Good ideas, keep 'em coming!
I’d agree that there’s room for normal dirty clothing that has just taken a lot of punishment, either from the player taking damage, crawling around a lot, swimming in dirty water bodies, or the clothing itself being left exposed to the elements.
Regardless though tainted clothing would be extremely contaminated, and you can consistently guarantee that all zombies would have tainted clothing, with the disadvantages above. Of course, there can also be exceptions, such as clothing that can’t be tainted at all (open to modders hopefully).
Actually, if we are to see deadzones in UII, I’d imagine that deadzones can also taint clothing over time. Maybe even the excursion zones.
This is interesting.
I really like the idea of food contamination, it would make the player much more cautious when handling food. It should only be applicable if it’s uncooked/fresh food like raw meat, fruit/vegetables, etc though.
As for the latter, I’d rather prefer that your detection radius by smell from zombies is substantially reduced.