Welcome to VirusBreak
This game allows you to see how viral outbreaks spread through a population.
You can watch the spread of well known viruses such as coronavirus, influenza, measles, ebola, or
make up your own.
As well as looking at the spread of your infection you can also play with
counter-measures such as quarantine and vaccination to slow or even stop
the spread of the disease. You can see how these measures can be effective
in stopping even the most infectious diseases, and how losing these controls
can allow disease to re-emerge.
Playing the game
Playing the game is a simple process:
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From the Viruses section pick one of the standard viruses to load
its properties.
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From the Properties section you can see how virulent
the infection you selected is.
You can change the properties of the virus if you like by dragging
the sliders. The values you set here will affect the spread of the virus
in the simulation.
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Start the simulation. On mobile press the Run tab,
or on desktop look at the main area.
The coloured squares represent the whole of
the US population (around 327 million people). The colour of the
square represents the status of the people. At the start everyone
will be either vaccinated (and therefore immune), or uninfected (but
vulnerable). You will also see one purple square which is the start of
an initial infection.
Press the Run button. The simulation will start to run.
You will see your initial infection start to spread. Sometimes it will
naturally die out - usually because of your vaccination or quarantine
countermeasures. Sometimes the whole of the popualtion will end
up infected. Watch the numbers in the categories at the top to see
the effect your outbreak had. You can start further infections at any
point by pressing the Infect button.
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The simulation will stop when the last infection dies out. You can
look at the final tally of infections and deaths at the top of the
simulation area. Try changing the properties of your virus to see
what effect it has on the outcome. Press the Reset
button to clear the results and start again.