STDs in the Honorverse

Just getting around to reading A SHIP NAMED FRANCIS which I had foolishly ignored. It is hilarious.

Among the numerous humorous nuggets is the revelation that the ships chaplain on a Grayson cruiser contracted a sexually transmitted disease while visiting a planet in Silesia. This got me thinking.

The Honorverse is predicated on humans colonizing thousands of star systems at a time when interstellar transport is STL and hideously expensive. These isolated populations would exposed to infectious bacteria and viruses from the alien ecosystem as well as mutating versions of anything that they brought with them.

I would expect that the various populations of the Honorverse are hosts to a multitude of diseases, some sexually transmitted.

Would there be any planets that are renown for plagued by STDs and thus not a good port to get laid at?

Was the plague that amost wiped out the Manticore colony an STD?

Enquiring minds want to know.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just getting around to reading A SHIP NAMED FRANCIS which I had foolishly ignored. It is hilarious.

Among the numerous humorous nuggets is the revelation that the ships chaplain on a Grayson cruiser contracted a sexually transmitted disease while visiting a planet in Silesia. This got me thinking.

The Honorverse is predicated on humans colonizing thousands of star systems at a time when interstellar transport is STL and hideously expensive. These isolated populations would exposed to infectious bacteria and viruses from the alien ecosystem as well as mutating versions of anything that they brought with them.

I would expect that the various populations of the Honorverse are hosts to a multitude of diseases, some sexually transmitted.

Would there be any planets that are renown for plagued by STDs and thus not a good port to get laid at?
Was the plague that amost wiped out the Manticore colony an STD?

Enquiring minds want to know.

And I bet you'll never find out. We know a really tiny amount about the Honorverse. Note that the author of the story was NOT Weber.

I would guess a real lot of diseases have been wiped out and it may be that there are assorted meds to block them. But I doubt Weber will be writing about them.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Just getting around to reading A SHIP NAMED FRANCIS which I had foolishly ignored. It is hilarious.

Among the numerous humorous nuggets is the revelation that the ships chaplain on a Grayson cruiser contracted a sexually transmitted disease while visiting a planet in Silesia. This got me thinking.

The Honorverse is predicated on humans colonizing thousands of star systems at a time when interstellar transport is STL and hideously expensive. These isolated populations would exposed to infectious bacteria and viruses from the alien ecosystem as well as mutating versions of anything that they brought with them.

I would expect that the various populations of the Honorverse are hosts to a multitude of diseases, some sexually transmitted.

Would there be any planets that are renown for plagued by STDs and thus not a good port to get laid at?

Was the plague that amost wiped out the Manticore colony an STD?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Ah, a thread that peers under the skin. Nice, Fly.

I've always wondered what effect sex slaves and their genetic tampering had on STDs. E.g., they're genetically engineered to really not need artificial lubricant. Their garages are always naturally wet. Wetlands would seem to be natural areas to cook up bateria. Living Petri dishes. Also, STDs are better fought in progression I always thought. New strains are consistently being encountered and fought. What happens when strains are localized and mutated over and over in poor areas like Silesia, then suddenly exposed to man? Like what happened with the Marines in Vietnam who brought back strains of STD that were kicking the American population and our then current penicillin's ass.

I forgot to address one part of your question, FLY. Places I tend to think would be veritable hot zones. I wonder what Mesa's STD count is. I would carry a black light with me to all hotels on Erewhon as well. The hottest zone was probably the space station The Wages of Sin.


Late edit:

Erewhon was known to have some of the strictest traffic laws and sanitation codes in the known universe.

Is that because where there's smoke there's fire?

What is STD??

Hornblower wrote:What is STD??

Sexually transmitted disease, like syphilis or gonorrhea.
A point that many miss is that STDs are really only diseases that are hard to catch, unless they are provided with an easy vector (like wet and abraded skin).

Daryl wrote:

Hornblower wrote:What is STD??

Sexually transmitted disease, like syphilis or gonorrhea.
A point that many miss is that STDs are really only diseases that are hard to catch, unless they are provided with an easy vector (like wet and abraded skin).

Who told you that STDs are hard to catch? Someone lied to you whole hog. They are as easy to catch as failing to wear a condom.

You are specifically talking about HIV.

Poor areas like Silesia and the Verge are also most likely hot zones.

Cute little warnings like what would always float about social circles when I was a kid are probably plentiful in the Honorverse.

"Wrap it up before you tap it up."

"Double bag it, before you shag it."

Or my mother's favorite warning, "Don't forget to wear a raincoat."

Really hot strains of some STDs become resistant to treatment. They really have a need to be nipped in the bud, pardon the pun. What this entails is the local Health Department giving you the embarrassing interview of all of the sexual partners you had, so they can be called in for treatment. And they are aggressive about it to prevent and contain outbreaks of epidemic proportion.

Can you imagine a sex slave's number of partners and some Galactic CDC tasked with locating the infected partners around the galaxy at large and doing the same thing with them?

How do I know all of this? I was always sexually active, even without that most info gathering, infectious time of anyone's life - COLLEGE. If you didn't catch an STD in college, you never entered a female dorm. LOL

At one point, ECU was known as the beer drinking capital of the world and a veritable hot zone for STDs. Insane consumption rates of beer on a college campus is followed by an insane rate of STDs. ECU still have their traditional beer blasts on campus before and after exams to relax the tension in students. Kegs are set up 25 yards apart all over campus and there's drinking all day long. You can bring your beer to class. Just don't forget to carry condoms and a brain.

A hot tip, pardon the pun. The head of a man that is consistently being forced under wetlands and oftentimes wrapped in plastic - thus starved of oxygen - does not have a functioning brain.

A woman's vaginal area is not meant to always be too wet. Nature causes her emotions to indicate when its time to open the floodgates. Always being too moist help create natural breeding grounds. That's one reason some women overheat and sweat in their engine bays and catch yeast infections so often when wearing materials that don't allow their Cuda's to naturally breathe.

Daryl wrote:

Hornblower wrote:What is STD??

Sexually transmitted disease, like syphilis or gonorrhea.
A point that many miss is that STDs are really only diseases that are hard to catch, unless they are provided with an easy vector (like wet and abraded skin).

I tend to agree with you about ease of transmission. I found this:

https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2015 ... tatistics/

The statistics on infectivity are interesting as the risk varies dramatically depending on what specific acts people are engaging in.


My speculation is that evolutionary pressures would result in isolated populations becoming tolerant of if not imune to STDs that are common on their homeworld. A visitor from another system would be far more vulnerable to infection. Some worlds would host more diseases than others and some would host nastier diseases than others. As a result, some worlds would get a reputation for being dangerous places to engage in casual sex. People from such worlds would be considered high risk partners and be shunned.


Putting the risks in perspective, a disease with an infectivity rate of say 1% for each act of conventional sex might seem to be difficult to catch. However; the risks escalate with the number of encounters as well as partners. Example would be a sailor getting lucky ten times during a brief shore leave has a (1-.01)^10 has a 90% chance of NOT GETTING INFECTED!