Virus Apocalypse

There is a game called Plague Inc Evolved, where you have to infect the world with some kind of virus, and to succeed you would have to limit the symptoms to not being spotted and cured early.
This made me think: what if that happened in real life? Let's imagine if there was some kind of deadly virus with no visible symptoms, and it rapidly spreaded the world without anyone noticing any change. Then boom, everybody starts dying and there is not much to do because the virus is already all over the world.

What if there was actually a "smart" silent virus like that, and had already infected half the world? We should just have to surrender the imminent apocalypse, or there would be some way of survival a virus we don't know anything about?

 

HIV/AIDS fits the bill!

 

Yes, it most certainly can, and has, happened in real life. Contagions have been pretty common in human history. We now have modern medicine, sanitation systems, advanced technology, et al., that has dramatically decreased the spread of disease. However, that is no guarantee that some bug will not rip through the human population. Though medicine was still pretty basic then, it was only 100 years ago the the 1918 Flu epidemic claimed the lives of three to five percent of the entire world population at that time.

Also, while I am thinking about it, there was a medical thriller called Contagion that came out in 2011. While a work of fiction, it was praised by some in the scientific community for its accuracy. The films stars Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Kat Winslet. It is worth a watch.

 

I actually watched that movie when it came out! But I didn't really like it, I remember I found it a bit boring... Maybe I'm not into the medical stuff that much to find it interesting, but I admit it was pretty accurate, based on my basic knowledge of the subject.

 

With the "super viruses" popping up recently, I think this is a big possibility.
People are abusing antibiotics and creating viruses that are immune to them.
I don't think the question is can it happen. It's more like, when will it happen.

 

Very scary premise "there would be some way of survival a virus we don't know anything about?" - one that has actually occurred several times throughout the history of mankind. Many of these plagues have been mentioned in earlier responses such as the Black Death and AIDS. The Black Death killed over 20 million people in Europe in the 14th century and no one knew what to do!! In the course of doing research on the medicinal properties of garlic I came across this article about a Catholic church in France that grew garlic during the time of the plague. Garlic was hung everywhere, used in the food, consumed raw, made into oils, etc. - the smell of garlic spread for miles away. Not one priest, nun, or worker or anyone who lived on the church grounds caught the Black Death. The story made me chuckle and thought what a great ending for an apocalypse zombie movie - someone discovers garlic will prevent/cure zombie virus.

 

The latest Emergency Management magazine (Summer 2017) has the cover article devoted to just this. It is entitled "Nightmare Scenario: A a flu pandemic is coming, but when and how bad will it be?". Said periodical, in both print and web, is available for free, so it is worth checking out.

 

That is not something any of us would want to experience soon, but if it does come to that, the best bet is to get away from the affected places and move to a more excluded location, so even if the virus eventually catches up with you, you would have lived an extra day.

 

Depends on how contagious, how it spreads and what the incubation period is.
A virus like in 28 days later would overwhelm a continent but would be unable to spread across oceans
A slow plodding virus that took several days to manifest would allow it to spread to multiple continents but would allow for testing and containment.
Of course if it went truly airborne or managed to cross over to other species.

Remember the Spanish flu killed more people than WW1. And there weren't 7 billion of us packed into cities with less than 3 days worth of food on the supermarket shelves

 

Of all the many disasters that could befall the world this is one that I worry about the least. It isn't that I consider it the least likely to happen, rather it is the one over which I have the least control and is least likely to exterminate mankind. Surviving a world wide viral plague will be mostly a matter of luck. In order for it to spread fast and across all borders both national and cultural it will have to be airborne and have a rather long period where you are a carrier before it sickens and kills. AIDS and Ebola were both limited in their danger to a wide number of people. Most like me had little to worry about. Hepatitis is a far more dangerous disease than either.

 

The black death was carried by fleas that specifically lived on rats. Even today someone will get it from handling a member of the rodent family. Prairie dog fleas can carry it. There has been some study that indicates that the black death mostly faded out because it was a victim of its own success. It pretty much killed until most of the people that had survived were no longer endangered and so it faded and people slowly became less vulnerable. The virus still exists but people just are stronger now and it just isn't as virulent to us.

Pretty much over time a people will adapt to just about anything. The ugly side of this is what happened to the American natives when they met with their European cousins. They had never had to deal with things like the Black Death or Small Pox or even the to Europeans the relatively harmless Chicken Pox that all were carriers of. I suspect that it was not small pox that was the mass killer so much as it was the less potent to European lesser poxes. In a body with no resistance at all, chicken pox is lethal as small pox.

My Mothers entire family had small pox and none of them died or were even scared by it. They were quarantined for a few weeks while it ran its course but to them it just wasn't a killer. Later when I received my small pox vaccination, something that is no longer done and so people now lack that small scar we all shared, I proved that this immunity or at least strong resistance had bred true in me. I had an atypical response to it that they determined was caused by my body already having the antibodies in my blood before the vaccination.

Over time humanity will out live any plague and their bodies will adapt. The problem the world faces now it that in our efforts to make it so we, even as children, never have to be sick, have vastly weakened our bodies to the point that we are now dependent on our artificial external immune systems; the doctors and their drugs. Without them I fear the death rates will far exceed the black death.