When TV Viruses Attack! Ranking TV's Top Bugs

Warning: Your TV is infected. The television landscape is currently choked with shows that involve deadly viruses. The latest is Between, Netflix’s viral thriller set in a small town where the adult population is decimated by a disease of unknown origin, leaving the younger generation in charge. Sounds pretty dangerous, but how does Between’s virus stack up against some of the other illnesses infecting the television landscape? Wash your hands (twice) and check out our ranking of TV’s many and varied killer bugs.

7. Helix (Syfy)

Name of Disease: Narvik-A and Narvik-B
How It Spreads: Direct contact with the infected.
Symptoms: Blood takes on a blackish hue; throat convulsions; increased fight-or-flight tendencies; spitting-up black goo. Depending on which strain you have, you’ll either die quickly and unpleasantly (Narvik-A) or aggressively pass the disease on to others (Narvik-B).
Fear Factor: Low. Helix’s recent cancellation after two low-rated seasons has led us to downgrade this particular virus. It may have been deadly, but honestly — like the show — it was also super-dull.

6. 12 Monkeys (Syfy)

Name of Virus: Kalavirus
How It Spreads: Both by direct contact and through the air.
Symptoms: Severe cold-like symptoms — coughing, aches, fatigue — that quickly advance to organ and respiratory failure.
Fear Factor: High. With only 2 percent of the population remaining in the show’s distant future, the Kalavirus is a beyond-lethal proposition. On the other hand, knowing that time-travelers are actively trying to change that does help make us a bit less worried.

5. The Strain (FX)

Name of Virus: Not specified, but it rhymes with “trampire.”
How It Spreads: Teeny tiny worms that can enter your body through any access point, though they’ve demonstrated a particular fondness for eyes.
Symptoms: Pale skin; bald heads; pointy teeth; and a serious hankering for hemoglobin.
Fear Factor: Medium. In this post-Twilight world — when being a vampire is all sparkles and eternal love stories — it’s hard to get too worked up by the idea of succumbing to a vampire bite. Or, in this case, a vampire worm infestation.

4. Z Nation (Syfy)

Name of Disease: ZN1
How It Spreads: Zombie bite.
Symptoms: Single-minded appetite for human flesh; white, pupil-less eyes; loss of intelligible speech; constant urge to rampage and destroy; increased desire to travel in packs.  
Fear Factor: Medium. Zombieism is certainly a serious medical condition, but these walkers don’t pack the same scare quotient as another show that we’ll get to in a moment.

3. The Walking Dead/Fear the Walking Dead (AMC)

Name of Virus: Currently unnamed, although we’d suggest “Walker Syndrome” as a possible candidate.
How It Spreads: In a previous column, Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman spelled out how the virus works, writing: “The rule is whatever it is that causes the zombies, is something everyone already has. If you stub your toe, get an infection and die, you turn into a zombie, unless your brain is damaged. A zombie bite kills you because of infection, or blood loss, not because of the zombie ‘virus.’” The show seems to be following a similar rule, at least so far.
Symptoms: Major skin deterioration (as in, flesh peeling off); a bad case of the “evil eyes”; frequently missing limbs and other body parts; unnatural desire to feed on intestines and bloody hunks of human flesh.
Fear Factor: Very high. After five seasons (and a looming spinoff) you think the prospect turning into one of these shuffling ghouls would cease to frighten us. But it still looks like a fate worse than death, especially knowing — as Kirkman says above — that all of us have already got the disease.

2. Game of Thrones (HBO)

Name of Disease: Greyscale
How It Spreads: Via touch, either with an infected person or an unsterilized object they’ve handled.
Symptoms: Over years and even decades (provided you make it that long), your skin progressively hardens and cracks, eventually taking on the appearance of stone. As if that isn’t agonizing enough, in later stages the disease moves inwards and hardens your organs, including the brain, resulting in violent spasms. It looks a little something like this:

Fear Factor: Off the Charts. Almost worse than the disease — which, with a few notable exceptions (like Stannis’s daughter, Shireen) is a death sentence that lasts years — is the way Westeros society treats you. Greyscale victims are feared and shunned, and those that aren’t put out of their misery are often forced into quarantined colonies.

1. The Last Ship (TNT)

Name of Disease: Unnamed
How It Spreads: Airborne.
Symptoms: A speedy death preceded by a weakening of the body’s muscles and organs, internal bleeding, and paralysis.
Fear Factor: The fact that it claims 80 percent of the world’s population in mere months shows just how dangerous this particular virus is. And remember, there’s no zombie afterlife. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. Excuse us while we go stock up on gas masks.

Between airs Thursdays on Netflix.