"What If" - Rapid Incurable "Super-Virus" Wipes Out Half Of Humans Within A Year....

The scenario:

A highly contagious and rapidly moving "super-virus" begins to infect humans across the world now - it knows no bounds and is transmittable in every form. It is entirely baffling to scientists - so much so, that some scientists claim that it is an entire lifeform in its own right (some suggest that this "super-virus" actually originated from space in recent meteorite strikes).

The thing is, this "alien super-virus" binds with (and in some cases, takes over) our human DNA. In those humans that the super-virus is unable to bind with successfully, the victim dies painfully as his DNA is degraded and destroyed in real-life. In the end, this "alien super-virus" wipes out 3-4billion human beings!

The thing is, those who do survive are not entirely as they were before. Sure, they fell sick like everybody else, but they survive. Some survive, but are greatly weakened and frail - but they survive nonetheless. Others survive and can function as normal. But the rest of the survivors all come out "better" - more intelligent, more efficient and improved physiological systems; "new" cells (i.e. initiated by the arrival of the alien super-virus into the host); rapid muscle and bone growth - even in those who have stopped developing (i.e. these new alien super-viral cells mimic aritificial stem cell implants etc) etc etc.

So, we now have around 3-4 billion humans remaining - would society be able to get back on its feet? Take note, that when the super-virus pandemic was at its peak, planes were grounded etc etc - so, it would be presumed that infrastructure was still intact, no?

Do you think old world order would continue - or would different states and governments rise up? (Take note that no "cure" or vaccine could be found - because scientists had literally never seen anything like this or as complex and intricate as this "alien super-virus" before, especially as it didn't originate from Earth)

This scenario and then our border, telling my sons about this so called awesome game where he could be the bad guy and design virus's to take out the world, like say, Russia.

I was horrified, and told my kids, do not touch that.

The whole idea is very much this: THOUGHT CREATES. The dark side has many dark plans but no permissions to bring them in.

But if they can program humans to think about this, plan this, fear this, then the chance is increased!

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


Ok, now this was one of the scenarios on television that would scare the mess out of me, because it was something that could happen in reality, more so than some of the other scary movies Hollywood comes up with.

I think survival instincts are fairly basic for humans, so I would say people would manage because they would have to. Without governments, you would have people banding together to get things done. It might start out with a group of people as small as a family, but as they find other survivors, it would grow and start to function more as a community and so on.

In other words, It would just work because people would make it work.

The where would matter.
if say half of india, china, and like a token amount of the rest died, no change..but if say, all of north America, Europe, etc died out..then it would be a very different world...in which I say, good luck with that.

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


whats going on with all these what ifs??

I hope your not planning something evil with the information we give you?

I guess it depends on if I'm a pessimist or an optimist.

The body burial, cremation, and liquefication industries would be big. That would really hurt because the planet would be running on half today's soul power and there's no guarantee what the side effects of the killer virus is. The survivors might be zombies.

That's when you go to back up civilization priorities. Crops, clean water, and bare necessities first. Media takes a backseat to reality that half your labor force is gone. The economy would deflate so bad and the survivors would get the rearranged wealth but I guess in that scenario the ones in a government would grab it before it empowered new people not yet screened for social order things (as they do today). All the wiggle room would unleash some savagery in people and they might revert to less organized ways for society relation.

The first five years would be close to a nightmare with destabilization from the massive deflation of everything. Feels like a global mini ice age could happen just from the loss of all those warm bodies on the planet. Small towns would disappear as the survivors would group up in cities. You can't afford sprawl on half a population with tiny towns, the empty buildings would have to be pruned off, turned into ghost towns.

Big cities would continue. Order would continue. Industry would be hurt and international industry would be scarce.

Life goes on.

Originally posted by Tlexlapoca
reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens

 

whats going on with all these what ifs??

I hope your not planning something evil with the information we give you?

Ah he's probably just personality typing people for the sites running advertisements, getting demographics and whatnot.

I resent the miscategorization that I'm an overweight middle aged housewife though, seeing the ads. Get me better stuff than that chubby woman in the flower dress.

What if he's building an AI robot and cloning our answers into a bunch of AIs? To replace us after the virus hits...

What if the virus wiped out ALL humans on the earth leaving none alive except those on the space station in orbit, and when they come back, they're the only ones alive on earth. What would they do!?

Oo

*wwwwwwossshhh flap flap* flies off.

Originally posted by SaturnFX
The where would matter.
if say half of india, china, and like a token amount of the rest died, no change..but if say, all of north America, Europe, etc died out..then it would be a very different world...in which I say, good luck with that.

That is such a self centered view....

Originally posted by Ghost375

Originally posted by SaturnFX
The where would matter.
if say half of india, china, and like a token amount of the rest died, no change..but if say, all of north America, Europe, etc died out..then it would be a very different world...in which I say, good luck with that.

That is such a self centered view....

no, its a military and socioeconomical view. the world is the world. you can't wish it different.
no western influence would have no holds barred against Pakistan v india, china v japan, etc...

People slam the west all the time. Remove them and watch the earth glow.

Originally posted by winofiend
What if the virus wiped out ALL humans on the earth leaving none alive except those on the space station in orbit, and when they come back, they're the only ones alive on earth. What would they do!?

Oo

*wwwwwwossshhh flap flap* flies off.

made me think of that movie "Night of the comet"

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


Well, if that happens, then half of us will be beyond giving a damn. The rest will carry on in the relatively happy knowledge that there is now more than enough material resource to feed the whole planets population, fuel everyones homes, keep the motors of industry working, and motor vehicles moving, all at a reduced speed of expenditure.

The economic climate would probably have a fat wobble, and things may be strange for a while, but the long and short of it is, the show will go on. The earth will continue to turn, people will fall in love, or fall into bed, which ever way round that happens, and babies will be born, and grow into adults, and so on and so on. There will of course, be mourning, sadness, sundering of ties by the cold hand of death. But there will also be joy, plenty, reuinions. In essence, in the grand scheme of things it will be business as usual once the bodies are buried.

Pandemics, Super Volcanoes and Extinction Level Asteroid impacts all have two things in common:

1. We know they have happened before and,

2. It's a mathematical certainty they will happen again.

Of the three, only Pandemics operate in our human perceived time scale, instead of the hundreds of thousands of years we might wait for a SV eruption, or the millions until the next planet killer hits, we just had a global one in 1918, and many more recent regional and continental ones.

Plagues are, in large part, the history of the human race, such as is discussed in the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and that history is still being written.

Our world today is even more vulnerable to a pandemic than the world of 1918: a new disease can go around the world at the speed of a jetliner, undiscovered until suddenly people go symptomatic in multiple urban centers around the world nearly simultaneously.

Then more time passes as the disease spreads from each city even as infectious disease organizations struggle to identify the culprit and establish the extent of the threat. By the time such a bug was recognized, it would all ready be virtually uncontainable.

And while scarcely five human generations have passed since 1918, the germs have had many, many billions of generations to evolve further, so I think that Super Bug is probably out there somewhere waiting to bite us.

The "super humans" resulting from the virus pandemic would band together and destroy the "lesser" humans (while the regular humans are kept around as lackeys), as during the pandemic (with that kind of death rate), society as we know it would collapse. For a time (probably about half a decade), it'd be like a Mad Max kind of world, where some societies prosper, but only as collectives (and only if they can defend themselves from bandits).

This is where the super humans come in. They will be the town leaders, and the bandit leaders. Eventually, there won't be much left that is lightly defended to raid, and they'll have to integrate with communities. So, at this time, is when we'd see the rebirth. But, it would take a while, and depending on the resources left after such a plague, there would likely be some warring between different groups over these resources.

And while scarcely five human generations have passed since 1918, the germs have had many, many billions of generations to evolve further, so I think that Super Bug is probably out there somewhere waiting to bite us.

No doubt. Just imagine a form of mutated rabies that is airborne and resistant to current rabies treatments. Rabies is an extraordinarily deadly disease if untreated (100% mortality rate). Not to mention, the side effects would be akin to 28 Days' fast zombies! (of course, a moat would help at least, as part of it is a fear of water!)