The aim of Revil is to provide an R-based simulator for the spread of disease, news, rumors, political views, ... Instead of conceptionalizing each of these facets of spreading as a seperate affair, all spreading is abstracted to the spreading of a viral disease that turns humans into zombies.
Since popular versions of zombie viral infections assume a medical model that is unfit for opinion analysis, a different viral model is created and used. On top of that, also the effects of cures to the zombie virus can be analyzed.
The classic, Resident Evil concept of a virus-based zombie apocalypse is centered around a very potent virus. The virus is not airborne and turns humans (and animals) into aggressive and hungry zombies. These zombies transmit the virus via biting humans. Once bitten, a human invariably becomes a zombie.
While this dichotomous conceptiualization of a disease has its merits (mainly, because many diseases indeed work like that), it is less practical when trying to understand the spreading of political views or opinions regarding products. Here, a political attitiude like xenophobia, can be regarded to spread like a virus. However, it would be a very strong assumption to require the entire population being classifiable in either xenophobs or not. Rather, the harboring of xenophobic views must be expressed on a continous scale.
Therefore, the viral model used is modified to reflect these requirements. The C-Virus does not turn human into zombies, but rather just increases their zombieness, to the point the become contagious zombies themselves.
The medical viral model that knows only two states (healthy vs. infected) is called the D-Virus.
The opinion viral model that knows an infinite number of states and expresses the strength of the opinion being held is called the C-Virus.
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D-Virus and C-Virus implementation
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powerful simulation framework that allows for fine-tuning of many parameters
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implementation of different treatment frameworks to analyze the effect of counter propaganda
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various visualization modes