Character with Panacea for blood- what kind of physical immunities/problems would they have?

So, in an upcoming story/work of mine (set in a zombie apocalypse), I have a character whose supernatural blood acts as a Panacea of sorts. Whoever it's injected into gets extremely powerful antibodies and immune system, allowing them to cure themselves of any disease ^note Beneficial bacteria are spared since they don't actively hurt the body, parasite, poison, and heal injuries at a very accelerated, relatively painless and non-Harmful Healing way^note Not as strong as Wolverine, Hulk, or Deadpool levels- injure her enough and she will die, as will decapitation. Even stuff like genetic syndromes could be (temporarily) cured depending on the syndrome type. This effect lasts for a limited time, between a week and a month.

Fortunately, she's one of the greatest hopes against the zombie apocalypse, but unfortunately she's a very foulmouthed, violent, selfish jerk who would attack those seeking the cure.

Naturally, since it's her own blood, the character has these effects on all the time, and she exploits them to the max. Eating expired food, forcing herself to strain her muscles and even break her bones, etc. Of course, the more she regenerates, the more she will need to eat to replace lost protein/biomass, and starving her is a possible way to kill her. Also, she can't feel much enjoyment from alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs, since the harmful, addictive substances are removed quite handily.

The question are, what other immunities/problems would she have? For example, would she need to sleep? Sleepiness is technically an ailment caused by chemical reactions and signals in the brain, and since her blood is able to remove ailments, it could possibly set the chemicals right.

Related thread pertaining to world effects on finding out about her

edited 17th Sep '16 5:03:26 PM by ironcommando

Well personality wise, if she's particularly aggressive and unhelpful they'll probably stop trying to recruit her and go straight to abduction after a while- She'll especially make a terrible impression if she's killing the zombies despite being The Immune and having zombie-curifying blood.

Though even if she doesn't need to sleep, she'll need regular mental stimulation. There's not gonna be a lot of reliable power in a zombie apocalypse after all. In addition they'll probably wonder how she ended up with Panacea blood, since they'll need more than they can bleed out of her at a time.

She'll obviously have a resistance to tranquilizers so drugging her wouldn't be a reasonable option, and naturally she'll be fully aware should she ever need surgery- Furthermore ignoring pain is an ultimate side effect, and pain is the body saying something is wrong. Thus she wouldn't be able to properly judge the seriousness of her injuries/problems.

Besides her selfish nature, Rosie's (that's her name) refusal to cooperate also stems from a group of scientists ("Genecorp") that actually captured her once against her will (via a durable trap and restraints, since tranq darts didn't work) before, before the zombie apocalypse started. After a bit of experimentation on her, she broke out and escaped the facility thanks to her pain tolerance.

Rosie indeed makes a terrible impression, what with living by herself in a zombie-infested city to deter others from finding her. Whenever the not-very-famous Genecorp scientists (they produced the zombie plague when trying to make their own miracle cure after their experimentation on Rosie failed) enter the city to attempt to forcefully capture her, she actively shoots and kills them.

About curing zombies... she's actually tried that before. She used a dart gun with darts containing her blood, and they indeed turned zombies back to people within minutes. The trouble is, one of them committed suicide (hurting themselves until the regeneration wore off) after the sheer mental trauma of zombification, another got quickly torn to pieces by other zombies when transforming back, overriding the regeneration^note When necrotic flesh turns back to living flesh... there's still a few open wounds that need to regenerate, and that smell of fresh meat from them is attractive to zombies. After seeing stuff like this happen, she deemed turning them back as a lost cause.

Rosie does feel amount of pain when she strains herself, but she's able to heal them off. Being unable to judge the seriousness of her injury also does "help" with her thrill-seeking/limit pushing nature, but often causes her to bite off more she can chew- her regeneration needs food to sustain, and she only knows that it's running out when she starts getting hungry.

She's not the only person in the world with strange abilities, although she might be the only one with this blood. About the sleep thing/mental stimulation, that works. Most probably she'd need to sleep but not as long as other people, and she barricades herself in a high-storey room whenever she needs to do so.

Other weird question: Are navels technically considered wounds when it comes to healing factors? IIRC They're a type of scar after all.

This Rosie's ability actually reminds me of Shizuru Nakatsu from Rewrite (whose anime is currently airing by the way). I highly suggest that you watch it and not just for this particular character either since there are other interesting abilities and complexes at work here for you to draw inspiration from.

Aside from that, you have my congratulations for thinking of a specific ability that really hasn't been played with very often among fiction.

Thanks, btw! =D

More questions... how would an (actual, injurious) knockout blow to the head affect a person with a healing factor? Would it still knock them out or would they recover extremely quickly? What about a Taser?

edited 23rd Aug '16 2:36:26 AM by ironcommando

You're welcome.

Let's understand something very critical here: her higher-than-average pain tolerance is not a direct effect of her special blood but rather a completely natural resistance that she had gradually built and grew herself (just like anybody else can).

The taser and knock-out blow are situations that basically "short circuit" the nervous system, so Rosie's blood alone wouldn't offer much resistance or recovery from that. Her mind and perceptions would still need to "reboot" and "resync" with her body. The extent of what I see her blood healing is more physically apparent things like broken bones, cuts/lacerations, bruises, sunburns, frostbite... you get the idea.

TLDR: The blood itself simply repairs and maintains Rosie's "hardware", not "software". Her other talents are simply a realistic product of pushing her body in extreme conditions.

Ah, thanks! Yep, her pain tolerance was gained from fighting on the streets, including getting shot and stabbed a few times, and later on during Marine Training.

From what I see around the internet about healing factor, it would be able to heal tensed muscles from a taser, but the muscle tension would still apply, just for less time. That and the nervous shock too.

Those kinds of taser that stick to the target and apply constant voltage would be a great way to take her down.

Kinda needed to know that because she'd get captured at one point of her story, and needed to know what would be good ways to capture her alive. A cage with extremely strong bars could work too.

Thanks! =D

edited 23rd Aug '16 6:23:28 PM by ironcommando

Hmm, another question relating to the drugs/alcohol immunity one. Would somebody with this sort of poison immunity/healing factor be immune to caffeine? There's sources that say it is.

Caffeine is technically a type of stimulant, so yes.

Hm, thanks.

One suggestion my friends told me was that, for substances that the body needs but can be toxic in larger amounts, her body would remove or break down said substance until it's back to acceptable levels. Caffeine probably doesn't not count under this.

edited 26th Aug '16 12:56:33 PM by ironcommando

Hmm, got another question I need to ask about Rosie.

I know it's possible for a human to strain themselves way past the limit (i.e. swinging their arm far more quickly than intended and tearing their muscles or straining/tearing enough muscle in their legs to perform a powerful jump.)

For Rosie, this isn't a prob since her regenerative blood would heal all the strain/tear within seconds (since those are internal strains/tears and not cuts/wounds). Thing is that I'm unsure about the amount of force she would be able to use.

What's the maximum force that one would be able to exert if they strained their muscles to the max? (Am planning to get her to run at above average human speed even while carrying up to a good few 15kg guns, not sure if that is possible with straining)

edited 16th Sep '16 7:45:34 AM by ironcommando

Well, generally speaking speed isn't really something that can be improved by that. Oh, sure, you can force your muscles to exert more force than you should and for longer than you should, but with speed what matters is also one's agility—which is not improved by forcing anything past its limits—and reaction speed—likewise impossible to improve by forcing one's body past its limits—all of which means that there is some kind of maximum speed she normally has that is pretty much the same that a person with her aptitude and level of fitness would have without the special healing factor, and what her healing factor changes is that she can keep moving at her top speed for longer (because, you know, the thing about people only being able to sprint for a short time because limits) and while more encumbered (only to a certain degree, of course, but as for most people the absolute highest amount of force they can exert is many times as high as their normal output, anything less than what they weight wouldn't really be an issue).

edited 16th Sep '16 8:00:10 AM by Kazeto

Ah, noted. So in the end her movement speed should be determined by her reaction time and agility, but duration, carrying capacity and force she can exert would be determined by regeneration.

Another question... would a healing factor that affects the brain help a bit with reaction time? Was kinda planning to justify above-average reflexes and reaction time because of it.

Yes, pretty much.

That said, I do presume that her weird blood also has the effect of being capable of supplying all the necessary nutrients to any part of the body that needs them regardless of anything; because while straining one's muscles by using them like a maniac is one thing, but the reason why people get progressively weaker during exercise until they rest is that their muscles stop getting enough nutrients as time progresses as the body's ability to throw that stuff into the bloodstream over time is limited. And though I don't doubt that with her starting from a higher place on the scale it's not, strictly speaking, as much of an issue for her, it still is an issue unless her blood helps with that too.

Also, running at what counts as above average human speed while carrying 45 kilograms of stuff, assuming it's actually carried in a proper way (and thus doesn't throw you to the sides constantly), is possible even without such a regeneration factor. Oh, sure, most people wouldn't be able to keep it up for long (or for anything above bursts, really), but just doing it at all is not only very much possible but also done all the time (by soldiers, for example) so or her it should be within the realm of possibility.

As for your question about heightened reflexes, not really. Going with some RPG jargon for a moment because that makes it a bit easier to explain, muscle strength and endurance are stats, but reaction is a skill (the governing stat of which would be "perception", by the way), though one people have a varying aptitude for. So it's something she'd have to train. And since all or at least most of the more effective ways of training one's reaction speed depend on our ability to feel pain to force us to adapt quicker, I'll say that such a training is probably going to be way less effective for her than for others. With that, I'd say that unless she's a prodigy as far as her reaction goes, I doubt she'd get to even average reaction time (unless you count the zombies for the average too, in which case she's probably going to be above that).

edited 16th Sep '16 8:11:49 AM by Kazeto

Understood. Huh, never knew that her reaction time would actually be slower than normal unless she trained it a lot.

About the blood supplying nutrients faster, it probably would, hence helping with regeneration and tiring her out slower, plus it helps regulate energy/nutrient use better. She does need to eat a lot if she recovers a lot.

Would a better reaction time be possible if her pain tolerance was trained instead of in-built? She feels the same amount of pain like most others when hurt/shot/stabbed/etc, but having a rough life where she did get hurt/attacked a lot would eventually help with it as well as her reaction/reflexes. (Note: She most def can't dodge bullets, but avoiding physical blows would be easier)

edited 16th Sep '16 8:37:49 AM by ironcommando

It could be then, yes. Because with it being something she'd trained rather than an innate ability to ignore it, she would be able to react to bad stuff as she grew up which is something people naturally do as they live that heightens their reaction speed (or at the very least does not allow it to deteriorate), and she would also be able to use pain-based ways to train her reaction speed—like the whole "dodge quick-moving small projectiles that aren't enough to harm but are enough to hurt" thing, or even just sparring with people—which work better for combat than the non-pain-based ones due to the difference in how they work:

The latter are mostly about perceiving better and estimating quicker how stuff will happen, meaning it doesn't tend to work well in brawls but work well for stuff like tennis, and it also requires more time and stuff. And the former are about automating a lot of small stuff so that it happens on instinct, without having to think about it, and I don't think I need to write why that is good for combat. Of course there's some spillover there too, as there's always going to be some improvement on both fronts, but yeah, the two methods start from the different directions and simply meet in the middle.

PS. While I don't doubt that avoiding bullets with pure dodging skill and such hax is ridiculous, if her opponents happen to be amateurs wielding short firearms (pistols and stuff), I can see them missing a lot as without the support provided by the longer barrel and/or a stock those things can be ridiculously inaccurate in the hands of people without steady hands; of course, there are limits to that even, but an amateur missing all of half a dozen shots at 30 meters or more when aiming at a moving target is something I could envision (heck, if it's a complete amateur of if the person is moving quickly and swerving and using the environment to disappear from the sight whenever they can then I can see them consistently missing at half that distance).

edited 16th Sep '16 8:55:31 AM by Kazeto

Hm, this could probably work then. She did grow up as part of a delinquent gang and stuff so plenty of time to spar, as well as some dodging projectiles (probably from a stolen baseball pitcher machine).

Anyway, thanks for clarifying stuff about reflexes and regeneration. Before this I always thought that regen would affect mental acuity/processing speed all this while XD

edited 16th Sep '16 9:24:25 AM by ironcommando

The biggest potential trouble she could possibly get is cancer in her white cells. If they're that strong, they could turn against her body and there is little she could do against it.

For cancer, her cells would target abnormal mutations in cells and would remove them quite fast before it even spreads. (Her blood gives immunity to abnormal, fast mutations which includes cancer)

No. I mean antibodies can also be cancerous:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukemia

My idea is that her specialized blood cells would target cancerous bone marrow as well as the abnormal white blood cells produced from it- since the abnormal cells can't fight as properly, they would be eliminated along with the cancerous marrow with much ease.

Her WBC count is otherwise pretty normal.

Part of the story does kind of... become slightly supernatural/physics breaking on the biological level later on. Her marrow produces an unknown cell in her blood which is what kills and removes cancerous cells, poisons, diseases (beneficial bacteria not included), parasites and mutations with ease, while also helping the body to regenerate quickly. Like most cells this unknown cell has a limited lifespan outside her body although it can adapt to the bodies of other organics, and if produced by cancerous bone marrow, would become nearly useless (and targeted by healthy unknown cells) like cancerous white blood cells.

edited 16th Sep '16 8:53:13 PM by ironcommando

...Actually, that Leukemia question brought something more important up. Even if her cells could combat Leukemia before it spreads (by attacking infected bone marrow and infected cells)...

...I'm not sure what happens if (assuming it might ever happen) she developed Lupus, aka immune cells go to town on your body. Not sure what causes that either, but damn, if her specialized cells did target herself...

Yeah... any kind of auto-immune disorder would just be awful. One of the absolute worst for her would be Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (or FOP) which basically amounts to paralyzing its victim with his/her own skeleton.

I really like this idea. Keep the good work!