Pee Zee: Rodney's ACTUAL origin is just a fricking combo-platter of bad stuff.
He's a former Project Krypton soldier from a test group BEFORE the one that produced Captain Freedom.
Basically it was a drug trial that caused massive, almost uncontrolled growth of a person's muscular system. So badly in fact, that several of them DIED because their overdeveloped muscles crushed their skeletal system.
He was retained and partially detoxed before being released as unsuitable. However, they address the possibility that, at some point, his system could release some of the things still left in it and kill him in a rather nasty fashion.
On top of this we have Regenerator trying to resurrect his dead wife, only to basically fortify a basic human corpse to the point where it can get up and move around by itself (and bite things).
After his wife escaped the apartment, the first person she happened to bite was...Rodney. Which triggered the drug flush. Which killed him and set off the Ex virus pandemic by making Ex mobile.
And remember, Ex isn't what kills you. It's the combination of all the nasty, gross things in a human body (which have been generally amalgamated across the ex population by all the serial biting) that kills you. Ex just preserves the body and turns you into an ex once you die from disease.
Also, as is discussed elsewhere, dying from disease isn't the only way to become an ex. Simply dying PERIOD (old age, etc) will convert you into an ex. As the Ex plague is actually in EVERYTHING. So the heroes spend some time talking about the need for burning the dead for several generations until Ex has worked its way out of the population.
Pee Zee: Rodney's ACTUAL origin is just a fricking combo-platter of bad stuff.
He's a former Project Krypton soldier from a test group BEFORE the one that produced Captain Freedom. Basically it was a drug trial that caused massive, almost uncontrolled growth of a person's muscular system. So badly in fact, that several of them DIED because their overdeveloped muscles crushed their skeletal system.
He was retained and partially detoxed before being released as unsuitable. However, they address the possibility that, at some point, his system could release some of the things still left in it and kill him in a rather nasty fashion.
On top of this we have Regenerator trying to resurrect his dead wife, only to basically fortify a basic human corpse to the point where it can get up and move around by itself (and bite things).
After his wife escaped the apartment, the first person she happened to bite was...Rodney. Which triggered the drug flush. Which killed him and set off the Ex virus pandemic by making Ex mobile.
And remember, Ex isn't what kills you. It's the combination of all the nasty, gross things in a human body (which have been generally amalgamated across the ex population by all the serial biting) that kills you. Ex just preserves the body and turns you into an ex once you die from disease.
Also, as is discussed elsewhere, dying from disease isn't the only way to become an ex. Simply dying PERIOD (old age, etc) will convert you into an ex. As the Ex plague is actually in EVERYTHING. So the heroes spend some time talking about the need for burning the dead for several generations until Ex has worked its way out of the population.