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In Stephen King's The Stand, "Captain Trips" is the name given to a weaponized version of Influenza with a 99.4% mortality rate. That isn't really feasible since viruses need to leave some hosts alive, but even the real-life Spanish Flu killed 5% of the world's population less than a hundred years ago. Our epidemiology and virology has advanced quite a bit, but there are still tons of scary things out there that are just waiting for a mutation or evolution to become a real-life Captain Trips. The Spanish Flu had a 15% mortality rate; what would something with a 50% or better mortality rate look like? How would America/the World be affected by a superbug that in a matter of months reduced the global population by half? Would the brain-drain from half the world's skilled population plunge us into a new dark age, as the people who know how to run and repair power stations disappear? Would we return to an agrarian society, as the global financial markets collapse and there's no profit in pulling oil out of the ground for markets that don't exist anymore? Would we get death-cult raiders, or would the militaries of the world coup their leaders in an attempt to get things under control? What are some realistic looks at a pandemic like this?
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Feb 16, 2017 20:49
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I don't think you can meaningfully ask this question without specifying what kind of disease it is, what circumstances it emerges under (i.e. it's hard to really separate the impact of the Spanish flu from the fact it occurred during the tail end of the First World War) and how effectively various governments recognize the crisis and respond to it.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:15
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Helsing posted:I don't think you can meaningfully ask this question without specifying what kind of disease it is, what circumstances it emerges under (i.e. it's hard to really separate the impact of the Spanish flu from the fact it occurred during the tail end of the First World War) and how effectively various governments recognize the crisis and respond to it. OK, let's assume the following: -viral (so no antibiotics available) -non-weapon (just a freak mutation) -present-day (so generally peace in our time, with a few hotspots) -present governments/NGOs in place As a bonus, assume that all survivors are permanent carriers, so quarantines wouldn't really work unless you set up a morlock/eloi split between infected survivors and uninfected. Ebola is the closest thing to what my OP is about, and matches everything I've said (including the 50%+ mortality rate and zero known treatments) I know the CDC put out a whitepaper on a Zombie Outbreak a while ago, and that's where most of my thinking starts. The movie Contagion was also on my mind, as well as World War Z (which supposes a similar level of mortality with bonus enemy combatants after death) Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 21:17
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I think it would end up like Earth Abides op.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:22
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Instability would spark regional conflict, which would spark conventional war, which would spark nuclear war as one of the combatants gets desperate. I can't imagine any kind of global outbreak scenario that doesn't end in the bombs being dropped.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:24
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the black husserl posted:Instability would spark regional conflict, which would spark conventional war, which would spark nuclear war as one of the combatants gets desperate. Do you think that the death or debilitation of roughly half or more of the command structure of a nuclear nation would lead them to launch sooner as less-senior members are field promoted? Or would they focus on solving/isolating the disease over settling scores while the world dies? How does the fact that nuclear subs/carriers are one of the few groups to be 100% not affected by this outbreak (at least until they run out of food and need to make landfall to resupply, so a month or so at the soonest) and be able to make clear-headed decisions?
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Feb 16, 2017 21:26
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I imagine that the reaction time of the government would play a significant role in how rapidly the disease spread. Just look at the response to Hurricane Katrina: that was going to be a bad disaster no matter what but it probably wouldn't have been nearly as bad as it was if a more competent government had been overseeing the crisis. On the bright side a mass die off of humans would go a really long way toward dealing with our multiple overlapping environmental crises.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:44
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The reason why Captain Trips spreads so far in the book (or the TV show? I forget) is because once the US realizes that there is absolutely no way they can contain it and it's going to utterly devastate the population they load passenger jets with ~chem trails~ and spray China/Russia to ensure they also get infected.quote:Before stepping down Starkey orders that the command "Rome falls" be issued to covert U.S. operatives overseas. All of these operatives have been issued vials of the superflu; on command, they will release the disease on other continents, in order to obscure its true point of origin. This act completely destroys any chance of containing the superflu and ensures the near-extinction of all mankind. Party Plane Jones fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 21:45
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Quick question about the effects of this disease: do the people who die from it later return to "life", bereft of their mental capacities and only motivated by ravenous hunger?
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Feb 16, 2017 21:47
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Flowers For Algeria posted:Quick question about the effects of this disease: do the people who die from it later return to "life", bereft of their mental capacities and only motivated by ravenous hunger? No, I'm asking about real outbreaks/pandemics like Spanish Flu and Ebola, not zombie prepper navel-gazing.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:50
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:Do you think that the death or debilitation of roughly half or more of the command structure of a nuclear nation would lead them to launch sooner as less-senior members are field promoted? Or would they focus on solving/isolating the disease over settling scores while the world dies? I don't think nuclear subs would be a factor since I think the launch would come from either India, Pakistan, or Israel.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:53
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the black husserl posted:Very well articulated - your first paragraph is exactly what I think would happen. Breakdown in organizational structure means that the finger on the button gets more and more twitchy. That's a really specific outcome to be predicting given how vague the parameters of the scenario are.
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Feb 16, 2017 21:54
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It still depends on a lot of parameters here, stuff like incubation period, symptoms, time of year, and how it gets discovered. It could be spotted early, and confined to a certain region or collection of cities. Places that imposed draconian quarantine measures would have a much higher chance of surviving than those that reacted slowly or with incomplete quarantines. Quality of the quarantine will depend on location. A strong and stable state would be able to convince/coerce people to remain in their homes and take certain precautions. They have the communication and organization and ability to use violence to make this happen. If, say, a big city had a lot of people infected and a large number started dying, control inside that city could break down, but the state could put the military outside the city to prevent more infections. Governments unwilling or unable to do this, or places where there's already deep mistrust in authorities would see bigger problems here. International air travel would shut down once the scope of the problem was realized, the question is how far would the infection have spread. Major transit routes would get the worst of it. Isolated rural areas would be more gradually infected. Borders would get mighty interesting. You could see large masses of people fleeing to areas they perceived to be safer. Probably a lot of violence would result. My bet would be some areas would be devastated, some partially hit, say some cities in a country and not others, and some regions would be almost completely untouched. This may not seem like a bold prediction, but wiping out an entire species, humans or not, is really pretty difficult over short time spans.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:16
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Count Roland posted:It still depends on a lot of parameters here, stuff like incubation period, symptoms, time of year, and how it gets discovered. Let's say it's straight-up Ebola, except it's gone airborne. 50% mortality, week-long incubation (so the knowledge of an airborne version of ebola isn't known for a week). Helsing posted:That's a really specific outcome to be predicting given how vague the parameters of the scenario are. Shrecknet fucked around with this message at 22:22 on Feb 16, 2017 |
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Feb 16, 2017 22:19
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The rich and celebrities would isolate themselves from the rest of society and wait out the social devastation from their summer homes, ruling via the internet, while they await the development of a vaccine.
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Feb 16, 2017 22:34
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I mean Captain Trips is obviously a very dangerous Stand but it seems weak in 1-on-1 combat. I think any of the Jojo's would be able to defeat it easily
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Feb 16, 2017 23:17
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World War Z does have some neat little ideas about world wide outbreaks. But aside from The Stand, there is a ton of speculative fiction on the matter. However, the basic reality is that the more advanced we get in cheap fast transport. the more likely you are looking at a event that wipes out whatever percentage is immune.. (Assuming the Captain Trips if you are infected, you are a carrier/ you die.) Eventually, maybe after a hundred years, the only people living would be the immune and that would depend on the ratio of living and then you are into genetic diversity/ rounding everyone up to breed and form stable population centers. Basically what happened in the Stand without the cool black lady and the denim devil who eventually dies in a anti-climactic hosed up way in another book/universe. The basic fact is anyway that our cheap flights and roads are what will gently caress us up.
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Feb 17, 2017 01:02
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Lonos Oboe posted:But aside from The Stand, there is a ton of speculative fiction on the matter. Nonfiction books or things like Exit Mundi would also be awesome. I'm currently working through DEATH FROM THE SKIES!! by astronomer Phil Plait.
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Feb 17, 2017 01:26
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:Let's say it's straight-up Ebola, except it's gone airborne. 50% mortality, week-long incubation (so the knowledge of an airborne version of ebola isn't known for a week). The scariest disease for humans is not Ebola, it's rabies. Basically 100% lethality with a giant lead time before it kills you, only consolation is the fact that it pretty much transmits only in saliva so knowing you need a vaccine is obvious. Party Plane Jones fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Feb 17, 2017 |
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Feb 17, 2017 02:02
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Budget Dracula posted:I think it would end up like Earth Abides op. drat, I love when someone else actually remembers this underrated classic. That book was a wild thing to discover at the age of 12. This is the correct answer, except also much worse because of Nuclear Power stations. I suggest OP pick up a copy of Alan Weismans "The World Without Us", where the author goes into detail on the impact a sudden lack of humanity would have on many parts of the biosphere. Spoiler: vast swathes of the earth would become irradiated wastelands far worse than Chernobyl, thanks to hundreds of nuclear power plants melting down in the absence of operating crews. So, more like the dark ending to Cloud Atlas tbqh.
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Feb 17, 2017 04:53
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Earth Abides isn't like anything described in the OP. Earth Abides is like a 99.999% mortality+spread. The protagonist is in Berkeley (in the 40s) and aside from a few people he sees in SF he's totally alone until he finds someone in, iirc, Marin. It's a great book but it's about the world returning to nature as man largely vanishes. The last section of the book is called "the last american" because the hunter-gatherer civilization that emerges at the end of his life doesn't know what countries are any more and is already treating a library like a forbidden holy ground. Earth Abides also starts iirc in like a 2 week period. People are alive and then they are dead. It's a totally different scenario than 50% of the population dying over, say, a few months. Just the ability to shut things down or mothball is a huge shift in outcome.
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Feb 17, 2017 05:22
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Once the scope of the problem becomes clear most people would try to stay at home. The police/military would be directed to take over distribution of essential goods as the supply chain collapses. From there economic collapse and the government takes over the farms and factories it needs to take care of who is left. Nobody is going to start a revolution. Well there would probably be some riots but running around in a large group of people is how you get infected so that's going to solve itself.
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Feb 17, 2017 10:20
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:Can you recommend anything that's more grounded than the supernatural-inflected Stand and WWZ that would be decent. I already grabbed Earth Abides. Sheeeit, I would not be the best person to ask. I am thinking of stuff like The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak and that one REALLY good episode of the X-Files about it. My tastes run more towards Children of Men or I am Legend. I also liked Earth Abides, but again those are not really what you may be looking for. A quick search on Goodreads however brought up a big selection of them. Some seem like proper speculative fiction books, others are history and there are a few potboilers. Sorry I couldn't help.
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Feb 17, 2017 19:11
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Understanding global reaction to a pandemic of this magnitude is an interesting exercise. Certainly we can have a bug where you get it and you die, but considering hosts of secondary effects makes even more numerous and interesting side possibilities. Also interesting would be dispersal of certain chemicals to cause changes in the population. So, for infectious agents, I think Rabies (either through genetic drift or some dumb weaponized idea) would possibly get us closest to the zombie outbreak, having people either going into a coma and dying or becoming erratic and aggressive. They're not superhuman though, just itching for some Mad Max gruesome adventures... before dying in a few weeks. Zika is another interesting one because it can have both immediate and long term effects. In the short term, lets say the neurological symptoms (Guillain-Barre Syndrome) was made much more prevalent to get the more sudden drop in population, with the added bonus that it doesn't immediately kill you, just make it so you can't fend for yourself. How would a society deal with upwards of 50% of its population slowly and steadily needing more nursing care... do we start euthanizing people or do we try to save everyone? Then, the survivors would also have to contend with diminished reproductive ability, both in fetuses that die prior to/at birth, as well as increased numbers of humans with diminished mental capacity from Zika effects in utero. What about leporosy making a massive comeback? Instead of something that kills everyone, instead it gives you a slew of visible and gross lesions as well as diminished lifespan. For the chemical side, domoic acid would be interesting since it causes amnesia. A concerted effort to place sufficient quantities in, say, McDonald's beef distributor would be interesting with society dealing with contamination of food supplies. Microcystins in water supplies would lead to more immediate deaths. Inevitably I think that, as far as worst case scenarios for pandemics go, although "you get it and die" is definitely on the top of everyone's mind, I think the worse ones would be cases where there are significant long term effects that don't kill off everyone (excluding the immune, of course) which would see changes to how society functions and deals with things.
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Feb 17, 2017 22:44
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HelloSailorSign posted:So, for infectious agents, I think Rabies (either through genetic drift or some dumb weaponized idea) would possibly get us closest to the zombie outbreak, having people either going into a coma and dying or becoming erratic and aggressive. They're not superhuman though, just itching for some Mad Max gruesome adventures... before dying in a few weeks. Both Rabies and Ebola are the type of viruses that have never made the jump to airborne (no saliva- or blood-transmitted viruses have); a superflu like Avian/Swine/Spanish, either weaponized or mutated, is the best chance to become hyperdeadly. The thing that scares me is places like Mumbai, Tokyo, NYC, where there's so many people so densely packed. That's a LOT of bodies to deal with, even 20% mortality is almost 3 million dead in New York. Where are they going to go? And what sort of knock-on effects will piles of bodies rotting in the streets of Mumbai have?
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Feb 17, 2017 22:51
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Party Plane Jones posted:The scariest disease for humans is not Ebola, it's rabies. Basically 100% lethality with a giant lead time before it kills you, only consolation is the fact that it pretty much transmits only in saliva so knowing you need a vaccine is obvious. HRVP, motherfuckers.
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Feb 18, 2017 08:59
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I can't see wars breaking out over a global pandemic, or any stupid poo poo like a nuke firing, because every country in the world is going to be primarily concerned with maintaining order inside their own borders. Maybe a particularly opportunistic state that has managed to largely avoid the full brunt of the conflict intervenes in a limited way to smash & grab certain contested areas or whatever, but I can't think of a better vector to spread a disease than a literal armed engagement. Either way, you're going to see mass quarantine programs, major economic shocks and the resulting shortage crises in daily life, and major social breakdown. But regardless of how high a mortality rate the virus has, the key factors that are gonna determine the full effect are going to be (a) it's vector (b) how fast that disease is recognized as a potential pandemic, and then have it's vectors recognized (c) how well you can contain the initial spread, and then 'plug' any holes you get. So, how easy is it to recognize if someone is infected, and how well can you enforce quarantine? If you can get on top of all 3 problems, I think most well-organized and modern states should be able to come out mostly unscathed, but still with a massive pile of bodies. It's the countries without a strong, legitimate central government that are going to have problems.
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Feb 18, 2017 11:38
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My favorite disease "what if" is what would happen if there was a disease with a really extreme mortality rate but also also created 'typhoid marys" frequently. Like a disease that was likely to kill you ebola fast but if you survived would develop into a chronic condition that you would remain infectious for many years or forever. Could the modern would handle large scale leper colonies? Is there a point where simply euthanizing people would be the only choice?
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Feb 18, 2017 12:22
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rudatron posted:I can't see wars breaking out over a global pandemic, or any stupid poo poo like a nuke firing, because every country in the world is going to be primarily concerned with maintaining order inside their own borders. Maybe a particularly opportunistic state that has managed to largely avoid the full brunt of the conflict intervenes in a limited way to smash & grab certain contested areas or whatever, but I can't think of a better vector to spread a disease than a literal armed engagement. You're completely failing to imagine how it could actually go down. It wouldn't be everyone in India and Pakistan getting sick. It would be a major public health crisis in Mumbai making Indian war hawk hardliners need to sabre rattle with Pakistan to distract and win an upcoming election. Oops, turns out they sabre rattled too hard and now a real war starts in Kashmir. Oops, turns out the plague got even worse in Pakistan, the government is on the verge of collapse, and a desperate leader is convinced launching a nuke is the only way to save the country. The current global balance of power feels like a bomb waiting to go off. I think a pandemic would light the fuse.
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Feb 18, 2017 20:29
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How would talking about Pakistan distract Indians from dying in a pandemic? If that worked national leaders would just threaten their neighbors every time a natural disaster devastated their country.
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Feb 18, 2017 20:56
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Dealing with a pandemic-scale disease places institutional & resource burdens on any government. Now, if we're assuming the disease is hitting both India and Pakistan within, say, weeks of each other, they'll be an implicit understanding on both sides that a war wouldn't really benefit anyone, so long as the crisis is ongoing. You're assuming wars are only done to 'distract' people, which is kind of a weird assumption to make, usually the people doing them have a reason. But none of them really work while a pandemic is on-going. It doesn't make sense.
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Feb 19, 2017 00:49
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:The thing that scares me is places like Mumbai, Tokyo, NYC, where there's so many people so densely packed. That's a LOT of bodies to deal with, even 20% mortality is almost 3 million dead in New York. Where are they going to go? And what sort of knock-on effects will piles of bodies rotting in the streets of Mumbai have? You named 3 port cities. It's called a garbage barge.
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Feb 19, 2017 01:16
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Budget Dracula posted:I think it would end up like Earth Abides op. No, more like BattleTanx 
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Feb 19, 2017 01:20
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rudatron posted:Dealing with a pandemic-scale disease places institutional & resource burdens on any government. Now, if we're assuming the disease is hitting both India and Pakistan within, say, weeks of each other, they'll be an implicit understanding on both sides that a war wouldn't really benefit anyone, so long as the crisis is ongoing. Depends on how realistic their assessment of their own condition, and how good their intel on the other guys, is. Like if Islamabad hears half of India is dead and there's no functioning government (But actually it's just relocated to Hyderabad or something), and thinks "We can definitely win this because we're Pakistan!" they might give it a shot.
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Feb 19, 2017 06:11
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Mister Adequate posted:Depends on how realistic their assessment of their own condition, and how good their intel on the other guys, is. Like if Islamabad hears half of India is dead and there's no functioning government (But actually it's just relocated to Hyderabad or something), and thinks "We can definitely win this because we're Pakistan!" they might give it a shot. "let's invade the plaguelands!"
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Feb 19, 2017 07:24
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By the way, If anyone is thinking about the 'Crossed' series by Ennis. Just read the first trade and pretend there was not a 100 plus issue series of it. It's an interesting premise of a bodily fluid transmitted disease that turns people into vicious rape-cannibals that maintain their intelligence, but none of their self control. The web comic 'Wish you were here' was a legitimately chilling and effective end of the world fiction and Ennis wrote a few great stories in among the crap. It's actually cool how he does not explain the origin, meaning it could be a virus, the wrath of God or the planet doing a 'The Happening' and trying to cull our numbers. One issue by Ennis in the middle of the garbage run, is set back with patient zero shows how the virus spreads so fast and has a couple of cool "What if" scenarios involving former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The series itself is garbage bordering on unironic torture porn. But if you pick up the first 9 issue run and the 4 or so trades of 'Wish you were here,' you might have a good time as Ennis and Spurrier manage to combine dark humour with ball shrinking horror.
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Feb 19, 2017 19:14
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Dr. Angela Ziegler posted:
Oh right. The gritty and realistic book by Mel Brook's kid where plucky misunderstood Israel expends significant resources in the midst of a global crisis to save save Palestinians from a global zombie epidemic.
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Feb 19, 2017 19:52
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Don't forget "blowing the zombies to pieces with large amounts of bombs and artillery inexplicably doesn't work but musket formations do because ~~headshots~~"
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Feb 19, 2017 21:34
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I don't think Post-Captain is a recognized rank in any modern military, so I'd say this whole concept is extremely unrealistic.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:05
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Fojar38 posted:Don't forget "blowing the zombies to pieces with large amounts of bombs and artillery inexplicably doesn't work but musket formations do because ~~headshots~~" Again, I am only interested in WWZ for the logistics and post-apocalypse survivor/planning/reconstruction. This isn't Yet Another Zombie Thread.
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Feb 19, 2017 22:14
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