How do you deal with sporechids?

[old_fantom]

I can do the trick where you fill in the space in the area one cube at a time.   But with all the new spore chid spawns, this is tedious.   Do I just mine out the biome and then vacuum the whole oil biome and send the gas into space?  Mine out the biome and ignore the darn things as I am in a suit?  Just wondering wha other players do with them.  

[Hokaeru]

I usually go with exosuits through chlorine and I have also storage bins there for everything to get cleaned before going to base.
or sometimes sporechids just die off when the slicksters have eaten all the CO2 and there is not enough pressure.

[Padishar]

I usually just mine the whole oil biome in suits with no problems. Even had dupes drinking a soda containing zombie spores without any issues. Funny enough, those spores came from carbon dioxed produced by burning natural gas, which in turn has been produced by a oil refinery using crude oil containing those spores.

[NewWorldDan]

Atmosuits and a liquid lock, and then I just don't worry about it.  Never had a zomibe spore infection.  Also makes it easy dealing with the oil biome.  I just let the atmosphere there fill up with natural gas or whatever.  Let slicksters eat the CO2.

[blakemw]

I just ignore them totally and don't let Pips get the seeds. If I'm feeling extra diligent I dig out the Sporchids but often I just leave them.

So here's the deal, Zombie Spores are broken and it's nearly impossible for them to infect Dupes "in the wild". Duplicants have to breath in zombie spores to get infected or eat/drink them. I'm pretty sure "contact" infection is simply implemented the same as digestion at least I've never managed to get a dupe exposed in any way other than inhalation or eating/drinking. Inhalation is the considerably more likely route to infection considering the convolution required to get dupes to eat/drink zombie spores.

Dupes can only breath Oxygen or Polluted Oxygen, they cannot breath any other gas.

Zombie Spores are typically released into Carbon Dioxide by virtue of the fact that it sinks down into the oil biome and any other gas will stifle the Sporchids, the other gases Zombie Spores might get into are mainly Sour Gas and Natural Gas, dupes can't breath those gases either.

If there are less than 5000 zombie spores in a 1 kg CO2 tile, the spores are not allowed to spread into another type of gas tile (they can spread into other CO2 tiles by splitting and merging), this is likely to prevent the germs becoming "spontaneously" underpopulated by aggressively leaving the gas tile. Zombie Spores are immortal in CO2 but they also don't reproduce so you just end up with spores trapped in CO2 tiles unable to leave.

So some distances away from the source of the zombie spores, the spores have spread out enough that they are now just like 1000 germs/tile and can't possibly escape into oxygen tiles (because as noted they need to be REALLY concentrated to be able to get into oxygen).  You can have these infected CO2 tiles bouncing around and mingling with oxygen tiles, but the spores can't spread into those oxygen tiles, and if it so happens that a carbon dioxide tile does have barely enough germs to share them with an oxygen tile, then those few that do spread into the oxygen tile will nearly instantly die to acute under-population (7 second half life).

So coming back to what I said earlier, Dupes can't breath CO2 tiles, a Dupe can be standing in a CO2 tile with 1000 zombie spores and breathing from an adjacent oxygen tile and is at zero risk of breathing in zombie spores (this is like a dupe breathing underwater from an adjacent oxygen tile), they stick out their extra long breathing proboscis and suck down that oxygen from a meter away. If you actually indulge them with Atmo suits for their forays to the oil biome their impunity is even greater if it's possible to go below zero risk.

Let's also approach this from the other angle, say you WANT to infect your dupes with Zombie Spores "by accident" or deliberately. How do you actually do that? Well basically, you need to plant the Sporchid very near oxygen, for example in a CO2 pit under your Great Hall would be ideal, the Sporechid can then release like 50000 spores into the CO2 tile, and that CO2 tile can then release thousands of spores into the oxygen tiles then your dupes can suck down that oxygen loaded with spores and get zombified. To avoid this happening don't deliberately plant a Sporchid plant under your Great Hall.

(Or if you want to go the digestion route for getting infected, then first get some zombie spores into crude oil by having the Sporechid sitting in shallow oil but its top in CO2, then mop the crude oil, then transport the bottle of crude oil (or use a gas pump to pump infected CO2, then a Canister Filler and a Canister Emptier), now the dupe has zombie spores on their hands, now get them to eat food without first washing their hands. This will give them contact with zombie spores, though unfortunately very few spores tend to survive the multiple transitions between different objects so the spore load isn't very high and it's unlikely to cause infection. A better route might be to plant a Sporchid in shallow water + CO2 then use that water to make Mush Bars or Tofu or in the Water Cooler or Soda Fountain)

And don't have an "all seeds" bin that Pips can rummage through because if a dupe delivers a Sporechid seed then a Pip steals and plants a Sporechid in your base hilarity will ensue.

So in summary, ignore Sporechids, don't go the extra mile to get dupes infected despite the game trying to make it nearly impossible, and don't let Pips get the seeds.

[Ceos]

I know they are not much trouble but they still scare me... so I use corner tricks to dig out the plants crush the polluted CO2 and crude to non existence (all while in atmo suits).  Then use an automatic dispenser to shove the seeds into neutronium tiles. Overkill, yes... vaguely fun in a pandemic year to obliterate a disease also yes.

[mathmanican]

11 hours ago, Ceos said:

Then use an automatic dispenser to shove the seeds into neutronium tiles

I love this part. 

[Padishar]

Maybe you can feed the seeds to pacus. Did not check yet if pacus can eat them but I am sure pacus can eat many decorative plants seeds, so I would be surprised if they cannot eat sporechid seeds too.

[mstque]

Right now Disease Clinic is not working, Serum Vial not available to producing in Apothecary and even if you will spawn Serum Vial in sandbox mode and duplicants will deliver it to Clinic - it will still not working. I don`t know if these were planned by Klei or it is a bug, but in DLC there is no way to deal with zombie spore now, so beware.