The PCD and the sporestorm
Treat the official PCD briefing as the game's rulebook: spores are about 4 microns, normal masks don't work while FP3 filters do, going outside during a sporestorm is lethal, and only heat above 100 °C or alcohol stops a spore.
Who the PCD are
The Plague Control Department is the in-universe agency standing between Spain and the spores — and, in Project Jupiter, your employer. The series has built it out as a fictional public institution with its own creepy completeness: an official-style website (mycopsychosis.online) presents it as an information service for citizens, including the survival briefing below.
That briefing is the closest thing the series has to a rulebook. It describes a "sporestorm": a weather phenomenon where clouds of microscopic fungus travel with the wind, and what ordinary people are supposed to do about it.
The sporestorm rules, as the PCD writes them
- Spores are about 4 microns across. One spore is enough to infect a host.
- Normal masks don't work. The briefing recommends an FP3 mask or finer; regular dust filters can't stop particles this small.
- Don't go outside during a sporestorm. Not with the right equipment. Under no circumstances without it.
- Rain doesn't help. The spores are not water-soluble — a downpour changes nothing.
- The water supply is safe. For the same reason: the spores can't contaminate water or other drinkable fluids.
The numbers that matter
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Spore size | ~4 microns |
| Confinement alarm threshold | airborne spore content above 0.1% |
| Alarm lifts | when content drops back below that threshold |
| Transmission on contact | 99% of the time |
| Contact needed | 30 seconds for a spore to travel from host to victim |
| Contagious from | the first symptoms onward |
| Kills a spore | heat above 100 °C |
| Inhibits a spore | alcohol or other disinfectants |
If it happens anyway
The briefing's emergency section is bleak in the best way: during a sporestorm, emergency services cannot dispatch to you until the storm passes — the danger to responders is too high. The official advice, in order:
Stay calm. Secure yourself. Wait for the sporestorm to end before calling the emergency services.
Put plainly: the game's world expects you to shelter in place and hope, because the department's own protocols say help is not coming.
Why this matters when you play
This briefing is part of the fiction, but it is also mechanical foreshadowing. A horror RPG about a department that studies spores will reference its own rules — filters, alarm thresholds, the 30-second contact window — and scenes make more sense when you know which numbers the characters are frightened of. It also explains the opening mood: everyone Hugo meets already knows all of this by heart.
Read the original
The full briefing, in-character, is live at mycopsychosis.online — the PCD's own site. It is official developer material, presented in-universe.
