Wednesday 15 February 2017

#100daysofvideogames Day 6

Sprout rediscovered Plague inc evolved today, and chatted to me lots about the options that you use as the pathogen to either wipe out or enslave the human race. It involved virulence, viruses, bacteria, Ebola, DNA, RNA... we looked up electron microscope scans of various viruses and he was curious about how close to real life it was... he told me about the similarity of one aspect of the game to Alien's xenomorphs... talked about what affects the success of a pathogen, whether wiping out its host is wise, how severity or otherwise might lead to better or worse spread... he told me about looking at infecting high density populations in poorer areas compared to lower density and richer areas, and the comparative consequences of this. He asked me what I thought the necro virus might be, and after guessing something quickly fatal, or something necrotising, I guessed at a zombie virus which he gleefully confirmed was correct :) We chatted briefly about the behaviour modification in mice due to toxoplasma, and in snails due to Leucochloridium. He talked about being able to edit the genetic code of the pathogen, and we talked briefly about the reality of genetic editing for hereditary disease. He told me that the viruses have a much higher mutation frequency than the bacteria, which affects the human's ability to cure them, and we chatted briefly about the similarity to real life viruses and bacteria.

(Microbiology, epidemiology, genetics, making connections. literacy, numeracy, sociology)

He also played a bit more Fallout 4, utilising some underwater power armour. He told me that it lets you breathe underwater, plus also used two tactical buoys on the arms. He laughed and said that that was buoys with a U, and said, "I don't just strap two random males to my arms." We'd all had a conversation about homophones the other day, and he said it was like that.
(Humour, making connections, literacy, problem solving, humour)

We went to the park and Squidge took his AR dinosaur book, as he'd been waiting to go somewhere really open to generate the bigger ones. He was excited at how big they were, and thought it was funny that if you walked in front of the camera it glitched and the dinosaur attahed itself to your head :)
(Prehistory, technology)

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