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pollution and the new "germs" mechanics


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Yesterday on the stream you showed us the new infection mechanic, and said that it will somehow interconnect with the polluted oxygen/water. Also, polluted dirt from the outhouses is also infected, for some reason.

And I started to wonder, what the "pollution" even supposed to be? Because right now it is a strange mix of "toxic" and "infected" - the two things that has nothing in common. Slime is polluted, and so are some water pools inside the slime bioms. These bioms are also very hot and damp, so that looks very much like the area contaminated with the putrefaction bacteria, and the "pollution" would be ammonia toxins and hydrogen sulfides. Other source of the polluted water would be ice bioms, where it is stored in the form of "polluted ice". Which is definitely something else, since you can't freeze a water with organic waste inside. That is actually how northern people clear the water: they freeze and then unfreeze it. I actually don't have the slightest idea what a "polluted ice" could be. And finally, we have hand-made polluted water, produced by the bathrooms, CO2 filters and gas-generators. Here, I'm at a loss. Human feces, as wikipedia teaches us, consist of bacterial biomass and carbohydrates. Shower water is a water mixed with dirt, sweat, and skin tissues, and gas-generator waste is a water mixed with... another water, actually. "Natural gas" is just methane, it burns into water and CO2. Which brings us to the CO2 filters. If you mix CO2 with water, you get soda (well, not exactly, but close enough). Soda is not "polluted" :). All these types of "pollution" are very different. And, by the way, none of them are infectious in any way. Even human waste, that contain a lot of bacteria, is not infectious, since those are not the pathogenic bacteria, it's Escherichia Coli which we can't live without. So I don't really understand why outhouses are so infectious.

Well, anyway, enough with chemistry, let's talk gameplay! I think you should split "polluted" into "toxic" and "infected" altogether. "Toxic" has nothing to do with immunity, and can't spread from one dupe to another. If someone has a toxic poisoning it'll be his own business, nobody can "catch" it. On the other hand, toxic environment can't be decontaminated by e.g. UV light or chemicals, it must be filtered. You don't need to filter the infected water, just boiling it would be enough. Or clean it with UV, like the modern water stations do. The plants don't need bacteria to grow (well, actually, they do, but that's a totally different story), so they would probably like the toxic water (implying the presence of ammonia and carbohydrates that they need) and not the infected one. Right now the "polluted" substances bring lots of confusion.

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