Lore

[Strats]

I've been devoting a playthrough to trying and listening to all the different radio tidbits in the game, and I have just gotten past the tenth day. I know that there are the rare broadcasts that occur later in the game, but I was wondering if anyone knew whether new radio/TV broadcasts are planned to be added in the future. Thanks! 

[Pann]

I don't know if they are adding more in on PZ side, but I do remember hearing that they were working on making it possible for it to be done for multiplayer - scripted radio/tv broadcasts. 

[Slice985]

Lucky you. I've been doing a lot of RP writing and trying to learn as much as I can about the Lore. I haven't had time to delve into listening to every piece of information on the radio or TV. The sad part of working full time and having kids.. Its cutting into my Zomboid time.. LOL

[MisterLock]

I am still wondering as to how exactly the Virus became Global from a isolated outbreak in Kentucky...It's just...weird.

 

[Crowbar Felt]

Someone always hides a bite or scratch. 

[PrincessCandy]

11 hours ago, MisterLock said:

I am still wondering as to how exactly the Virus became Global from a isolated outbreak in Kentucky...It's just...weird.

 

I believe it may be an "everyone's infected/It's in the air" type of thing where bites are fatal,  however, the virus remains dormant until the death of the host, after which it quickly takes over.

 

It's possible the virus simply managed to spread past the Exclusion Zone, as a certain transmission set implies. *cough cough*

 

Some of the military within or near The Zone may have become infected as well, and they may have been in contact with government/high ranking officials/journalists/people who can travel in general. These people end up spreading it farther and farther, government tries to quell small outbreaks beyond kentucky, but then they start popping up elsewhere. 

 

Then everything descends into chaos, death, and a borderline-insane degree of carpentry practicing. 

 

During several radio transmissions, both the more, ah, clandestine ones and the local stations, there's talk of Immune individuals. Whether that's just people desperate for hope in a very bad time or a legitimate possibility is to be seen. It probably won't have any effect on gameplay, at least not anytime soon.

 

inb4 "Immune" positive trait for 30 points. 

[MisterLock]

13 hours ago, PrincessCandy said:

-snip-

 

inb4 "Immune" positive trait for 30 points. 

While you do make a very good point...I thought it's pretty obvious that the Bites & Scratches are the way the disease spreads in PZ, atleast canonically, because if you go into sandbox mode you can imediatelly see that the "Proper Zombies" box includes the aforementioned setting as canon.

As lore wise, if we follow the bite method, it's just weird that people would start to experience the disease after a week of it being contained, by hey...then again, The Walking Dead does seem to have a similar situation :In season 1 when Dr Jenner said it has been x number of days since the Virus has been detected and x number of days since it went worldwide, so it may be similar...Anyway I like the fact that they included Africa in the broadcast's, I was genuinly surprised when I heard Somalia was one of the places that got the outbreak, I was half expecting to hear things about Russia, China or maybe Europe.

[PrincessCandy]

21 hours ago, MisterLock said:

-snip-

Been a while since I looked over the transmissions but it may be possible that a few small outbreaks started, and because of them, the TV stations started to go down and radio stations began to report on the chaos in a few areas. Before it was well-known people taking planes spread it elsewhere. 

 

Additionally, I guess we just have to consider that we don't know where the virus comes from. It may spread through blood and saliva, but how did the first infected become infected? It could have been a government project, (which the name implies, but, IIRC, it was originally a temporary name that just stuck) developed virus of some sort which is only capable of infecting a select few individuals with a specific trait who can then go on to spread it with the bites/scratches.

 

I suppose that, at the moment, it's pretty much all speculation. 

[Absle]

SPOILER ON A LATER RADIO BROADCAST FROM MCGREW

Spoiler

There's a radio broadcast that I caught towards the end of the general media radio broadcasting where McGrew has a recording played through NNR basically confirming that the virus spreads through the air or water or some unknown manner for most people, while some can only be infected via fluid transmission. Basically a minority of humans worldwide are immune to everything but bites/scratches. He said something like (very inaccurate quote) "If you're hearing this and you're one of the few remaining, and you'll know if you are soon, then you are lucky. You can't be infected like most other people, but you almost certainly be infected by a bite." Then some stuff about taking up arms against this enemy, don't be afraid to pull the trigger on family/friends, and that you haven't been abandoned.

 

[MisterLock]

On 20.03.2016 at 2:43 AM, Absle said:

SPOILER ON A LATER RADIO BROADCAST FROM MCGREW

  Hide contents

There's a radio broadcast that I caught towards the end of the general media radio broadcasting where McGrew has a recording played through NNR basically confirming that the virus spreads through the air or water or some unknown manner for most people, while some can only be infected via fluid transmission. Basically a minority of humans worldwide are immune to everything but bites/scratches. He said something like (very inaccurate quote) "If you're hearing this and you're one of the few remaining, and you'll know if you are soon, then you are lucky. You can't be infected like most other people, but you almost certainly be infected by a bite." Then some stuff about taking up arms against this enemy, don't be afraid to pull the trigger on family/friends, and that you haven't been abandoned.

 

I really don't think that's what it is...I mean, Mcgrew did mention that the virus entered a second stage, some sort of...second wave...But it doesn't make sense as to how in the heck the virus went from fluid transmision to airborne, it just doesn't, and why doesn't it make sense?Because as far as we know the only afected zone by this virus was Mauldraugh Kentucky and West Point, there were literally no other mentions of anywhere else having this before the virus supossedly went up and mutated, everywhere was fine, Including New York and DC, but as soon as it started to go airborne, people just got sick from it, unlike the walking dead, where it's kinda the same deal, everyone's infected, but you never do see them dying from it, no, the virus activates once the people are dead in that medium(What caused social collapse is just people dying from natural causes in the first 2 days, then it increased because of social uproar against police violance, #seefearthewalkingdead).

So all in all, the only people who actually know what caused this virus, in this medium, is the dev's...Still, fun to make theory's about it.

[Slice985]

Spoiler

From What I could tell, it looks like it was a meteor, there were reports of a shower. So it seems like these are zombies from space. it also makes sense at the global outbreak so instantly across the world if there were chunks all over the planet that were slowly discovered, just that the Knox one was discovered and spread first. 

 

The timeline seems somewhat weird though. But this may be because of the Lore, but not because its bad. The Knox even is live for a long time, isolated, reports of sick people. There are only reports of sick people, not zombies, even the civilian radio channel doesn't indicate any infection inside the zone. Now you can say the army was jamming radio communications, but to cover every single band it would have to be so powerful that no one could even report from anywhere near the Exclusion Border.

 

When it hits the world, it seems its zombies and instant sickness airborne spread. Now, you can say that people boarded a plane before the event was setup, however people in kentucky are more likely to travel to other cities, not other countries, but the rest of America is fairly fine while the rest of the world reports outbreaks. Which might lean more towards the meteor scenario. 

 

 

[Slice985]

Spoiler 2

 

Spoiler

Now, given the outbreak across the entire world, that leans away from the meteor shower cause though. Because then it would be more likely to be limited to one "side" of the planet, the impact zone. Now the world spins, so you could have impacts over a day or two to hit the whole world.  Also given the way the world spins, Since West America didn't seem to have infection, So you could say Asia started to get hit with meteors, then the world rotates. Which would make Kentucky last to be hit, so that gives longer odds of it being a shower because Kentucky shouldn't have been first to show massive symptoms. Given there were outbreaks in Japan, how crowded it is there, a meteorite would be discovered and infection spread nearly instantly there. 

 

Now you can say a rogue asteroid was ahead of the main pack and hit Kentucky first, skipped the rest of America and then blasted the rest of the world with chunks later that day. 

 

But if it wasn't a full world shower, then that leans more towards a intentional terrorist attack. Given again that the virus would have hit all of America full on first in a infection spread scenario, Or would have affected Japan first in a Meteor scenario unless of course as mentioned there was a rogue meteor ahead of the others. 

 

[Skv]

I'm probably of no relevance here at all but I'd just like to say that having an 'immunity' or any sort of 'cure' to an infection via scratch or bite in this game would completely ruin the point of it; PZ is a game where you play a character who will inevitably die, and that will have been his/her story in the apocalypse. His/her complete chapter in the PZ Universe, and there's something so incredibly beautiful about it, because to me, every time I play a new character after my previous one dies I feel as if I'm going through peoples' individual stories 1 by 1. It's a pretty nifty way to look at it I think.

 

Also, the radio broadcasts will most definitely be upgraded and improved in the near future, I'm pretty sure about this anyway. There's a lot of us who are into the Lore of games and the fact they implemented radio broadcasts just proves they are taking deliberate action to include lore where ever they can. Personally when I see a survival game with zombies including lore and background story, it's when I fully believe the game is finally taking shape. 

[Slice985]

Just now, Skv said:

I'm probably of no relevance here at all but I'd just like to say that having an 'immunity' or any sort of 'cure' in this game would completely ruin the point of it; PZ is a game where you play a character who will inevitably die, and that will have been his/her story in the apocalypse. His/her complete chapter in the PZ Universe, and there's something so incredibly beautiful about it, because to me, every time I play a new character after my previous one dies I feel as if I'm going through peoples' individual stories 1 by 1. It's a pretty nifty way to look at it I think.

 

Also, the radio broadcasts will most definitely be upgraded and improved in the near future, I'm pretty sure about this anyway. There's a lot of us who are into the Lore of games and the fact they implemented radio broadcasts just proves they are taking deliberate action to include lore where ever they can. Personally when I see a survival game with zombies including lore and background story, it's when I fully believe the game is finally taking shape. 

 

Spoiler

Its immunity from the airborne aspect. the survivors are not immune to fluid transmission. 

 

[Skv]

Ah, my apologies, too vague in what I meant, what I should have said was 'having an immunity to infection via bite or scratch would ruin the point of PZ'

Sincerest apologies.

EDIT: Probably should just edit the darn reply itself.

EDIT2: Did it. Oh boy I made a good mess.

[MisterLock]

It is a bummer really...Ever since I got back into the game and I saw that the devs actually added radios to it, I was quite literally dying to go onto the forums and see what crazy theory's us fans have come up with, I was half expecting the general discussion forum to be filled with conspiracy theory's about the lore...But it came to me as a surprise I only found 1 general topic about lore...beside this one.

Anyway ON-Topic : The meteor shower theory is quite intriguing, it could explain the sporadic outbreaks that happen all over the world.As you said, maybe one meter landed in Muldraugh and WP ahead of it's pack, and then the big kahuna(or you could say the big wave) of asteroids came flooding the earth's surface, producing outbreaks in England, Somalia and the sort.

But you did say there were mentions of meteority showers in the game?Where exactly?I did a playthrough dedicated to only listening to the radio and never once had I heard about meteors.

[Slice985]

40 minutes ago, MisterLock said:

Where exactly?I did a playthrough dedicated to only listening to the radio and never once had I heard about meteors.

 

 

It was really early on the first or second day I think, but hard to remember I didn't write it down because it didn't seem important for the reason I was listening to the radio, which was to get names and dates and times.. 

 

I built a command center. I started a character in a place I knew I could get everything I needed and raided a police station and several homes and planted down like 7 radios and 3 tvs and turned it all on. Broadcast are only at the top of every 6 hour. So 6, 12, 6, midnight (I think midnight).

 

There is a steam or reddit post that list all the hidden channels. You will need at least 7 radios to pick them all up. I can't remember if it was the TV news channel or the radio that broadcast it. 

 

*Edit and from what I remember, it was only casually mentioned and only one time. Which leads me to believe it is probably the right cause because the thing no one cares about usually kills you. 

[Pann]

9 hours ago, MisterLock said:

It is a bummer really...Ever since I got back into the game and I saw that the devs actually added radios to it, I was quite literally dying to go onto the forums and see what crazy theory's us fans have come up with, I was half expecting the general discussion forum to be filled with conspiracy theory's about the lore...

 

I've purposefully avoided talking about the radio/tv broadcasts because one of the devs specifically asked for details not to be mentioned. Don't quote me, but they said they wanted players to have the joy of finding it out in game, rather than just being able to read a post and know what had happened. 

 

[Skv]

On 3/30/2016 at 0:36 AM, Cithanor said:

I've purposefully avoided talking about the radio/tv broadcasts because one of the devs specifically asked for details not to be mentioned. Don't quote me, but they said they wanted players to have the joy of finding it out in game, rather than just being able to read a post and know what had happened. 

 

 

I'm going to be completely real - some of us really don't care about playing the game that much just to find out the story. It may be that there's only a small majority, but I'm apart of this majority. I love PZ and it's a great way to kill time but Lore is my main attraction about games like this, and when it's about a Zombie apocalypse I mean come on, I don't want to actually have to go and find the pieces of the puzzle, I'd rather wait until someone put the pieces together for me on a thread, and I'm actually thinking about just doing that. I'm a lazy guy.

 

I understand completely why the devs would want it that way through, because my view does ruin the point of PZ to a certain extent, albeit only story wise. I kinda just want a story. I don't know if anyone here's a fan of the FNAF Franchise by Scott Cawthon but that guy basically made such a well hidden-in-plain-sight story that the puzzle was too sophisticated to solve and the story hasn't been solved ever since the release of the final game in that Franchise. I don't want the same incident here, I don't want us to be buried in pieces and have no actual set reason or backstory for PZ. I just wanna know what happened and how we got from A to B. I'm a simple man.

[Pann]

Skv, if all you want to do is get the lore, you can make a sandbox with short days and no zombies, and sit there and get your stories by watching the tv and reading the radio logs. It's pretty simple to do so without having to have any threat and being able to accelerate time without worry so you can read them pretty fast.

What I believe the devs didn't want (and feel free to correct me if I am wrong) was for those logs to be posted on these forums. I can't find the specific post, but they said they knew there would be people who put them up off site, they just don't want them specifically here to ruin it for others who would read it inadvertently just skimming through the forums.