I was watching a thing on the black plague. we all know about how it wiped out a good chunk of europe due to the fact that they had no immunity. it occured to me that a major epidemic like that is practically imminent, but this time more will die than the black death. this makes me wonder, will we be able to defend ourselves against the next super epidemic, or will we keep losing our population until our immune system finally writes the immunity into our genetic code? if we can defend ourselves, how long until our defenses no longer affect it? I would really appreciate your input on this.
I say this because people are migrating from place to place much faster than medeival time, and with them comes excotic forms of bacteria and viruses. eventually, one will develop a new strain that spreads quickly, and is immune to all our current treatments for each of the other strains. this means we would be completely defenseless if it turns out to be a lethal strain.
That's a source of trouble for sure, thanks to globalization some bacterias, viruses and their vectors can travel along goods transports or such, and thanks to global warming vectors like mosquitoes are already found in regions they were never found in before. Though, this could happen anytime as well as not happen, depends how well prepared we are.
I feel there won't be any such thing as a super-epidemic. Many of our vaccines and antibiotics are based around our study of how our body fights diseases, something we know pretty well. I think that if anything black-plague-ish started, we would be able to control the issue much better than people in 14th century. I mean, one of the biggest reasons epidemics died down even in the 18th century was just based on the new idea of isolating sick people -- which confounds me since I was amazed nobody thought of it before.
We are in a way running into a brick, as we make more antibiotics/germ killers, the germs become stronger. I'm sure, though, there's some limitation on how far this whole thing could go. Yet, I don't think humanity is going to ever suffer as bad as it did with the black plague. Though our population is larger and we are much closer together, this is because of our success against diseases, which contributed to our high population. I think that at least in the West, there won't be anything disastrous.
In most cases the disease doesn't get to spread as fast as the black plague did - this is down to us. We know a lot more about hygiene and when word hits the news about any kind of epidemic we get geared up to protect ourselves meaning that although there's deaths - it doesn't reach that far (Even without cure) So i don't think it's something major to worry about.
The only reason we should ever resort to using nuclear bombs to eradicate a disease is if it turns us into zombies and we go around biting each other, spreading the disease to, and killing/eating mass amounts other people... and all other military attempts have failed. (or maybe there'll be a different reason I'm not thinking of.)
I don't doubt our ability to overcome any known, treatable bacterial or viral infection. At least, in the first world. There is considerable cause for alarm if some less well-equipped countries were to be the breeding ground for a major outbreak.
Even if we hit a massive epidemic, there is never a reason to use nuclear weaponry. doesn't anybody else know that zombies are immune to radiation. the only way to stop them is to decapitate them. that's why the shotgun to the head is so popular.
besides that, other countries are already trigger happy as is. if we launch a nuke, chances are somebody else will launch one just because we violated the M.A.D. philosiphy.
btw, if we get a zombie disease, I'm going to do whatever it takes to not get infected by the airbourne, or contact strain.
I think that the next super epidemic will be a disease that already exists! Over time things create immunities so that current vaccines will not work. Think about it!
There was a super epidemic after the black plague. Left one in every twenty Americans alive. Invaders found towns filled with bones because no one was alive to bury the dead. It's what made moving in so easy. We just don't hear about it because the victims weren't whi- I mean because the victims weren't yet known to us. U-S-A!
I am sadly most offended by the zombie based comments on this thread. I recognize that they are light-hearted, but I am utterly humorless and hate fun, so I am compelled to observe that zombies would stand no chance against humans. A zombie plague would be less and epidemic, more an interesting newscast for the evening. It all starts with patient zero... and would likely end with patient zero, and definitely by patient two or three.
