[quote=@Foster] Well, "SCP-186" isn't so much an organism as a location where some pretty nasty fighting went down in real life, and the only real lore I borrowed was transcript SCP-186-56 as follows: [hider=A Letter From Hell] Dearest Nadya, I have heard rumors of the madness happening at home. Be comforted that it is nothing like the madness that is happening here. We thought that four years of war had taught us everything we had to know and then more. We learned nothing. The damnable Frenchman that the men elected to lead them spoke of peace. He spoke of weapons so terrible that we could make the enemy surrender on the spot. We were fools. We had run at trenches with dead men's rifles and sticks in our hands. We believed him the way we believed anyone that has supplies. We never thought where this man came from. We didn't wonder why he had the weapons he did. We didn't care. We wanted to live. We never considered that the enemy had the same things we did. I do not think the Frenchman did either. Or at least I hope he did not. I cannot imagine any man who would walk into this knowing what would happen. Maybe the Frenchman is not a man. Maybe he is something else. I am sitting now in a hole I have dug in a forest somewhere. I should have run the second I saw the German take aim at Gilyov. That was no bullet fired at him. I could not look anymore after his face came apart and he was still screaming. I thought I saw hands pulling his head apart. Somewhere in the distance Volikov is screaming that he can see devils roasting his children. He has been screaming about the same thing for five days. I should have run away so many times. The Frenchman gave us a new gas weapon. We refused at first, remembering what had happened in Romania. But he promised us that this was different, that this would put our enemies down without harming them. Who wants any more bloodshed, he asked us. We could not argue with that. We fired mortars at a position ahead of us. A strange blue gas seeped from behind the trees, but the Frenchman cautioned us against advancing. One more thing, he said. He took one of our rifles, and taking aim took a single shot. Before we could ask what a scientist could know of shooting, we heard a scream. He had hit one of the Germans. He handed me a pair of field glasses. Take a look, he said. I saw the German missing half of his head, still screaming. I have seen everything in this war, but I have never faces like those of that German's fellows as they watched their comrade. The Frenchman, in his terrible calm voice, explained that his shot had to have destroyed at least a quarter of the soldier's brain tissue. Enough to cause instant death, he said. But watch. I kept watching through the field glasses. The German didn't stop screaming. At least ten minutes I watched, unable to move away. The Frenchman smiled. He smiled at this scene. The gas, he said, ensured that death would not come, regardless of injury. The Germans were too horrifed by their comrade to notice that they were not behind cover, and the Frenchman lined up another shot. The rest of the soldier's head was now gone, and the screaming was replaced by some sort of low grunting, the likes of which I have never heard from men. No, the Frenchman said, no harm at all. I have bestowed the gift of life on your opponents. Who could possibly stand against that, he asked. I had to leave and vomit behind some bushes. I had not done that since the first trenches. Who indeed could keep fighting after such a thing? But fight they did. Once a group of us were ambushed and chased to a meadow. The first men through the trees were hit with something that took their skin. I cannot describe why seeing men blown apart is not as frightening as seeing a neatly flayed corpse on a battlefield, but our group scattered. We are no longer armies. Not any more. We are animals, trapped in a forest together, uncomprehending. Sometimes, when Volikov sleeps, I hear the Frenchman in the woods, yelling in Hungarian, yelling and laughing. I would almost rather listen to Volikov. I am going to die in this hole. I am too scared of what is outside of it to do otherwise. Minkin is going to try to brave the horrors in the woods to escape. I am sending this letter with him in the hopes that he does. As I gave it to him, he joked that he will get a civil service commission after the war for delivering a letter from Hell. I am not certain he is wrong. Goodbye, Pyotr[/hider] [/quote] Including it feels like trying to make an unoriginal hodge-podge of everything. The concept is amusing, but it's sort of killed by the entire SCP genre of Creepy Pasta. It's up there with Ben Drowned and everything kids are all over as a joke in the horror or monster genres (well, zombies in general fit that bill, but there's a point of saturation too). Frankly, I don't see the inclusion of anything from the SCP-verse as essential or really needed. Whatever transpired or not. And trying to include that in the plot [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic]ignores a very significant happening at this time.[/url] It doesn't even tie together everything that makes this period its own period. At least to the general reader or writer. The First World War is the 1910's. Chemical weapons is this era. Spanish Influenza - the great model of modern pandemic fears - is this era. Mass death, social upheaval, the spawn of another generation of European national and social politics is rooted in this era. SCP is not. It's an abortion that even /x/ doesn't care about anymore. Now if you're taking suggestions at this early stage then I may consider hanging about if SCP is tossed out and the existing conditions of the period are used to make a unique setting for zombie survival. Atop the background of conflict scouring Europe physically and socially is the Spanish Influenza. But there's a sci-fi turn that also introduces a zombie virus or mechanics. No need to explore it, that'll just weigh it down. Give it a lampshade. So now we got a world of global conflict on multiple fronts with people dying in the trenches by the scores from artillery fire (the #1 cause to war-time casualties among soldiers for the First World War), an influenza outbreak, and now either the dead coming back to life by some means or scores of otherwise healthy citizens becoming hostile and irrational. The zombie genre is a versatile thing and experimentation in crazy sorts of mayhem. SCP just does not fit. You have all the ingredients to make this an interesting ride with the setting. You do not need to add SCP.