SCP-016, the sentient pathogen, has been rewritten completely.
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-016.
And has greatly evolved…need to add a test log, some day…
Exactly, so please don't respond to 5 year old posts.
Minor comment about the description of phase three effects. I don't believe an increase in blood pressure would have anything to do with projectile vomiting of that intensity. That sort of effect would be controlled by the type of spasm of stomach and throat muscles.
What would happen if an infected D-class is introduced to SCP-682? Would it make the 016-infectee adapt to attempt counteract the danger of 682 and its adaptation?
Two problems:
I'm going to guess, if 682 starts becoming a threat to them, they won't have time to adapt. If you could arrange it so that 682 became a long-term threat, they could adapt to whatever specific stimulus there was. They probably wouldn't be entirely 682-proof after that. Example: If they had 682 chasing the D, the D might start running faster. However, if 682 caught up to them, they would not have adapted protection from its giant angry jaws.
This is just my understanding, though. I hope I explained this clearly.
That said, this was also the first SCP I read at the site. I love this one.
In addition, if they COULD adapt to 682, we might have something worse on our hands.
Piffy is an SCP Foundation Moderator, Lv. 9001 Squishy Wizard, and Knight of the Red Pen.
Worst-case scenario I can think of: the D adapts to be capable of infecting 682 with a modified version of 016. From there, things can only go downhill. Either the modified 016 takes over and changes 682 into something unimaginably bad, or 682 adapts to 016 and… well, you can see where I'm going with this. No matter what side adapts first, it'd be a potential XK-class event. As if 682 wasn't dangerous enough already…
(The reason why I said it was a modified version of 016 is because the main article implies that normal 016 can only affect humans.)
I like it, though I do have a few nits to pick.
1) Is there a specific reason why 016 is a bloodbourne pathogen, yet can only survive in blood for up to 6 hours?
2) "including the nose, tear ducts, anus, skin pores, mouth, urethra, and (in case of females) vagina" The mention of vaginal hemorrhaging, while appropriately graphic, seems unnecessary. Females have urethras, too, and there's no mention of "in the case of males, penis".
3) "Sentient Micro-organism" How do we know 016 is sentient? It has extreme effects to be sure, but if anything the logs suggest that it is the host who controls the specifics of the mutation response, not the virus. Also, viruses are not typically considered micro-organisms.
4) Why does the virus need to mutate to become a retrovirus? Couldn't it just be a retrovirus from the beginning?
Sorry to be so anal, I liked the article!
Males have urethras too, you know. It's one of the orifices they bleed from.
That's my point. Men and women have urethras, so there's no point in singling one out over the other in terms of bleeding from the nether regions; you already covered that when you mentioned bleeding urethras.
I think the point being made is the distinction from the urethra, which both men and women share, and the vaginal opening itself, with is manifest only in women. This mention is to clarify that bleeding would manifest from both body openings in women. Men, having the signal opening (the urethra), would bleed only from that.
Which makes the experience all the more unsettling for women. In short, women have two holes in front, and will start bleeding from both. The entry clarifies this in a acceptable and wholly correct way.
Ok. I think it just struck me because special mention was made of female anatomy when it didn't seem to be strictly necessary.
Bleeding from the vaginal mucosa or cervix, maybe, but just saying vagina is a bit vague for medical terminology. But it's not my article, and hence just a personal observation.
When I first though up of this thing way back when, it wasn't really a blood pathogen. It was a microscopic organism, similar to an amoeba (but not like an amoeba clearly) that modified host organisms to better suit their needs and better protect the organism. This is why it was sentient (3), because it wanted to transform into something else, knew what it wanted to do, and did so.
However, I do like clef's rewrite. It's a bit more interesting and realistically in tune with other SCPs. I'll be writing up an incident (hopefully) to better show SCP-016's nature.
Between the fact that this thing is sentient and the fact that it begins to transform its host in order to help it survive stressful situations, the most hair-raising possibility this SCP raises for me is the idea that the hemorrhagic aspect is unintentional.
Who knows. Maybe, given time, the microorganism will figure out how to infect us without killing us in the process.
On the other hand, perhaps it's trying to keep the host alive in order to allow a wider exposure and more infections. Malicious! Either way, this is a pretty cool one.
This SCP is excellent; the descriptions of the various mutations/adaptations stand out in particular.
Does the foundation have to contain it? Wouldn't they trial it to see if it improves the survivability of agents/ MTF squads?
Just a thought, although I'm sure the massive hemorrhaging would make it unacceptably dangerous
Wouldn't they trial it to see if it improves the survivability of agents/ MTF squads?
…
What?
It's incredibly contagious and ends with "near-total exsanguination".
The bodily reconstruction is almost always fatal. And even if it wasn't, it makes carriers more aggressive.
And just imagine this thing mixing with another SCP to become even worse.
Am I missing a joke here? Some kind of meta-commentary on how excessive SCP testing is a bad idea? Because that sounds like an idea so incredibly bad that it actually is pretty funny. :P
Full documentation of experimentation with SCP-016 must be submitted before and after samples and duplicates of SCP-016 may be taken.
The phrasing of this line makes it seem like some words or punctuation may be missing. I'm having trouble parsing it. Of course, I'm recovering from a cold, so I may just have brainfog, but it stumped me enough to make me ask. Apologies ahead of time if it's something simple I'm just missing. :)
/forum/t-122535/scp-016#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
