thirdly, every second you are vored, as in, inside them, you would take 15% (or however much you want) of your max HP in damage, and to escape, maybe the classic “mash the move buttons till they let go” from old videogames would work. secondly, not everyone will have the virus, and of course you think, 'But THE_DIALOUGE, how do you know which npc’s they are? and my answer to that, is little changes, like maybe instead of the black dot eyes on humans, they would have easy to notice pink eyes, allowing you to know which is which, and fight them off, or maybe they could have some aura around them, or walk really slowly until they notice you, like a zombie, changes like this, in general. Basically, areas like the outpost, missions, stuff like that, npc’s with this virus will not spawn in those, only on generated worlds. And of course, there is many problems with that, I know, but here’s some other things for this idea, to kinda help cushion the idea, I guess.
So basically, here me out, virus outbreak, and certain npc’s will have the virus, the virus basically being that they vore you on sight. Well, damn, now I got an idea on how to do this, though it’s a little cheesy, so heads up there, heh.