Zerg Infestation and assimulation- How it works

Infestation has always been an interesting aspect of teh Zerg for me. Ranging from mindless suicide bombers to the Queen of Blades herself, Infestation can yield unique results, and affects Terrans and wildlife alike, but Protoss seem to be immune. This is also how the Zerg assimilate new races into the gene pool, infesting members of the species and using their DNA to evolve new strains. However, there's also questions and interesting findings that come with these processes.

1. Most basic infested Terrans seem to be brain-washed minions, not much different than their natural-born zerg counterparts. However, in Wings of Liberty, an infested colonist pleads to Raynor's raiders "please, kill me," as well as the fact that infested marines spawned by infestors commit suicide after time limit expiration. Can there be varying quality levels of infestation among normal infested? I think that in the case of the colonist, the virus only took control of motor functions (if that makes sense) and left the rest of the brain free. As for the marines, I think the rapid mutation only provides temporary control, and the marines snap out of it horrified by what's happened to them and kill themselves.

2. How does the hyper-evolutionary virus work? In original starcraft, it made me believe it could only be spread through direct injection by whatever creature is seen growing on an infested command center, chyrsalis, etc. But in SC2, it seems to spread like any normal virus, and infested can spread the infection to others.

3. Is there any sort of media (including fan art) showing what any of the races that Zerg breeds were based off of looked like before being assimilated?

4. What do you think a zerg breed evolved from infested terrans would look like? I think the aberration most closely represents what one may look like.

 

Meh, Zerg assimilation/infestation has always seemed a little contradictory to me. As I understand it, all the strains the Zerg have assimilated at this point were the result of a very gradual symbiotic fusion of the original Zerg (essentially larva) with the host organism. It might just be that Terrans are a relatively recent addition to the swarm, but there has yet to be a consistent end-result from Terran infestation beyond lumpy-mutated masses of extra limbs.

Apparently having a certain level of psionic capability is supposed to "guide" the evolutionary virus, maximizing beneficial mutations while avoiding the more problematic ones. The only problem with that is that the Swarm would have to exclusively infest/assimilate life forms with some level of psionics, which is a pretty damn rare occurrence. It kinda makes me wonder how the Swarm was able to crank out the necessary strains for Banelings and Roaches so quickly.

Oh and here's this. It's a blog discussing scientific plausibility of various things in the StarCraft universe.

 

Thanks for the link. I remember from a novel a zerg queen infested a dog and managed to keep some DNA samples. The infested dog was killed, but the Queen used the DNA to have larva morph into EXACT copies, which General Duke named Roverlisks. This may have been an unsusal occurance made out of desperation, or it could mean that new zerg strains start out just like the infested form of the base creature, and evolve to look more naturally "zerg-like" over time.

 

From various sources, like Revelations and Thundergod, we've seen that infested terrans lose some of their mind. In effect, your mind degenerates and becomes more zerg over time.

Personally I think the "suicide" is just supposed to be humor.

That was a new virus, as Matt Horner said (or a new take on an old virus).

I think not. Except, I suppose, the dog in Wings of Liberty.

Yes, but...

Humans suck as raw material for something like the zerg. We're not warriors, really, instead we're fast food, convenient and easily acquired by apex predators like tigers and zerg. (Mind you, when you use your brain to develop a spear, which gives you a reach advantage against a tiger, you become "inconvenient food". Zerg don't need technology, though, they can match it using their own methods.) That's why infested colonists are so weak, and the summoned ones don't last long, they're not worth the effort.

We have two things the zerg find useful, though:

1) Psychic potential. That's something that could be transferred to other strains, without using a weak creature as its base. Heck, queens might be using said potential (BLATANT GUESSING!)

2) Intelligence. But intelligence by itself doesn't mean much. An aberration hasn't gone to school, has it? That's why individual terrans like Sarah Kerrigan, Alexei Stukov and Ethan Stewart were infested using advanced methods - they already demonstrated psychic potential, intelligence or both - and after letting the terrans educate them and give them life experience, the zerg just steal them.

That was Shadow of the Xel'Naga.

 

@Kimera
Humans aren't that bad physically, you know. We are the only predators capable of keeping up with prey for prolonged periods of time. Hell, one of the favorite tactics of ye olde time humans was pursue animals until they died from exhaustion.

1) Actually, the infestation of the colony seemed to be more like a virus than regular infestation. The retaining sentience could just be one of the differences between the virus and regular infestation.

2) See 1)

3) Judging by the description of the ultralisk in the original starcraft manual, the new species doesn't really resemble the old one all that much

4) Wasn't the aberration already an infested terran? Because the hyper-evolutionary virus and regular infestation produce very similar results (in the physical department), and we saw a couple of them on Char, I think it's safe to say the aberration is just a strain of zerg based on terrans.

 

Aberrations are confirmed to be infested terrans, not natural-born zerg. I'm unsure what to think about he virus. I'm pretty confident infestation has always been carried out via virus, but a virus can't root itself into a building and grow into a tenticle-like organism that engulfs said sructure, unless it's sort of like the Flood from Halo, where infected organisms would be used as biomass to feed the zerg growth on a building.

 

That could just be the zerg-created virus extending itself to the local micro-organisms, mosses and plants.

 

"Humans aren't that bad physically, you know. We are the only predators capable of keeping up with prey for prolonged periods of time. Hell, one of the favorite tactics of ye olde time humans was pursue animals until they died from exhaustion."

True, being bipedal does have a few advantages, but the zerg seem pretty tireless as it is. Also, in Koprulu Sector, zerg hunt you!

 

I think the Zerg can make use of human DNA. I remember reading the base species for the hydralisk was docile and friendly. Even in self defense, I don't think this said creature is close to the hydralisk in potential. Keep in mind any species asorbed by the zerg is evolved into a strain devoted ENTIRELY to one task, whether that be killing, maintaining the hive, etc. If the zerg were to evolve humans into a strain devoted enirely to combat, and maybe add ranged weapons, there could be potential. Maybe even making it be sort of a caster-based unit instead, like the infestor. As for psychic potential, you have to remember psychic power is very rare in humans, and all cases of infesting ghosts either result in loss of that power, or a creature too valuable to sacrifice for it's genes.

 

too whit the rarity of ghost: by the end of brood war, the dominion had about 200 ghosts. On a population of several billion.

 

The slothien had "urticating" (stinging) hairs that it could launch at opponents. The zerg could evolve that.

Humans have ... brains, which let us wield technology. (An unarmed human should lose to a lion. An armed human, or one with martial arts training, has at least some chance. Although I suggest practicing first; a pair of martial arts students in India learned this the hard way.)

With queens, overlords and Kerrigan, the zerg don't need that, and they can't really use technology anyway. There's pretty much nothing physical about humans that the zerg would want to use.

 

Humans also have thumbs, which lets us throw rocks. Or spears. Or grenades. I don't think any zerg species has been portrayed with thumbs.

 

True, but zerg don't need thumbs. Why throw rocks when you can spit spines that can penetrate 2 cm of neosteel? That's a bit more impressive to my mind. Why use a melee weapon like a spear when you are one?

I don't think most human physical advantages are useful to the zerg. Mental yes - infesting psionic military officers gives the zerg what they want - but I seriously doubt Kerrigan's rifle skills had anything to do with why she was chosen.

 

Well lets think about ease of "production." A human-based strain may not be the most powerful zerg around, but if this strain was easy to produce in large numbers, would anyone do it? Who knows, maybe the aberations seen on Char were natural-born zerg, and they were produced by similar means as the roverlisk.

 

Ooh, I got another: 1337 jumping skills. Our knees are better for jumping upwards. We could become bounceylisks.