Build 42 Corpse Sickness — How Miasma Works and How to Stay Safe

Leave your kills where they fall and Build 42 will make you pay for it: rotting corpses generate sickness that creeps up through a dedicated moodle until your character is genuinely ill. Corpse sickness is one of the few B42 threats that punishes winning fights — the better you do in a neighborhood clear, the more poison you leave behind. Mechanics below come from PZwiki's Noxious smell and Sick pages (42.13-era stamps, re-checked on 42.20) plus community-reported details from the veterans' guide. Checked 2026-08-04.

The mechanic: when corpses become a hazard

Corpses don't sicken you one at a time. Per the wiki's Sick page, corpse decay starts causing sickness when more than 20 dead bodies pile up together — the signal is flies, seen and heard buzzing. Zombie corpses are the usual culprit, and animal carcasses from butchering waste deserve the same respect.

Distance rules that keep you safe:

This is why your home-defense kill zone should never be under your bedroom window: clear the bodies, or move your sleeping quarters a floor away.

Reading the Noxious smell moodle

The moodle is a four-stage meter of how fast you're gaining sickness:

The first three levels come from corpse proximity. The fourth is its own beast: toxic fumes from a generator running indoors — health drops to 65% without protective gear, then extreme fatigue, then health parks at 5%. Deadly fumes won't directly kill you, but they leave you helpless in a building you can't safely occupy (generator placement rules).

What sickness does to you

Corpse-derived sickness behaves like other reversible illnesses and climbs the Sick moodle's four stages — Queasy (sickness >25%), Nauseous (>50%, −1 carry, slower healing), Sick (>75%, −2 carry), Fever (>90%, weakness and rising temperature, −3 carry, slow health decline). Unlike zombie infection — which is always lethal on Apocalypse/Survivor/Builder — corpse sickness is reversible: the character recovers when well-fed and rested, or by consuming lemongrass. Note the sandbox knob Decaying Corpse Health Impact (None/Low/Normal/High/Insane) scales the pressure (community-reported via pzfans), and a separate Zombie Health Impact option can make living zombies apply it too.

Protection: masks and filters

Any item with the gas mask or SCBA (full suit) tag prevents the noxious smell effect entirely. Practical notes:

• The gas mask carries a 60% discomfort rating (NBC mask 75%, half-mask respirator 50%) — wearing one all day feeds the Discomfort/Stressed loop, so mask up for cleanup work, not for grocery runs (moodle details).
• Filters drain while protecting you, and a drained mask degrades to its filterless version; improvise with clean rag filters (weaker than commercial ones, better than a bare face covering) — all community-reported from the veterans' guide. Stock spares with the mask itself.
• The B42 cleaning system also matters for base hygiene: clean blood and mess where you've fought rather than decorating with it.

Corpse disposal: the real cure

Masks manage symptoms; removing the source cures them:

1. Burn piles where they lie (carefully — fire spreads) or haul to a burn spot outside your 13-tile perimeter.
2. Haul and dump far from base with a vehicle — work vans with big trunks make this a one-trip job (vehicle picks).
3. Butcher-zone discipline: animal remains from the livestock loop rot too — keep the kill floor away from pens and housing (animals guide).
4. Track the flies: if you can hear buzzing, you're already inside the effect radius.

Recovering while sick

• Stay well-fed and rested — the two passive recovery conditions.
• Lemongrass consumption speeds recovery (verified wiki remedy).
• Community-reported from the veterans' guide: hot drinks made with chamomile, honey, or mint help flu-style recovery — and chamomile and mint are both growable B42 herbs (crop table), so a sickbay garden is a legitimate prep.
• Keep the sick character out of combat: healing slows, capacity drops, and pain compounds (combat pacing).

Verified on 42.20 · Last checked 2026-08-04

Core mechanics — the 20-corpse threshold, flies as the warning, 13-tile outdoor distance, floor/building separation, the four noxious-smell levels, deadly-fume health behavior, lemongrass recovery, and gas mask/SCBA protection — come from PZwiki's Noxious smell and Sick pages (42.13.1 stamps) re-checked against 42.20.0. Filter drain and the chamomile/honey/mint drink remedy are community-reported via the B41 veterans' guide; exact filter durations are not published, so count spares generously.