amputation of limbs and even immolation.
And while the Infected will attempt to bite their victims, it is usually as a means of either attack or to kill them (often by biting into the main arteries in their neck). They are not shown to ingest any organic material, and probably do not feed. Since Rage-infected specimens are still living human beings, they can be killed using conventional weapons that inflict fatal injuries, unlike Zombies.
References
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This page uses content from the Annex. The original article was at Wikipedia at Rage (fictional virus). The list of authors can be seen in the Annex page history. As with Zombiepedia, the text of the Annex is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |