Radiant V.S Zombie Apocalypse

[TruthwatchingRadiant He/Him]

So how long would a Knight Radiant survive a zombie apocalypse? Assuming the zombies are just slower and somewhat less intelligent. The disease would be spread by bite, and it would be a brain bacteria sort of thing. The transformation into a zombie would only take about 15 seconds. Would the Stormlight healing of a Radiant be able to heal the body from the bacteria, or would it only slow the effects significantly? Which order of Radiant would last the longest? Also the Radiant would be at the point where they could summon their spren as something, but they don’t have their own shardplate yet, or that would be kind of a no-brainer. What say you?

[Treamayne]

13 hours ago, TruthwatchingRadiant said:

What say you?

Radiant Healing is about making the body conform to the Spiritual ideal of their Spiritweb, as filtered through their cognitive Identity. An external parasite (like bacteria) has no chance of successfully infecting a Radiant (or anybody with Spiritweb-based healing but more would be spoilers for this forum). It may not even be able to infect normal Rosharans, as seen by the "Pure Lake Plague" which barely infected the common people and was eradicated by normal healing in a year or two because Rosharans have heavy innate investiture being exposed to frequent Highstorms (or, at least, it started in WoK and was gone by the end of Oathbringer). 

Spoiler

stormfather (paraphrased)

Does the plague on the Purelake has anything to do with the fact that the magic fish form symbiotic bonds with spren?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, worldhoppers brought a disease to Roshar that they didn't have before. It's the common cold. Rosharans' Investiture makes it so they're usually a healthy bunch so something like the cold is kind of frightening. "It's a plague of the sniffles."

stormfather [Alternate wording from ZenBossanova's report] (paraphrased)

Another person asked about the plague in the Purelake.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Turns out, that was a pathogen introduced by worldhoppers. People on Roshar normally have greater health than elsewhere in the cosmere because they are more Invested (Stormlight and all that). This plague was what we call… the common cold.

Firefight Phoenix signing (Jan. 21, 2015)

Hope that helps

Edited June 7, 2025 by Treamayne
SPAG

[TruthwatchingRadiant He/Him]

5 hours ago, Treamayne said:

Radiant Healing is about making the body conform to the Spiritual ideal of their Spiritweb, as filtered through their cognitive Identity. An external parasite (like bacteria) has no chance of successfully infecting a Radiant (or anybody with Spiritweb-based healing but more would be spoilers for this forum). It may not even be able to infect normal Rosharans, as seen by the "Pure Lake Plague" which barely infected the common people and was eradicated by normal healing in a year or two because Rosharans have heavy innate investiture being exposed to frequent Highstorms (or, at least, it started in WoK and was gone by the end of Oathbringer). 

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stormfather (paraphrased)

Does the plague on the Purelake has anything to do with the fact that the magic fish form symbiotic bonds with spren?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

No, worldhoppers brought a disease to Roshar that they didn't have before. It's the common cold. Rosharans' Investiture makes it so they're usually a healthy bunch so something like the cold is kind of frightening. "It's a plague of the sniffles."

stormfather [Alternate wording from ZenBossanova's report] (paraphrased)

Another person asked about the plague in the Purelake.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Turns out, that was a pathogen introduced by worldhoppers. People on Roshar normally have greater health than elsewhere in the cosmere because they are more Invested (Stormlight and all that). This plague was what we call… the common cold.

Firefight Phoenix signing (Jan. 21, 2015)

Hope that helps

Yeah, that makes sense. If the plague was harmful to people, which Radiant order hypothetically would survive the longest?

[AlmightyGir]

20 hours ago, TruthwatchingRadiant said:

Yeah, that makes sense. If the plague was harmful to people, which Radiant order hypothetically would survive the longest?

Literally all of them.

As long as they've sworn high enough ideals to heal via stormlight, and they have access to stormlight, they will never succomb to the plague. If they have any Edgedancers with them, they could potentially reverse the effects of the plague on the population, too.

[TruthwatchingRadiant He/Him]

Yeah, I agree. Do you think Knights Radiant are too overpowered, or just really in tune with their planet’s Investiture?

[AlmightyGir]

21 minutes ago, TruthwatchingRadiant said:

Yeah, I agree. Do you think Knights Radiant are too overpowered, or just really in tune with their planet’s Investiture?

Depends, really...

Have we got any confirmation that burning, for example, steel that's not *sourced from Scadrial* produces the same powers with the same potency for off-world mistborn?

The power level of Radiants and their relative scale in the Cosmere is yet to be determined. I'd imagine they're quite high up there though.

[TruthwatchingRadiant He/Him]

Yeah, me too. Thanks!

[Riino He/Him]

On 6/8/2025 at 7:44 AM, TruthwatchingRadiant said:

Yeah, that makes sense. If the plague was harmful to people, which Radiant order hypothetically would survive the longest?

Though what could happen would be Radiants running out Stormlight, or getting surrounded and bitten heaps without either their Stormligh healing or innate Rosharan healing being able to keep up, but with increasing the intelligence of the zombies, up to around 90 IQ, I'd say a Skybreaker, or Dustbringer would have a really good chance of surviving the longest due to Division and their movement surges.  But the knights radiant as an order, pre Night of Sorrows, would probably quite easily just wipe out the whole zombie population.

[TruthwatchingRadiant He/Him]

Someone with the surge of division would probably last pretty long. I was thinking maybe someone with the surge of illumination would last a decent while, on account of them being able to distract and misdirect the zombies. But eventually the zombies would probably learn and adapt to that.

[That1Cellist he/him]

On 6/7/2025 at 4:44 PM, TruthwatchingRadiant said:

Yeah, that makes sense. If the plague was harmful to people, which Radiant order hypothetically would survive the longest?

That depends on the amount of Stormlight they have access to. I would also say that most if not all orders could persist indefinitely if they had unlimited Stormlight.