The country is ravaged with disease. Infection runs rampant. Medicines are nowhere to be found. The only valuable currency in society is food.
You’re the one responsible. You’re Patient Zero. You’re at Sydney Airport. And you have to flee the country.
So I flew to Dubbo.
It’s all part of a browser-based promotion for The Division called Collapse. It’s a simple simulation that uses open source data from NASA, International Air Transport Association public flight routes and epidemic models to gauge how fast it would take for the world to become infected.
Thinking Sydney’s geography would buy the world a few extra days, I used that as my starting point. I “began” feeling feverish after the first day, according to the simulation, so it gave me a choice of places for treatment.
And by treatment, it was asking, “Where would you like to infect people next?”
I like this game.
Poor paramedics.
After this first week, people went from being sick to just dropping off altogether. A state of emergency is declared, and I get to choose what area I’d like to further infect. It actually says “you decide to go to the _______ to buy enough food so you can barricade yourself in”, but let’s be real. There’s no food to be had.
For those playing along, I chose ALDI. ALDI’s pretty great.
Look at all of those sterile buildings. I’ll sort them out soon.
The infection didn’t appear to spread that rapidly in my local area though. It changes if you pick a major metropolitan city, such as New York or Paris, though. Collapse lets you pick thousands of cities from around the world; I imagine in such a scenario, Australia’s isolation would come in handy.
If the airports were shut down in time. But they’re not. That’s OK though, because I can escape the country for any international destination of my choosing.
I picked Dubbo.
To make things more interesting, you’re given little factoids as the simulation plays out. For instance, did you know nuclear power plants can generally run for 2 days without human intervention. That’s from an emergency management expert called Brian M. The game doesn’t link back to the source, although it does provide other figures from more well-known organisations and bodies as the infection spreads.
After 24 days, the world came to an end thanks to you and an unknown strain of small pox.
The simulation’s a little more lively if you pick a larger city: the infection spreads faster and the map is more vibrant to watch. Interestingly, it took slightly longer for the world to collapse when Patient Zero started in Paris and absconded to London, even though the total number of deaths was almost 100 million more.
If you want to play along, check it out here. It’s a fun little time-waster.
Especially if you’re fleeing the country for Dubbo.
Comments
16 responses to “Ubisoft’s Promo For The Division Takes You To Dubbo”
Game doesn’t seem to be working for me in Firefox or Chrome.
Worked fine for me in Chrome…may be your computer.
Yup worked fine for me in Chrome, it’s totally you.
Thanks. I guess I’ll fiddle around a bit and try and fix it. Thanks @xenoun as well.
On Firefox, would start up fine for me, then would crash the browser at random times, having to close it down and start again. Had a go at playing it three times before I stopped bothering. Got as far as seven days in-game time (felt like about three minutes real-world time).
Fun!
First try I set it to Melbourne, flying to Hong Kong. Took 25 days and 623 million killed.
Second try I set it to HK, flying to NY. Took 23 days and killed 698 million.
It’s a bit odd in the destination selection options sometimes.
For example, it took me from my home suburb in QLD to byron bay, instead of any number of local hospitals or food shops I would more likely go to as a first stop etc.
I agree; I put in an address near Monash uni, and instead of sending me to Monash Medical Centre, it sent me to St Vincents, then to Footscray. Shenanigans, I say. Shen. Annigans.
Dubbo’s pretty awesome. Western Plains Zoo is well worth a visit.
That was my first thought when I saw the headline. Spent the day riding my bike through W’Plains Zoo – something that you can’t do through Melbourne Zoo or any of the major metros for that fact. A great day out.
Don’t know how I’d feel about fleeing to the Zoo in the event of a viral outbreak though. Too many movies with monkey’s causing things to spread has made me cautious.
If a virus kills it’s host in 2 days… it’s probably going to burn itself out pretty quickly.
I agree.
Plus 650 million people dead isn’t likely to end society.
Just for clarity: the end of society — at least in these models — isn’t because of the hundreds of millions dead, it’s due to the collapse of law and order, communications, electricity and the other systems that keep “society” running.
Very true.
The virus that may succeed in killing humanity will have a long incubation time (with few obvious symptoms), high infectivity and either high mortality, or else cause infertility.
If you’ve ever seen the movie “Children of Men” that shows the path to which the latter might lead.
I managed to get the world to last 26 days and change by starting at Lightning Ridge. OTOH, starting in Beijing and flying to Dubai destroyed the world in about 22.
sends me all the way to a hospital into brisbane city. In reality I would have been sent to logan hospital… awww I wanted Logan to fall first. Laughed my ass off when food was the number 1 item that’s stolen.. That happens everyday anyway without a horrible killer virus spreading everywhere…
I thought it was a cool little touch, played it a couple of days a go and was totally spun out by the way it was using all my local hospitals and the like
So I typed in my address in Tasmania… 1st day they decided to rush me to North Mackay Private Hospital in QLD, which from what I can tell, is a rehabilitation center. Somehow I am thinking they don’t quite have the facilities…