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The Basic Disease Game

To get an idea of how diseases propagate, we will try a simulation. Each group will get two transparent hex `playground's for the disease simulation. We will model children at school who interact on the play ground and infect one another. The initial population of children will be 50, of which one is initially infected. One team member will play the infected population, one will play the susceptible, and one will judge results and record data. Diseased and susceptible children will be placed separately on the play ground using overhead markers of different colors, and then new infections will be assessed according to interaction rules. The transparencies will be superposed and interactions evaluated by the judge. These new infections are added to the infected population for the next day.

Decide on an initial `splat' zone for each infected individual - a simple and easy to implement choice is the six hexes around any infected individual as well as the hex they stand in.



James Powell
2000-07-28