The Devastating Effects of Rabies

History shows why rabies is one of the most terrifying diseases around.

#MonsterWeek
Monster Week

You Are What They Eat

[kieragammon]

I just randomly got curious one day and started Googling what rabies does to a human. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this considering how absolutely terrible it looks.

[carterwaggoner]

It’s basically the closest thing we have to zombies and almost nobody is worried about

[skullmalice]

I've never been so terrified of a disease in my entire life

[greatbritishmale]

A disease that only displays symptoms when it’s too late, terrifying.

[evilnet]

Seeing the light fade from his eyes was both sad and calming. Sad in the sense that a human has passed, calming in the sense that he no longer had to deal with that pain.

[felix]

keeping him alive is basically torture

[Lou-ujmy]

My mom got bitten by a rabid cat 3 years ago, it was almost nighttime and she said she'll go to the hospital tomorrow morning. She did went to the hospital, and thankfully, she didn't got rabies.
I can't even imagine if my mom even waited for a longer time and the disease climbed its way to her brain. I didn't know rabies could be THIS fatal.
I love you, mom.

[glamourgoddess]

I always took rabies as a joke as a kid. I remember the whole class used to make fun of this girl in the class where the spots on her legs. It it was basically from her scratching herself every time a mosquito bite her. And so everyone called her rabies and I felt really bad for her. But at the time no one in the class never really knew what rabies was or the effects of it. After doing a more research about rabies I understand that it’s very dangerous.

[GushingGranny]

Rabies. It's exceptionally common, but people just don't run into the animals that carry it often. Skunks especially, and bats.
Let me paint you a picture.
You go camping, and at midday you decide to take a nap in a nice little hammock. While sleeping, a tiny brown bat, in the "rage" stages of infection is fidgeting in broad daylight, uncomfortable, and thirsty (due to the hydrophobia) and you snort, startling him. He goes into attack mode.
Except you're asleep, and he's a little brown bat, so weighs around 6 grams. You don't even feel him land on your bare knee, and he starts to bite. His teeth are tiny. Hardly enough to even break the skin, but he does manage to give you the equivalent of a tiny scrape that goes completely unnoticed.
Rabies does not travel in your blood. In fact, a blood test won't even tell you if you've got it. (Antibody tests may be done, but are useless if you've ever been vaccinated.)
You wake up, none the wiser. If you notice anything at the bite site at all, you assume you just lightly scraped it on something.
The bomb has been lit, and your nervous system is the wick. The rabies will multiply along your nervous system, doing virtually no damage, and completely undetectable. You literally have NO symptoms.
It may be four days, it may be a year, but the camping trip is most likely long forgotten. Then one day your back starts to ache... Or maybe you get a slight headache?
At this point, you're already dead. There is no cure.
(The sole caveat to this is the Milwaukee Protocol, which leaves most patients dead anyway, and the survivors mentally disabled, and is seldom done - see below).
There's no treatment. It has a 100% kill rate.
Absorb that. Not a single other virus on the planet has a 100% kill rate. Only rabies. And once you're symptomatic, it's over. You're dead.
So what does that look like?
Your headache turns into a fever, and a general feeling of being unwell. You're fidgety. Uncomfortable. And scared. As the virus that has taken its time getting into your brain finds a vast network of nerve endings, it begins to rapidly reproduce, starting at the base of your brain... Where your "pons" is located. This is the part of the brain that controls communication between the rest of the brain and body, as well as sleep cycles.
Next you become anxious. You still think you have only a mild fever, but suddenly you find yourself becoming scared, even horrified, and it doesn't occur to you that you don't know why. This is because the rabies is chewing up your amygdala.
As your cerebellum becomes hot with the virus, you begin to lose muscle coordination, and balance. You think maybe it's a good idea to go to the doctor now, but assuming a doctor is smart enough to even run the tests necessary in the few days you have left on the planet, odds are they'll only be able to tell your loved ones what you died of later.
You're twitchy, shaking, and scared. You have the normal fear of not knowing what's going on, but with the virus really fucking the amygdala this is amplified a hundred fold. It's around this time the hydrophobia starts.
You're horribly thirsty, you just want water. But you can't drink. Every time you do, your throat clamps shut and you vomit. This has become a legitimate, active fear of water. You're thirsty, but looking at a glass of water begins to make you gag, and shy back in fear. The contradiction is hard for your hot brain to see at this point. By now, the doctors will have to put you on IVs to keep you hydrated, but even that's futile. You were dead the second you had a headache.
You begin hearing things, or not hearing at all as your thalamus goes. You taste sounds, you see smells, everything starts feeling like the most horrifying acid trip anyone has ever been on. With your hippocampus long under attack, you're having trouble remembering things, especially family.
You're alone, hallucinating, thirsty, confused, and absolutely, undeniably terrified. Everything scares the literal shit out of you at this point. These strange people in lab coats. These strange people standing around your bed crying, who keep trying to get you "drink something" and crying. And it's only been about a week since that little headache that you've completely forgotten. Time means nothing to you anymore. Funny enough, you now know how the bat felt when he bit you.
Eventually, you slip into the "dumb rabies" phase. Your brain has started the process of shutting down. Too much of it has been turned to liquid virus. Your face droops. You drool. You're all but unaware of what's around you. A sudden noise or light might startle you, but for the most part, it's all you can do to just stare at the ground. You haven't really slept for about 72 hours.
Then you die. Always, you die.
And there's not one... fucking... thing... anyone can do for you.
Then there's the question of what to do with your corpse. I mean, sure, burying it is the right thing to do. But the fucking virus can survive in a corpse for years. You could kill every rabid animal on the planet today, and if two years from now, some moist, preserved, rotten hunk of used-to-be brain gets eaten by an animal, it starts all over.

[vkdee]

The man bitten by the rabid wolf, and the man in the bed do not look like the same person.

[jeremyphillips]

My grandfather's aunt died of rabies after being bit by a dog. There was nothing they could do for her back then. They had to tie her to her bed and wait for her to die. She knew she was going to die and asked her father to ride into town to buy her a white dress to be buried in. She was 11 years old.

[irishbear]

I remember before my deployment to the middle east years ago, we had so many briefings on Rabies that most of the platoon were more scared of wild dogs than enemy combatants by the time we got downrange.

[NerdyMely]

Omg!! That's a scary disease, I feel sad about the man that died of rabies, 😭🙏🏼

[monkeydsunny]

Very heartbreaking to watch his suffering.

[ohwhatworld]

The evolution of the virus is so interesting. It is transferred through saliva, so it infiltrates the part of the host animals brain which makes it extremely violent, making it want to bite anything it sees to help the virus spread. It is the closest thing we have to an actual zombie.

[IronReef]

Working as an ICU nurse I've seen some extremely graphic stuff from severe Traumas, brains falling out, diseases, bodies dropping left and right during covid. I'll say even all those just don't co pare to rabies at least in a sense of just downright creepy. You learn to flip the switch so that you can help the patient but this stuff here just makes you uncomfortable

[jannahm]

Rabies is absolutely one of the scariest diseases known to humanity.

[Nitalla_Creates]

Even though I live in Australia with "terrifying animals", at least we don't have to deal with this terrible disease. I hope it never comes to us having to worry about this.

[thomaspurdy]

“If the symptoms develop, you need medical attention or you’re going to die.”

Inaccurate right off the bat (no pun intended). If symptoms develop, you’re already screwed.

[prettybaked]

It's crazy there isn't more awareness about rabies. I had no idea it was 100% fatal