Infection

An Infection is a disease inflicted by certain zombie bites that are particularly deep. If untreated, the infection will eventually kill you. You can clean the wound with a first aid, or take antibiotics if the infection progresses.

Not the same as a traditional zombie movie infection. Might be related to the zombie 'virus' (not a virus, but that is a different spoiler), but probably just their, semi rotting, foul smelling, saliva. And the pieces of other humans still stuck between their teeth. The combination of bacteria from these sources causing some form of sepsis. Might still infect you with the zombie stuff. But that is not what kills you.

Bite wound

Zombie bites that hit and deal any amount of damage can leave bite wounds that feel "really deep...". Such a wound can easily become a serious threat; though you've got about 6 hours (3600 turns) after being bitten, you should pay attention and take care of the problem ASAP as it gets tougher to treat over time.

For the first two hours (1200 turns) you'll occasionally be warned about it ("Your bite wound really hurts.").

After 2 hours (1200 turns) pass, the wound will cause you pain (up to 10 points), making sleeping very difficult ("Your bite wound feels swollen and painful.") and reducing your dexterity by one.

After 4 hours (2400 turns) the penalties will double - two points of dexterity and up to 20 points of pain.

After 6 hours untreated, the bite wound will become infected.

A healthy diet, along with relevant traits such as Infection Resistant, can help your system repel the infection on its own. The chance of this happening to new survivors without Infection Resistant is not too high (~30%).

You can clean a bite wound with a first aid kit, disinfect it, or painfully cauterize it with a hotplate or soldering iron. Once the infection's fully developed, cauterizing and cleaning won't help as it's spread into your body. You can also cauterize wounds with a knife if you've got fire nearby (an adequately filled lighter will do), but cauterization is not guaranteed to prevent the infection and when it doesn't help, it makes the situation worse (50% chance to heal, otherwise makes the bite worsen as if 43 minutes passed).

Getting bitten in the infected body part makes the infection progress slightly faster (~7 minutes per bite if bite wound or ~4 minutes if infected wound).

Infected wound

Infections may develop when a bite wound isn't addressed within 6 hours. This disease will last for 24 hours. An infected bodypart is green in the interface, and shows up in the @ player info screen as 'Infected (body part)'.

After getting this disease (Infected wound), your strength and dexterity will be reduced by one point each and you'll start accumulating significant pain (up to 20 points). The constant pain makes sleeping nearly impossible. You'll also have a low chance (0.1% chance per turn) of vomiting.

After 8 hours (Badly Infected wound), your strength and dexterity will decrease by another point each. You'll also suffer from severe pain (up to 60 points). Chance of vomiting increases significantly (1 in 600 chance).

After 16 hours (Pus Filled wound), your strength and dexterity will be reduced by yet another point each. You'll also occasionally vomit and suffer from severe pain (up to 90 points). Vomiting becomes frequent (1 in 200) and there's a 1% chance per turn of passing out for up to a minute.

24 hours after the infection (30 hours including the bite wound) you will die ("You succumb to the infection.").

You can cure the infected wound by taking antibiotics, royal jelly or cleaning it with a first aid kit. This will give you the "recovering" status ("Recovering From Infection") with duration equal to 4 times the time spent with infected wound.

An infection can randomly heal on its own. A starting survivor has roughly a 15% chance of surviving an untreated infection. This chance is significantly higher with the Infection Resistant trait.

This disease can also be part of an NPC mission, where you'll be asked to bring antibiotics back.

Recovering from infection

After healing infection, the penalties are not removed immediately. It will take 4 times as long for the penalties to be removed as it took for them to accumulate. Penalties during recovery are the same as penalties during the infection, except they decrease with time rather than increasing.

For example, a survivor who healed a 10 hour infected wound (Badly Infected) will keep the Badly Infected penalties for 8 hours (4 * 2 hours), then they'll decrease to Infected penalties for the next 24 hours (4 * 8 hours).

Recovering from infection status significantly lowers the chance of other bite wounds and infections healing on their own.