How the world may end - seriously

kendoboi SG

Originally posted by the Bear:
this was published in The Citizen Scientist

it doesn't look fake.. and it sent chills down my spine...

there are mad and reality-divorced boffins out there who actually think like this...

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[b]Saving the Earth with Ebola

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.

Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.

AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.

After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.

...

then this happened

When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.

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read the complete article and the follow-up => The Citizen Scientist
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Gosh....to think that u can actually post this up..are u really free til u've got nothing to do..

[email protected] SG

u miss my point. Like u said, it has to have a long incubation period where the subect is highly contageous while having no visible symptoms.

With enough funding and research, it is entirely possible to re-engineer the ebola virus into such a strain.

Or else, other means can easily be used to overcome this problem. A good case study would be that which appears in Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6. In it, a pharmaceutical company uses the Sydney Olympics to spread a newly engineered strain of the ebola virus. However, this is not meant to be the killing blow. Rather, its used to spread panic. The company then announces it happens to have been developing a live-virus vaccine against this new strain. It "kindly" offers to vaccinate millions of people around the world. Unfortunately for the world, this live-virus vaccine is actually not a vaccine, but the very virus itself. With this method, their plan would wipe almost 90% of the people on earth out, not thru a virus spreading by itself, but rather thru people allowing themselves to be injected with the virus, thinking that its the vaccine. This certainly overcomes the problems of ebola killing too fast. The virus's fast killing time factor becomes an advantage, because by the time people realise what's happened, they're all too weak to do anything about it.

oxford mushroom SG

That's easier said than done...facts are often quite different from fiction..

A long incubation period indicates that the virus must multiply slowly and hide in some sanctuary sites to avoid detection by the immune system. During this period, it must not damage the host cells too much or symptoms will appear. Yet this virus has to be particularly virulent and lethal.

You have a paradox here: you want something that looks sufficiently benign not be be destroyed or to destroy its host during the long incubation period but yet able to destroy enough host tissues to be lethal. We have many organisms that satisfy the first requirement, but for the reasons I have mentioned they co-exist with the host very well and lead to disease only after a long period of time. Killing people slowly will not end the world, because people with disease can still reproduce..

The way to end the world is to target the reproductive system. If you render mankind sterile, you will eliminate mankind eventually.

hisoka SG

hmm what if the virus makes one sterile?? its not obvious at all and can take very logn if not forever to be found out, and if it can still spread by air..........

[email protected] SG

well never underestimate the ingenuity of humans. its certainly not easier said than done. Who knows what is going on in the bioweapon labs of countries all over the world?

2ndly, I don't think making people sterile will guarentee mankind's elimination. With the current breakthroughs in cloning and non-sexual human reproduction, there is no guarentee that mankind will die out before they successfully reproduce humans using nothing more than DNA from donor parents. Someone looking to wipe out 90% of the human race, might want something with a better guarentee.

oxford mushroom SG

ya...that would be a far more effective way..It will be more effective to target the female...

Devise a virus that attacks the ovaries...without eggs, you cannot even clone..

genieraul SG

comon lo.. now the medicine so high tech liao.. ppl with ebola u can jus simply spray them with bygone.. the bugs sure die 1 la

maggot SG

Genocide virus Twisted Evil

Designed just to attack a certain race due to their racial DNA

So that we can have only 1 race on this planet

[email protected] SG

the goal of cloning ultimately is to be able to take 2 sets of DNA from donors and produce a new human. It doesn't have to be DNA from the ovaries or the sperms. If u want to produce a virus to wipe humankind out this way, it has to target the DNA of the individual itself. Unfortunately, there is a reason why nature has diversified itself in replicating so many diverse sets of DNAs, and that is to survive such an attack. To effectively attack DNA, perhaps we have to look to nanotech where the nanobots can attack the DNA strands itself without any regard for what DNA is written, unlike viruses which might encounter unexpected defenses.

latterrain SG

I think if the world is going to end, it will end anytime.
It is beyond our control.

Komon SG

When that day comes he will surface again to save mankind

seow SG

Sounds like something which iveco would want.

[email protected] SG

yup King Arthur will rise from Avalon again, and bring forth the Keltic culture where it rightfully belongs.

Allen.Iverson SG

aiya, during cold war, the soviets and US made enough nuclear warheads to destroy the entire eath 9 times i think..we could use em if their still around .

Ito_^ SG

his usage of 10%, 2/3 and other terms make him seems more like a christian cult fanatic than a cold blooded scientist.

chenc SG

LOL Very Happy YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS STUPID!!! If it cost NASA billions of US dollars to send 5 astronauts to the moon, the cost of sending 2 billion people will collapse the world economic!!! And building base which can provide a suitable living condition on Mars cost millions of billions of dollars. Now you paying for it?

maggot SG

Soon perhaps when Nuclear war erupts over the Middle East Twisted Evil

Not to mention when the bird flu H5N1 mutates into the spanish flu H1N1 that kills 50 millions in a few months
Killed 25 million in 25 weeks how to beat that record

Spugnardi SG

Umm… guys b4 u’re too worked up u might want to check the date of the article… one day b4 april’s fool

BizarreRocksD12 SG

bear attacks

Hellraiza SG

sounds like something from the Bible, Revelations.

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