Bio-Weapon

General Information

Strategy Guides
Main Game - Cure Mode

Bio-Weapon

Exceptionally lethal pathogen that kills everything it touches.

Information

Plague Type

Standard

Special Abilities

Gene Compre ssion

Deactivated Modified Genes
Nucleic Acid Neutralization
Unlock Annihilate Gene

Release Date

May 23, 2012, Version 1.0

Cost

Complete Nano-Virus (Normal or higher) or $0.99USD

Core Statistics
Infectivity	Severity	Lethality
4	1	0

Cure Requirement	Mutation multiplier
0.18	0.5

Base Cross Country Transmission
Air	Sea	Land
1	1	1

Base Environmental Effectivity
Rich	Poor	Urban	Rural
0.4	1	1	1

Hot	Cold	Humid	Arid
0.1	0.1	1	1

« Bio-Weapons are organisms or entities that replicate inside their target host and can be used to kill or incapacite. They are prohibited under international humanitarian law and deploying them is a war crime. »

— Description of Bio-Weapon in Plague Inc.: The Board Game

The Bio-Weapon is a genetically and biologically engineered and modified virus that was accidentally released from a laboratory. It is the final Standard Plague available in the game.

Similar to other diseases, primarily the virus standard plague type in physical appearance and in shape and size. However, unlike the previous plague types, Bio-Weapon's lethality exponentially increases over time, leading to either detection or an extinction event.

In order to win, the player must use the disease's special abilities to lower the lethality in order to avoid killing too many hosts too early. Similar to the Nano-Virus, this quirk effectively provides a time strain, making it also suitable for Speedruns.

General Information

Similar to Nano-Virus, the Bio-Weapon is a powerful yet artificial engineered entity. Seemingly behaving like a Virus, Bio-Weapon does not feature escalating devolution costs nor excessive mutations from DNA fragmentation. A key feature of the Bio-Weapon is that its lethality will increase passively throughout the game. By default, the Bio-Weapon has slightly higher infectivity than usual, and is better suited to rich countries than average.

Bio-Weapon's innate lethality increment occurs randomly on a daily basis, eventually going exponential if left unchecked.

Gradual Lethality

Every in game day, the game will roll a random chance for the Bio-Weapon to increase lethality naturally. As the game progresses, the chance of lethality will increase exponentially. Nucleic Acid Neutralization will reset the exponential growth rate to zero, Gene Compression reduces lethality growth, Deactivate Modified Genes removes set amounts of lethality.

Special Abilities

Gene Compression 1 - 3: Extends the delay between lethality increments.
Nucleic Acid Neutralization 1 - 3: Resets exponential lethality growth to base.
Deactivated Modified Genes 1 - 3: Reduces lethality.
Unlock Annihilate gene: Greatly increases infectivity, severity, and brings forth massive lethality boosts.

Special Operations

Declare Armageddon: A large part of the world's population is alerted about the possible dangers of the outbreak, causing the player to gain a great amount of authority.
Expectation Management: The population is informed that it is impossible to protect all the infected by trying to reduce their exceptions, so that the player does not lose so much authority when the public order of a country starts to collapse.
Extreme Measures 1 - 2: Security agents will be deployed to ensure that the infected do not approach any healthy people or continue to spread the disease elsewhere.

Trivia

The Bio-Weapon has an advantage of +0.4 adaption/effectiveness by default in rich countries.
In early versions of the game, a biohazard icon was used to represent this type of disease.^[1]
In December 2015, Ndemic Creations announced the sale of plush toys inspired by the design of Bio-Weapon, Nano-Virus and Neurax Worm.^[2]
In January 2016, Bio-Weapon was added to the Multiplayer Mode.^[3]
- In Evolution of 20 of Plague Inc.: Evolved released in July 2016, some disease-related aspects were balanced, including Bio-Weapon's resistance towards cure.^[4]
In December 2019, the Armageddon expansion of Plague Inc.: The Board Game was released, in which two plagues were added, these were Bio-Weapon and Fungus.^[5]
- In the Board Game, the Bio-Weapon presents certain abilities, these include Festering Corpses, in which it collects DNA in countries where its population is completely dead in order to make the pathogen stronger. Although there is a possibility that it can eradicate itself since it has limited infectivity.^[6]

Stages of Evolution

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

Cure Mode Traits

Main Article: Cure Mode

Internal Haemorrhaging^{[n 1]}

Annihilate Gene^{[n 2]}

Total Organ Failure^{[n 3]}

Subconjunctival Haemorrhage^{[n 4]}

Genetic Harvesting^{[n 5]}

Necrosis^{[n 6]}

Coughing^{[n 7]}

↑ Internal Haemorrhaging: Arterial membranes break down, causing rapid internal bleeding and death
↑ Annihilate gene: Increase in temperature, contagiousness and severe dehydration, which can be fatal
↑ Total Organ Failure: Catastrophic cell death of multiple tissue types causes body-wide organ failure and rapid death
↑ Subconjunctival Haemorrhage: Blood vessels between conjunctiva and sclera burst, causing severe red eyes with occasional external bleeding
↑ Genetic Harvesting: Emergency kill-codes have proven ineffective, new ones will need to be developed before the disease can be stopped
↑ Necrosis: Large swathes of infected tissue lose blood supply and become fatally gangrenous
↑ Coughing: When infecting new countries, mutations are triggered, increasing infectivity and lethality

Achievements

Achievement Name:		Unlock Bio-Weapon disease type
Achievement Description:		Unlock the Bio-Weapon by winning with a Nano-Virus on Normal or Brutal difficulty
Value:	40 pts	Difficulty:	Normal/Brutal

Achievement Name:		Bio-Weapon Victory
Achievement Description:		Win a game with Bio-Weapon on Normal Difficulty or higher
Value:	N/A	Difficulty:	Normal

Achievement Name:	Bioweapon Master
Achievement Description:	Beat bioweapon disease type on mega-brutal difficulty
Value:	Difficulty:	Mega Brutal