Viruses. From influenza to the common cold,
we’ve all had experiences with these nasty diseases. They’re easy to catch, quickly
transferring from one host to another through proximity or physical contact. This also means
that viruses are easily spread, and if the number of infected grows beyond what’s treatable,
it can cripple the entire world’s health infrastructure. Overrun hospitals, behavioral mandates, and
constant death are all elements of a worldwide pandemic. It’s no wonder why zombie outbreaks
and lab-grown diseases are such common premises for horror movies and video games. Diseases
are downright scary, and it’s most likely because the world has been overtaken by disease
on multiple occasions that makes them so frightening. The bubonic plague, the great influenza pandemic,
and even the COVID-19 pandemic are all events that have wiped out significant portions of
humanity, and if left unchecked, a viral disease might be able to wipe out every last one of
us. Sure, you can take measures to keep yourself
safe, but who’s to say a mutation isn’t out of the question? A disease altering its
own biology to overcome resistance and continue its spread could be a germaphobe’s nightmare,
and have serious consequences for the entire world. Of course, we’re still talking about
ordinary diseases, but what about when the virus is anything but normal? What if it falls
under that umbrella that could be termed… anomalous. Enter the SCP Foundation. For them,
anomalous viruses are some of the hardest to secure, contain, and protect the world
from. It’s not hard to imagine why, either. Containing
viruses often involves the spread of safety precautions and information, sometimes distributions
of vaccinations and medicine. Basically, to stop a virus, people need to first know what
they’re dealing with. When you’re operating under the veil of secrecy that the Foundation
has to maintain, your options for information dispersal become a lot more complicated. Of
course, by nature of being anomalous, the diseases the Foundation has to deal with are
a lot stranger, and definitely more dangerous than just another strain of the flu. Perhaps you’re already familiar with SCP-008,
the infectious disease codenamed the “zombie plague”, that shuts down a victim’s body
and decays it heavily, but the SCP Foundation’s Russian database has a deadly virus of its
own. SCP-1007-RU, is also known as the Nietzsche Virus. It’s nicknamed after the famous German
philosopher, who coined the term ‘God is Dead’ and explored themes of nihilism, an
ideology that delves into the meaninglessness of life, the universe, and humanity’s existence.
If that doesn’t clue you in that this anomaly is horrifying, then just wait until we dive
into the file itself. SCP-1007-RU is, given it’s viral and infectious
nature, kept in a high security containment chamber intended to seal the anomaly away
from the world. The chamber is outfitted with a triple-airlock system that prevents accidental
leakage and unwanted access. Entry into SCP-1007-RU’s containment chamber comes with its own set
of Special Containment Procedures. Researchers must outfit themselves in an insulated, protective
suit that allows no material from inside the chamber to make contact with their body. Once
their work with SCP-1007-RU is finished, they must take a sterilizing shower to wash any
potentially lingering harmful particles from their body, and if that’s not enough, they’re
forced into a six hour quarantine, isolated from the rest of the Foundation until their
superiors are absolutely sure that they don’t exhibit signs of infection. If personnel are by chance contaminated after
contact with SCP-1007-RU, the Foundation takes their best interests into account and immediately
euthanizes them, followed by a cremation of their remains, to make sure all biological
material is destroyed entirely, as harmful, infectious agents may still persist on skin
tissue and inside the body long after death has occured. Yes, the containment procedure for SCP-1007-RU
is immediate termination of a valuable Foundation employee. Those don’t grow on trees either,
and the Foundation definitely does not resort to this option very often, but this only demonstrates
the severe threat that SCP-1007-RU poses to the Foundation’s integrity. Perhaps losing
one employee is better than the innumerable deaths caused by a full scale outbreak of
the anomaly. The area surrounding SCP-1007-RU’s containment
chamber, located in a facility kept inside the larger Foundation grouping of Zone-07,
is also kept free of contamination by a high-temperature sterilization process as a final security
measure to keep SCP-1007-RU’s containment as safe as it can possibly be. Since SCP-1007-RU
is transmitted like most contagious viral diseases, via airborne, physical, and blood
contact, the Foundation has made sure their containment procedures are as safe and tightly
designed as possible. Since anyone who comes into contact with the anomaly is a carrier
of it, all of the precaution is understandably necessary. But what is SCP-1007-RU, aside from a deadly,
infectious disease? What makes it anomalous, and separates it from an ordinary virus? SCP-1007-RU specifically involves the multi-step
mutation of neurons. If you don’t already know, neurons are cells that transmit and
receive nerve impulses throughout our bodies. Neurons respond to stimuli, sensations like
touch, sound, light, and information from other cells. They’re an essential part of
our bodies, and a necessary component for cells to communicate with one another. But
most importantly, neurons help us feel pain. When SCP-1007-RU infects a subject, it changes
their neurons over time to allow them to feel an increased threshold of pain tolerance,
meaning that the victim can feel a more intense amount of pain before succumbing to death
or losing consciousness. That almost sounds beneficial, right? If everyone
had an increased pain tolerance, things like minor cuts or falling off your chair would
barely register as harmful. But SCP-1007-RU has a disadvantageous trade-off that comes
with its multi-step nature. As the virus mutates and changes, it does so in ‘steps’, but
before each stage of cell mutation occurs, the victim experiences enough pain to completely
overwhelm their pain tolerance threshold. SCP-1007-RU’s initial incubation period
lasts from two to four hours, after which, the virus will make its way through the central
nervous system and into the brain. The victim experiences severe pain in line with their
ordinary pain threshold, and promptly loses consciousness. After they regain consciousness,
the true horrors of SCP-1007-RU commence, and the anomaly begins to mutate their neurons
and alter their existing pain thresholds to accomodate more stimuli. SCP-1007-RU seems to have an indefinite number
of stages. If the victim can handle the pain, the infection will persist, and the neurons
will continue to mutate until they’re unable to suffer any more and die from the disease.
Technically speaking, the virus is infinite, and it will go on until death occurs, but
Foundation research has found that human subjects have only been able to reach, at most, the
anomaly’s sixth stage, after which they die. Not a single test subject has persisted
into the seventh iteration of the virus, as it’s believed to be too much pain for the
human body to handle. But if a subject did reach these impossible
pain thresholds, they most likely wouldn’t last much longer. Curiously, when the Foundation
experimented with SCP-1007-RU on a rat, it survived nine stages into the anomaly. However,
the pain was too much for the researchers to bear observing, and the decision was made
to put the poor creature out of its misery shortly after. Each stage follows a similar pattern, allowing
it to be predictably catalogued and measured across all test subjects. First, a subject
will experience severe pain just below their current pain tolerance threshold. After 36
hours, the pain will intensify, growing larger and more harmful for the victim, until they
finally lose consciousness. A few minutes later, when the subject has fully regained
consciousness, the next stage begins, and the process repeats itself. Only this time,
the pain threshold is increased. Over time, this process will continue to repeat itself
and grow more deadly, until the subject expires, dying from severe levels of pain beyond any
of our comprehension. What makes the disease even worse to contract
is that this pain is unable to be suppressed. The Foundation has certainly tried, from analgesics
to tranquilizers, and surely some memetic agents designed to reduce painful sensations,
but nothing has had any effect on an individual infected by SCP-1007-RU. They’re forced
to endure the pain, without any reprieve, for a full 36 hours before passing out. They
can’t even lose consciousness before the stage ends, meaning that the only break from
SCP-1007-RU is the few short minutes in between stages, all before the process repeats itself
again and again. Interestingly, the inactive period between
stages, labeled the “quiescence” period, seems to increase exponentially as time goes
on. The first period ranges from 48 to 108 hours, where the subject feels completely
ordinary before the next active stage occurs and their pain tolerance is increased. The Foundation typically does not like to
prolong the pain of its test subjects beyond what’s absolutely necessary to understand
all elements of an anomaly. The moral issues that resulted from SCP-1007-RU’s research
were addressed in a statement by Overseer O5-4, which read “Human experiments are
performed only with the explicit permission of the Overseer Council. Any requests for
experiments in which a subject would have to reach the sixth stage are rejected automatically.
First, try to imagine such pain.” But regardless, experiments involving SCP-1007-RU
have been performed for the purposes of gaining all of this information, and the Foundation
kept recorded transcripts of some of them. One interview, which was held 2 hours, 12
minutes after the first exposure to the virus, and then held again at 2 hours and 17 minutes
following infection, involved an interaction between Dr. Luginin and an unfortunate patient. First, the patient felt fine, and asked if
the researcher had infected them with something. When asked to describe how they felt, they
exclaimed that they felt fine, and had been sitting there for two hours feeling normal.
Then, the virus took root, and a howling scream filled the room. The patient began to sob
and scream, feeling pain unlike anything else they had felt before. Pain they didn’t know
they were capable of feeling. They called for Dr. Luginin to stop the experiment, asking
why this was happening to them, but Luginin’s assistant called for the subject to be restrained
and locked up. As the pain increased, they became desperate, confessing to the crimes
that they had committed prior to being imprisoned and drafted as a Foundation D-Class personnel,
and begging the Foundation to stop. But even if the Foundation wanted to, they couldn’t.
There was nothing they could do but watch. Adhering to procedure, Dr. Luginin calmly
told the subject to relax themselves and asked where they were feeling the pain. But the
subject continued to scream, barely able to get the words out. Their head, skin, heart,
stomach, bones and teeth, every last bit of their body was overwhelmed with nothing but
pure pain. The subject begged and pleaded, and struggled for hours until they eventually
lost consciousness. Upon coming to, the subject asked what happened, to which Dr. Luginin’s
assistant, Junior Researcher Kosmov, responded that he’ll certainly remember in two days. Dr. Luginin was rightfully mortified by what
he witnessed on that day, and protested further experimentation with SCP-1007-RU. Luginin
appeared before the Overseer council, and advocated for the destruction of the virus,
but the O5’s were unable to accomodate his request, as they had already severely limited
the experiments and were unsure of how to take measures to eradicate the virus completely.
Luginin withdrew from the SCP-1007-RU research project, and the position of research head
was given to his assistant, Junior Researcher Kosmov. Despite Kosmov’s inexperience and
sadistic tendencies to prolong and observe experiences, Luginin was let go. However,
Kosmov’s psychological evaluation was still within the lines of what the Foundation considered
acceptable, and he was given permission to have complete control over all SCP-1007-RU
research materials. The file ends with a single note, written
by Kosmov shortly after his promotion to Research Head: “Permission has been granted for experiments
involving humans up to stage nine - M. S. Kosmov” Now go check out “SCP-610 - The Flesh That
Hates” and “SCP-500 - Panacea” for more anomalous diseases and cures!
