Following are some "common" facts so we're all on the same page. Not everyone will know everything of the following, and some of this might be false. You may even choose to believe something contradictory for the sake of RP, like your PC firmly believes the infected are walking dead, and that's fine. If you post something that is contradictory and we like a given fact you make up, it may get incorporated into the game or remain an honest IC error.

It's been 2 weeks since the outbreaks occurred globally within hours of each other, and all air traffic was shut down almost immediately. Governments around the world started to collapse a week ago and pretty much all semblance order (including electricity, telecommunications and the Internet) was gone a few days after that. A few governments are still transmitting on the air, like the UK in Europe, but France, Germany and the USA have all gone dark. There are rumours of a coup in France and possibly the USA, but no confirmation nor even details as to who was being it. (The military? Left wingers? Right wingers? Foreigners? Who knows?)

In most areas there has been little looting (other than for supplies) or violence, mainly because people are not interested in grabbing TVs and the existential threat of the infected caused everyone to band together: cops, criminal, refugees, military, gangsters... everyone was working together, more or less, so perhaps it was an unexpected bright spot that all humanity was able to pull together in its darkest hour. Too bad it was all for naught.

(Excepting religious and racist wackos from the rest of humanity, of course they pretty much ran amok.)

There doesn't appear to be cell phone service locally. In most places cell service and general telecommunications has been out for days.

The first major cases started showing up 2 weeks ago. This is when it went global, with cases occurring on all inhabited continents. The initial outbreaks were reported in Berlin, Sao Paulo, Chicago, Shanghai, Lagos, Bangkok, Melbourne and Moscow.

National governments started to collapse around a week ago as cities, communities and UN safe zones were overrun. Germany, Russia and China first, then the USA, France and the UK. Isolated military units are still holding out, mainly in the countrysides.

BBC World Service is still transmitting. There is a provisional British government established on some offshore islands (primarily the Isle of Wight) along with some military units. This news has been repeating for two days and may be out of date.
According to the BBC, the UK mainland is considered completely quarantined and off-limits, as is the continent.

Radio France is off the air. No French national government is known to exist at this time.

Voice of America is still transmitting but the message hasn't changed for days. The President has been evacuated to Camp David, keep calm, infection can be cured if treated soon enough, etc.

There is no universally known or agreed-upon Patient Zero and no obvious connection between the early cases.

The disease appears related to rabies and is communicable via fluid transfer.

The infection runs its course in 24-48 hours, but rare cases are rumoured to proceed to full-blown status almost immediately.

Immediate decontamination of wounds and/or administration of anit-virals can halt or even reverse the course of infection.

Infected are not actually dead. That is, they retain basic life signs (cardiovascular functions, etc.)

The infected are of course homicidally deraged, but do not attack each other.
Cognitive function is obviously impaired.

Most infected can run, some can use tools.

Some infected wander about at all hours, some during daylight and some nocturnally, individually or in a horde. Daytime is most common.

Most, when not "active", seem to go dormant. This makes them hard to detect indoors or in urban  and wooded areas as their thermal signature is greatly reduced. They can "power up" almost instantly from a dormant state, which means they are good ambushers.

They do not seem to feel pain and can survive considerable injury, even to the heart and lungs, and skull trauma.

While biting is almost universal they do not seem to eat their victims or one another.

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A few further facts have come to light:

Not all infected are the same. There could be different active or divergeant strains,
or one strain that affects different persons or body types in different ways, or it mutates or advances over time in a given person.

The disease works on a cellular, possibly even genetic level. One unproven theory is that it is partly a retrovirus. (That is, it introduces foreign DNA.)

It's possible these cellular changes will allow the infected to survive for several months before starvation sets in.

Some of the earliest types, possibly more advanced, were very fast, had claws and fangs.

These showed a rudimentary intelligence and were herding others.

"Advanced" infected were originally seen only in one isolated location but are becoming more common.

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Since France:

It is now KNOWN that Salt-Water has an Acid-Like Effect on Infected.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:32, Wed 04 Sept 2013.

"Infection" is a common term for the disease.

"Infected" can both mean someone who has contracted the virus, and those who act in a completely irrational and violent manner ("Infected").

For the sake of clarity, the progression of the disease (also commonly called "the New Plague") is much like how infection by HIV leads to AIDS, or how the rabies virus (from which the new plague is derived) progresses from an early non-infectious stage to one that causes profound changes.

There are 3 stages that are officially recognised:

1. There is a primary stage after the disease is contracted and the patient is not infectious or of a low infectious potential; this stage lasts for around 48 hours but some asymptomatic cases can last a week or more. The disease is reversible at this stage with medical intervention.
   
2. This is followed by a very short (usually ess than a minute but sometimes over an hour) secondary stage known as "amplification". The patient starts out conscious and rational but rapidly becomes more and more delusional, and their bodily fluids exhibit a much higher particle load of the disease. This stage has usually run its course when the patient's vital signs crash and they undergo a brief state where it is easy to mistake them for being dead. (This has given rise to rumours that the infected die and then rise as "living dead" of some kind.) Some cases have been reported to skip this stage and go directly to being Infected.
   
3. The final, tertiary, stage is "full infection". It is not known if this stage is permanent or can be reversed. Brain damage occurs, as does some minor and not-well understood physiological changes. It is thought there might be different strains that cause variations in the final stage, and that there may be other subsequent stages developing over time. Note, the infected do not actually die and are not dead in a practical sense although it's thought their personality, memories and capacity for rational or deliberate thought is destroyed.

For medical purposes, the disease's proper name is "Rabies Derived Retrovirus" (RDRV). RDRV causes "Amplified Rabid Infected Syndrome" or ARIS. It is this final stage that is commonly referred to as "infection" or being "infected" and the sufferers are the "Infected". Unofficially they are also called "Zeds" or "zombies" although this is inaccurate as they are neither the product of Haitian Voodoo magic, nor are they the risen dead with a hunger to consume the flesh of the living.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:13, Thu 04 May 2017.