Talk:Captain Trips

Ch-ch-ch-changes...
Considering going into detail about the effects of the disease and the aftermath, but that's all covered in the Stand article. This goes into more detail about the disease itself.


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 * Atlant 14:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

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 * Ironically, had there been an explosion it probably would have killed the disease in the wild.

This isn't true. King makes it clear that Campion and his family were infecting people along their way on their trip from Project Blue to Arnette, TX.

Atlant 14:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I'm in the midst of re-reading The Stand and I think I'll take exception to my own comment above :-). King actually leaves it pretty ambiguous as to whether the superflu had a multi-focal breakout or whether its breakout was confined to Arnette, TX. He includes one sentence that suggests that Campion and his family stopped several times on their way to their crash-landing in Arnette, and with 99.4% transmissivity, one must assume that Campion et al. infected essentially all the people they met, but in a later chapter, he describes a long chain of infection orginating solely from the State Trooper who came by and warned Hap, et al. about the quarantine. So I think we could argue it either way and the ambiguity may actually reflect a sort of continuity error in the book.


 * Atlant 14:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * The book is not free of continuity errors, that's for sure! For one thing, every town and city mentioned seems to have far fewer than 6 survivors per 1000 population. He doesn't give population statistics for the fictional towns of Shoyo AR, Arnette TX, and Ogunquit ME, but none of them has as many as 6 survivors although all of them seem from his description to be larger than only 1000 residents. New York City has about 8 million inhabitants, so there should be 48,000 survivors, but it sure doesn't seem that way when Larry and Rita are together. User:Angr 22:56, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Tony 09:02, 13 October 2006 (UTC)Many other survivors would have been indoors, hiding or caring for flu sufferers not yet dead.


 * There was also collateral damage, as evidenced by all the gunfire in Manhattan. After a catastrophe such as the Superflu, you can bet people would respond by killing even more people as they defended their property or tried to loot others' property.


 * Atlant 13:55, 13 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, like any good engineer, I'm now going to say "But on the third hand..."


 * In the TV miniseries, while we're with Ed Harris, a map is displayed in the background that clearly shows that Captain Trips broke out all along Campion's trip from Project Blue in California to his final crash landing in Arnette, Texas. So while the book is ambiguous, the TV miniseries takes a definite position: Captain Trips had a multi-focal breakout.


 * Atlant 00:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Genetic issue
The double recessive gene theory, unfortunately, does not hold water. If it were that direct and simple a trait there would have been lots of people in both Boulder and Vegas with surviving siblings and other first degree relatives. For example, Harold Lauder's sister Amy would have had a 1 in 4 chance of being immune. Extend this over the thousands of refugees in both cities and surely sibling pairs would have been mentioned. If immunity is genetic, maybe it requires multiple genes to give immunity, thereby lowering the odds of siblings surviving?

Or perhaps, it was a combination of the right genes and some environmental factor, like previous exposure to the original flu virus Captain Trips was developed from. This, however, seems unlikely since no particular age group seemed more likely to survive. Besides, siblings would often be exposed to the same viruses in the home.

It seems highly unlikely that whatever traits cause vivid dreaming would have an impact on influenza susceptibility, and remember our sample is definitely not random. The people we meet in the story are people who responded to the dreams from Mother Abigail and Randall Flagg. Those survivors who do not dream vividly and remember those dreams would simply have not responded. Instead of heading toward Boulder or Vegas and becoming part of the story, they would spend the length of the novel wandering Manhattan or Memphis or Minneapolis, oblivious to the passion play unfolding around them.

Am I the only one, btw, who noticed the recurring motif of blood in the story? Several characters received lacerations shortly before having contact with another character early in the spreading phase. Nick was attacked along the side of the road before meeting the sheriff. Larry was hit by a one night stand's spatula before chatting with a cabbie. Frannie bit her tongue before rendezvousing with Jess. Perhaps you need genetic immunity and to have the flu introduced directly into the bloodstream via an open cut rather than by inhalation? This could also explain why it seemed to kill a whole lot more people than 99.4%. Perhaps that's the percentage of the population with the gene, but that does not guarantee you'll cut yourself shaving the morning you receive your first exposure.Nosimplehiway--Nosimplehiway 13:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If such a disease existed, it would kill not just those who died directly from the disease, but those that died in the social collapse that would have taken place. Those with partial immunity might have lived, had there been anyone around to help them. Many might have committed suicide, not knowing that they were immune. A child who was immune may well have had the bad fortune to have been immune from the disease, but died because there was no one to feed them. I suppose some might not have heard the call of either camp, and stayed where they were. There likely would have been isolated places never touched by the virus, Pitcairn Island could have been one. If the disease had a non-human vector, such populations might have to stay isolated forever.--RLent (talk) 20:28, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * While RLent's explanation is certainly plausible enough to maintain suspension of disbelief, I remarked on this as well when the discussion of Fran's baby's immunity was mentioned. Out of the survivors where the status of family members is known, there was not a single genetically linked survivor anywhere - and all the examples I can think of from the novel explicitly died of Captain Trips.  Though King strongly implies that a divine/infernal influence picked the survivors, so maybe those who normally would have survived due to genetics were "Noah'ed" out to clear the way for the chosen few.  SalutationsWolfy (talk) 12:38, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Captain Tripps?
According to Stephen King's website (www.stephenking.com, once there click on the link at the left called "his works", then on "written works" then scroll down almost to the very bottom and click on "The Stand"), the disease is known as Captain Tripps (two p's) and not Captain Trips (one p). I haven't had time to look back through the book and check though. Does anyone know if this is correct, and, if it is, should the article's title be changed to "Captain Tripps" with a redirection to the article for the search of "Captain Trips"? --70.113.79.34 18:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It is 2 p's. I've changed it.NYKenny 05:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Well I tried to change it, but it's not working. Maybe someone else knows how to.NYKenny 05:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Another editor reverted your change. I guess someone (is that you?) will have to go to the book and look it up ;-). If it really is two "p"s, we should move the article to the correct title and fix all the references to the article.


 * Atlant 12:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

In the Unabridged version of the Stand on page 216 it says, "...residents that the superflu, known as Captain Trips by the young in most areas...". In this mentioning only one p is used. On page 218, "You can call it Tube Neck or superflu or Captain Trips, but it all...". Again, only one p is used. However, it wouldn't surprise me if Stephen King spelled it both ways throughout the book, especially since his website spells it with two p's (which could also be a typo). A google search of "Captain Trips" turns up 46,000 results, most of which have to do with a biography called "The Original Captain Trips" and profile names and quotes for MySpace. "Captain Tripps" brings up 10,500 results consisting mostly of MySpace messages, posts on Blogs, and odd references by random people on obscure websites to the superflu. It looks to me that I was wrong earlier and that Captain Trips with one p is more prominately used in the book. If anyone finds a Captain Tripps with two p's, maybe there should be a mention of it in the article? --70.113.79.34 20:48, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It would be entirely reasonable to write a section entitled "Variations on spelling" or some such. If there actually are verifiable sources pointing to both spellings, we don't need to "solve" which is correct, we merely need to document that there are variations.


 * Atlant 21:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Good point. Verifiable evidence for one p would obviously be the book and evidence for two p's would be Stephen King's official website. As I'm not very wikiliterate, I'll let someone else add to the article (for example of my wiki-ineptness, just look at the history for this page and see how many times I've had to redo parts of my earlier comments for them to make sense). To answer your earlier question, NYKenny and I are two different users. I have a user account (the Omega Knight) but am generally too lazy to log in when making small changes or starting discussions on the talk page. Thank you Atlant and NYKenny for helping sort this out. --70.113.79.34 21:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

One thing we might want to add somewhere is that one of jerry garcias aka's was captain trips hence the hippie character

Why Is It Called ‘Captain Trips’?
Is it a reference to something? Felicity4711 (talk) 13:55, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not too sure but I thought King said it was a Grateful Dead reference. I thought Jerry Garcia was known as Captain Trips. Could be wrong though.03:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by George Pelltier (talk • contribs)

AIDS reference
It's been quite a while since I read the book, so I don't recall what details King gave about the development of the virus, but he certainly didn't relate it to AIDS or "an AIDS-like illness." The book was written in 1978; the CDC first reported AIDS in June 1981, and didn't begin officially calling it that until the next year. I've removed this reference. Darguz Parsilvan (talk) 14:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * In the collectors edition of the book, the two doctors in the Free Zone do make an analogy to AIDS while discussing the survival of Fran's baby near the end of the story. I do not have the book in front of me for page number reference and exact quote, but it is something similar to "due to the fact that its antigens shift so rapidly, its more like AIDS than the standard flu," and is near the end of the book when Tom and Stu return to Boulder.  In this edition, King also retconned the story to occur in 1990 instead of 1985 and changed other pop culture references to match as well. SalutationsWolfy(talk) 14:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Supernatural Influence?
Is it also possible that the flu spreads and kills like it does becsaue there is a supernatural aspect to it? Everybody keeps trying to find logical scientific explanations for Cpt. Tripps, but they seem to overlook the dreams, Flagg etc. It is a Stephen King novel. Perhaps the disease is just amped up a little thanks to some otherworld help? Thunderbuster (talk) 14:50, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

It's possible but 1) this is an encyclopedia so possibilities are meaningless if there's nothing to support it and 2) nothing in the text does support it.

86.22.169.240 (talk) 19:04, 10 August 2018 (UTC)