About OutbreakForge
OutbreakForge lets you run the same kind of model epidemiologists use — a compartmental SIR/SEIR model — on a made-up town. People move between compartments: Susceptible → (Exposed →) Infectious → Recovered. The loop is predict → compute → decide.
The engine is deterministic and on-device and is pinned to established epidemiology: the basic reproduction number R₀ = β × (infectious days), the herd-immunity threshold pᶜ = 1 − 1/R₀, and population conservation at every step. Your interventions — vaccination and reduced contact — work by pushing the effective R below 1.
The decision is deliberately a trade-off: cases prevented against the cost of restriction, argued by two voices (Reya, who wants cases down; Sol, who counts the cost). There is no single right answer — that is the point.
The three synthetic outbreaks you can model:
- A seasonal flu (R₀ ≈ 1.3) — A mild, familiar bug moves through a town of 10,000.
- A measles-like disease (R₀ ≈ 15) — One of the most contagious diseases known, in a town of 10,000 with no immunity.
- A new respiratory virus (R₀ ≈ 3) — A novel virus in a city of 100,000. You will get to try interventions.
Honest note: OutbreakForge is a teaching model on invented populations. It shows how the mechanism works — it is not a forecast of any real disease, and it uses no personal or real data.