Cross-contamination of carried items about apesdk

[barbalet]

It's already in there Connor. See being_acquire_pathogen for more.

[connorsb]

It looks like the relevant variable does exist for modifying the chance that an ape who eats gets sick - PATHOGEN_ENVIRONMENT_PROB . It also looks like PATHOGEN_ENVIRONMENT_PROB gets set at 100 and not changed anywhere else in the code within the repository.

This would, I guess, simulate the "background noise" of disease globally for the apes. I'm imagining a much more granular vision for how disease might spread. I guess that's putting the cart before the horse, if internal bio-mechanics has been pushed back (heat regulation, etc).

I imagine forward work on disease vectors might move the way actual science has. PATHOGEN_ENVIRONMENT_PROB is "sickness is a curse from god". We'll move to Miasma (localized disease chance based on landform or some other factor), then contaminant, and then a real theory of bacteria / viruses / fungi / parasites.

I'm just not super-satisfied with "Apes live in a dirty environment, and self-contaminate all the damn time - damn dirty apes."

Yes. The probability of obtaining pathogens from the environment should depend on the landscape rather than just being a single global probability.