#rust plague

@whirl-jr-standing

yyyup! that's one application of it, for certain. there's definitely been times when his steel woolies taste more like rust bunnies, and he can't for the life of him figure out why.

(No, I am not going to mention COVID in this post, other than to tell you I’m not going to talk about it. You may proceed safely.)

Famously, the cosmic rust is a highly contagious disease that, as far as we ever see on screen, is nearly always fatal. 

So... What is cosmic rust, actually? 

Microorganism Theory: Bacteria?

It is described as being a microorganism that has an affinity for Cybertronian metalloid substances, resulting in the characteristic “rust” effect causing rapid breakdown of a Cybertronian’s frame and internal components. 

Microorganism, however, is ridiculously broad. It includes all single cell organisms, and bacteria-- Including disease causing bacteria, like Mycobacterium Tuberculosis! 

So that’s realistic enough, although a very general descriptor of what cosmic rust might actually be. 

HIV/AIDS was the Inspiration for Cosmic Rust: Virus? (And Some LGBTQIA+ History Because it’s Pride Month) 

However, in G1, Paul Davids (a writer for the show) mentioned that the idea of a plague spreading amongst the Transformers was inspired in part by the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. You can see where he mentions this, here. 

This makes sense, if you watch the original G1 episode in which cosmic rust first appears; At the time, HIV/AIDS was not very well understood, and some of the symptoms of cosmic rust echo some of what was commonly observed with HIV/AIDS in the 80s.

For example, we see very similar rapid onset physical symptoms: Rust in Cybertronians, and Kaposi’s Sarcomas in HIV/AIDS patients, which look fairly similar as both are dark reddish blemishes that appear across the surface of the face and body as well as internally. 

The sarcomas can come on seemingly very suddenly in people with unmedicated/untreated AIDS, and back in the 80s, I’m sad to say that sarcomas appearing were often the only commonly known indicator that a person was HIV+, aside from other common symptoms like wasting. (Nobody had retroviral treatments or other pharmaceutical therapies available at the time, so illness often progressed to the point where Kaposi’s sarcomas would develop.) 

We also see other similar symptoms between the two; Fatigue, fever (”running hot”), wasting (the corrosion effect with cosmic rust), and more depending on which franchise/series/comic book depiction you look at. 

I’m both middle aged and LGBTQIA+ myself, so I remember the gays that were slightly older than me who obsessed over checking their skin well into the late 90s-- Because all gays knew about the sarcomas, even if nobody knew how or why the mystery disease was spreading, and even after we got more knowledge about HIV, it was hard to shake the habits that were developed in the community during the 80s out of fear. 

(One day I had a cold sore and went to school as usual, I didn’t think much of it, but at lunch one of the older GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) kids at my school pulled me aside and almost threw me into the bathroom, and demanded to know if I had kissed anyone. I thought they were worried about mono, until they broke down and cried. This was probably in 1999 or the very early 2000s, if I remember right. None of my GSA friends relaxed until my cold sore went away, and then another kid got a cold sore and this time, I was tense, too...) 

AIDS is essentially a progression of HIV, and there are two major human immunodeficiency viruses which are types of Lentivirus, which themselves are types of retroviruses. 

Retroviruses are named as such because they work by injecting their own RNA into a cell, which then re-writes or alters the genome of that cell. In other words, they go back (retro = backwards in Latin, medicine loves Latin) and change the cell from within. 

Here is the HIV replication cycle, by the NIAID here: 

Cosmic rust doesn’t behave like a retrovirus in terms of how it is transmitted, as conditions for acquiring HIV are more particular, and cosmic rust spreads by simple surface contact-- Which is very different from retroviruses, like HIV. 

However, it’s worth remembering that in the 80s, nobody really knew how HIV/AIDS spread, and even when it was eventually figured out, it still wasn’t common knowledge yet.  

So at the time of the G1 episode’s writing, it was very true that people did commonly (and mistakenly) believe that HIV/AIDS was spread via casual touch; At the time, the parallels would have been much more clear and cosmic rust and HIV/AIDS would have seemed much more realistically comparable. 

Transmission by Contact: Parasite? 

We tend to see that cosmic rust is spread by contact with an infected person, item, or physical area, so it has fomite transmission-- Meaning it can be spread by surface contact.

Interestingly, it does not appear to have any other major mode of transmission, as Perceptor created Corrostop, which is applied topically to prevent the cosmic rust from progressing and in fact, tends to cure affected patients! 

In this way, cosmic rust behaves more like a parasitic infection such as lice, which can be killed and removed with topical solutions and is often transmitted by contact with an infected person or objects (such as hats). 

Verdict: It’s an Alien Pathogen, We Don’t Know! 

Ultimately, these are all comparisons to Earth based pathogens; It is most likely that cosmic rust, while resembling Earth microorganisms, realistically would be a completely different type of pathogen altogether and it may not have a parallel that we would identify or understand how to classify. 

It’s interesting that it has an affinity for Cybertronian metals, and clearly there is a biological process that occurs with the cosmic rust in some continuities: In G1, the cosmic rust does not affect any non-living metals produced on Cybertron, although living Cybertronian metals do begin to rust upon contact exposure. So a table made with Cybertron native metals won’t rust, even if the bot sitting on it is actively rusting. 

Meanwhile, in TFA, if I recall correctly, we see that when Rodimus is hit with a cosmic rust grenade, he’s holding his bow, but when he falls over completely rusted, the bow seems to no longer be around, so it could be an animation error or the bow itself rusted as well! 

The rust grenade seems to have a glass interior housing, so it may be the case that in TFA, the cosmic rust affects all metals of Cybertronian origin, not just living metals. 

@mightymegatron​

Vaccines were getting harder and harder to come by. Megatron himself seemed resistant to this particular strain, his medics crediting it to the fact that he’d suffered through a similar condition in his youth and survived, (or more likely, the dark energon coursing through him. This, however, was not public knowledge.) Even so, he was warned against coming into direct contact with any of the victims. Most of them were going to die within the week anyway, there was no reason to visit them.

Of course, telling Megatron that something is a bad idea is pointless once he’s made up his mind. Perhaps not the entire fleet, but he made a point to check in on those who had fought with him in the arena. These were the strongest of his Decepticons, both in strength and devotion, and out of everyone they should have had the best chance at recovery. It was eerie to see all of them so still, downed by something so microscopic as unnatural oxidation. Blackout was a holdout, old and stubborn, approaching the 10-day mark that so few had reached. If he could just stay awake past then, the plague would run its course and he might survive. Warning or no, Megatron put a servo on his shoulder.

“You will fight this. You will win. Is that understood?”

I’m reading through the storyboards for the Rust Plague G1 episode, and it’s pretty intense actually 

also, I guess here’s a sort-of canon depiction of Cybertronian internal anatomy?

Panel 1 - Under the armour, core frame structure (an inner “shell” to protect protoform + essential components) 

Panel 2 - Metalloid skeleton, revealed once the core frame and presumably the protoform itself rusted/melted away 

(yes I know the concept of a protoform was invented later than G1, but I’m just saying there’s some kind of “soft tissue” equivalent in there somewhere, even if it’s just a bunch of fuel lines) 

Panel 3 - Smouldering corroded metalloid skeleton, possibly on fire due to heated internal components + processed fuel exposed to oxygen (within Earth’s atmosphere) 

Evidently the rusting process generates heat, or more likely, the heat is generated as the body’s self-repair nanites overclock themselves trying to compensate for the rust infection. A Cybertronian cytokine storm. 

There’s plenty of upsides and downsides to having magical powers. Blurr, with the Emberstone, capable of essentially speeding up natural processes, figures out in a very traumatizing way that one such natural process is rust. Don’t worry, he doesn’t catch the Rust Plague!

He IS the Rust Plague.