Simpocalypse is a computer model designed to allow you to create your own disease by setting the parameters that control the model, run a simulation, and analyze the data. You can make up an imaginary disease, or try to model a real one. Simpocalypse can be used as an educational tool to teach students about the spread of infectious diseases, to produce data for teaching statistical concepts such as regression, or even to generate discussion on the societal and economic effects of pandemics, or the history of infectious disease.
Under the surface, Simpocalypse uses straightforward, simple algorithms. It was our goal to make very few assumptions. Users have complete control over the population size and density, overall health, birth and (natural) death rates, as well as the infectiousness of the disease, its incubation period, and how acquired immunity works. The model also lets users incorporate mitigating factors, such as social distancing, quarantines, face masks, and vaccines, and define how well (or how poorly) each one works.
Although Simpocalypse was designed to be open-ended, we have provided some example tasks for students to complete, and designed several long-term learning projects that use the application to investigate topics in statistics, engineering, and biology. We would like to hear from you regarding any suggestions you have, and especially if you have experienced any glitches, bugs, or other issues with the application.
We wish you the best as you embark upon Simpocalypse.
— The Delta College STEM Explorer Team
Acknowledgments
Simpocalypse would not have been possible without the Tcl/Tk programming language and graphics toolkit, the SQLite database system, and the CloudTk application server. This website is powered by the Debian operating system and the NGINX web server and load balancer. The STEM Explorer team is grateful to the authors of this open-source software for their wonderful work. You can see a full list of all of the open-source software packages that come with Simpocalypse, and read their copyright licenses, on the licenses page.