A strange epidemic has struck Equestria. It causes Pegasi to rip off their wings and throw themselves to their deaths. It causes Unicorns to lose their magic and eat their own horns, and it causes Earth ponies to tear out their manes and tails and exhibit dementia like symptoms. It leads to death in all three species.
Mass suicides break out in Cloudsdale. Celestia heads to Cloudsdale only to return with the same symptoms. Luna then gets a letter from Twilight saying that the Earth ponies of Ponyville have started tearing out their manes and tails. A second letter comes from the new Unicorn colony that many of the Unicorns are losing their magic. Things go from bad to worse when Celestia loses her own magic leaving Luna to raise ans set the sun as well as the moon.
Luna brings Twilight, Zecora, Regalia the Griffin medic, Ramoth the dragon healer, and Zaphod the Minotaur doctor together in Canterlot to try to solve this mystery.
(Author's notes: Prions are real and all the medical stuff in this piece is all real too. A Prion is a protien that attacks the brain by destroying the neurons and causing strange behavior much like what we see in Dementia and in Alzheimer's. Feel free to give criticism and ask questions if you don't understand something. I'll be very happy to answer your questions to the best of my ability. A lot of research went into this. Enjoy! (No worries, no gore))
You have my attention.
Must read.
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I SAY! This fic is certainly horrifying!
TO THE SAFETY COPTER, WE MUST ESCAPE!
SOI SOI SOI SOI SOISOISOISOSIOSISOISOIsoisoisoisoisoisoi....
Thanks! Glad you guys are liking this so far!
Safety Copter? Well, yeah that would keep you safe. Make room for me!
I am intrigued...
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I will have to read this later...
Looks good so far, can't wait for the rest.
Is this based off that one movie, uh... what'sitsface, yeah that one, where everyone commits suicide because of something in the wind?
well i must say this is quite the riveting tale. maybe a few problems but not alot. Good job.
458706
The Happening
458706 The Crazies? is that the movie?
Cool, its like that M. Night Shyamalan film, The Happening!
Except it doesn't blow donkey balls!
And the suicides aren't being caused by trees!
I will say that I found Scootaloo's reaction to Spitfire's rather horrific death to be HILARIOUSLY out-of-character.
"What's that Dash? Your hero just gruesomely committed suicide? FUCK YEAH, OPEN WONDERBOLT SLOT!!!"
realy scootaloo that was just awfull
"i didnt do anything" 
Thanks! Working on Chapter two right now!
Scootaloos reaction does feel out of character. Shock can do that to you. She'll finally realize it is all true. I went through a period similar to this years ago when my grandfather died. At first, I kept expecting the phone to ring and say it was a joke, much like Dash's reaction with the radio. It took a while for it to sink in. Dash is about to have it all sink in, the moment she crashes through the open window of the library, that is.
YES!!! i love prions. prionprionprions...
oh did i just let my prion obsessed part of my brain come out? oops. prions are one of the reasons the zombie apocalypse is possible.
Incredibly interesting, my only criticism is that it could be a tad bit longer. I hope you do a good job on portraying the fear and pandemonium that will spread once shit hits the fan.
I always love apocalyptic fic's, amazing concept.
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Possible, but unlikely, Prion zombies would be just as easy to kill as regular humans, the worst/best you could hope for is staggering rage zombies. Personlly I love the authors take on suicide prions, seems more surreal or whatever I'm trying to get across.
494244 why would they stagger? they could sprint. destroy rational thought part of brain, hyper-stimulate hunger part of brain.
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I'd imagine if they have the ability to sprint they'll retain at least some semblance of previous morality, and therefore if they loose that chances are they're brain damaged. or maybe just starved.
But you are right, thinking over there is nothing to say they couldn't sprint, but they'd have to have there anger as well as hunger hyper-stimulated. But then you'd run into a problem, in order for this to happen you'd have to have multiple prions affecting different parts of the brain and different proteins. not only that but the changes would most likely take at least a couple of days/week to begin taking affect as prions take time to infect and outnumber correct proteins.
Another problem is that if you have an incorrect protein that effects the brain in a certain way, is it going to kill the animal, proteins often work together to do a job, and if one is missing it would probably fail. This doesn't make it unlikely just implausible.
However, back to needing multiple prions, no one protein effects that many specific brain functions, if you changed a protien that effected ALL brain function you'd just kill or severely retard/vegtibalize the animal.
My Ideas:
1) Instead, perhaps all the needed prions all congregate in the mouth, the problem with this is what would brain chemicals be doing in the mouth, you don't get neural growth receptors there.
2) Perhaps it's a parasite that secretes large amounts of the prions. It would inhabit the salival gland and secrete prions and chemicals into the blood causing it's host to go insane and become a rage zombie, I'd imagine it would also put out large amounts of eggs/larva into the slaiva, perhaps overstimulating the gland to produce more of it. It'd be a useful survival tactic as it would spread in bites where it would travel the bloodstream until it came across the salival gland and started the process again. This also would not kill the host, nor cause excessive bleeding. The victim could be cured or rendered immune by the removal of the gland.
499185 i'm going to guess that the different parts of your brain have differnt protiens, so the prions could sense that, and thus think "if protein 1, stimulate. if protein 2, KEELL IT WITH FIRE!!!
501142
You have no idea how brain work do you? Of course I'm not implying I'm some kind of neural scientist, I myself have very little idea of how brains work on, only a very basic understanding. No offense but what you said sounded incredibly stupid, do you even know what a prion is? or how it works?
Have you even received high school education to the point where you know that bases make up amino acids which form proteins. A parasite could have in it's genetic coding the ability to produce prions which would target specific brain proteins, there prions would have no use within the create other then to be secreted. The evolutionary driving force behind this theory is this is how the parasite infects new hosts.
sorry.
You guys have the right idea.
A little run down on the brain. It is made up of different parts which each has a specific job. The Hind Brain, also known as the primitive brain is found at the top of the brain stem. Popular theory has this portion being the original brain from the time humans were nothing more then the basic wild animal. Over time, the brain improved. It acts much like a computer. The thalamus handles the sleep/awake cycle. When the thalamus is damaged, you lose the ability to sleep.
This is the case for twenty Itallian families. Around middle age, prions attack the thalamus and they die from lack of sleep. In several dear and elk spieces, they lose the ability to eat and end up starving to death. The prion goes for the Hypothalamus which is responsible for food and water control. It tells the body to stop eating or to eat. In Sheep, there is Scrapie, in which the affected animals develop a severe itch and rub their bodies raw trying to relieve it. the Prion has gone after the central part of the brain that deals with the central nervous system. You may be more familiar with the cow variant, Mad Cow Disease. Mad Cow rose when the beef industry started feeding food to cows that had ground up sheep in it. A sheep with Scrapie got ground up in the food and Mad Cow began. In Humans, the same disease is called CJD, and in rare cases, vCJD. (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease) this disease has been found in minks, and in cats. (Called TSE in minks, and FSE in cats) Your best defense against it is to cook meat thoroughly. That means no red meat in beef, mutton, and vension. There is also the laughing sickness in a tribe in New Zealand. They laugh to death. In this case, the Prion has gone after the part of the brain that controls emotion.
We'll see variations of the same sickness emerge in the other races.
Minotaurs: Mad Minotaur Disease: MMD
Dragons: Scrapie
Zebra: Wasting sickness
Griffon: Sleeping sickness
Pony: Red-Cross Disease: RCD
I'm not proud of this chapter. I think I was trying too hard to be funny, which is not my strong suit. I am going to rewrite this chapter sometime in the distant future after I finish the story. I am pretty sure there are mistakes here and there and I think I rushed a little bit. Feel free to help me out here.
This reminds me of the Happening only with ponies.
I really want to see more of this, sounds interesting.
Greatly written fic so far albeit a few mistakes here and there this is great +1 thumb.
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I hate to say it, but you were. Given that this is supposed to be sad/horror, comedy, other then dark, comedy really doesn't fit. I hope the next chapter shows us what happens to non-pegasi.
reminds me of the happening too. ominous.
great chapter again. hope to see this updated some more. keep up the good work!
umm i didnt see the funny granted funny doesnt fit in with dark sad and whatever else you have so thats fine and bybye celestia looks like i wont have to kill you after all err I MEAN GET WELL SOON
starscream? i thought rainbowdash ate you in deathmatch?
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According to Starscream, that was his robot self. He is claiming resurrection into a pegasus body. I allowed him in after he made me promise not to kill him off. I didn't tell him he would have to be a good guy though.
"Why is it that everypony thinks I'm a bad pony?" Starscream asked, "I'm not evil!"
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Also, I think I'm picking up a little "Outbreak (1995)" referencing...
458706 gone with the wind?
458706 gone with the wind?
give me more im waiting plez plez plez plez plez :D:D:D:D:D:
The Happening Pony Style :D
Chapter three is coming!
The Pony version of Mad Cow Disese.
Save the Ponies!
665313 How many more weeks?!?!?!?
3349793 Not much longer. I have been doing some research, and chapter three is nearly ready.