State of the world

[andrewducker]

In this fifty year period, a massive depression, coupled with the collapse of a key resource, undermines traditional economic models. Even as the global economy recovers, a global war erupts, a horrifying accident triggered by political systems overwhelmed by increasingly rapid communications, a tragedy multiplied by the almost casual use of chemical weapons. The end of this war coincides with the emergence of a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen, killing millions upon millions -- and, combined with the war, almost eliminating an entire generation in some parts of the globe.

After the pandemic ebbs, a brief, heady economic boom leads many to believe the worst has ended. Unfortunately, what follows is a global depression even more massive than the previous one, causing hyperinflation in some of the most advanced nations, and leading directly to the seizure of power by totalitarian, genocidal regimes.

 

What follows is perhaps predictable: an even greater world-wide war, nearly wiping out a major culture and culminating in a shocking nuclear attack.

 

At this point, you’ve probably already realized that this scenario covers the end of the nineteenth century through the end of World War II.

From.

Comments

[marrog.livejournal.com]

It really is starting to look like swine-flu was bad in Mexico due to some other factor, possibly a secondary infection, but firstly, that secondary infection may just not have found its way out yet and try as we might it might still follow on the heels of the flu, and then we're fucked.

Secondly, whether or not it's this one, every epidemiologist knows that whether we like it or not the day is coming when all our tinkering and vaccination combined with constant failure due to fuckwit anti-vaccine campaigners (thank you, Daily Mail) to get minimum coverage is going to bite us in the arse in the form of a pandemic that we can do nothing about and that will sweep across the globe and kill most of us off.

Which, in fairness, taken from the outside looking in, would be a pretty good thing right about now.

'Course, that doesn't excuse the fact we're currently sort of ignoring Africa and letting everyone there dies of Aids. We'll be sorry when an HIV strain shows up that passes as easily as the common cold. Nobody really talks about the fact that there are several different strains of HIV and that they've been changing, subtly, over the years. We may be closer than you think.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking - surely the much greater impact of the swine 'flu in Mexico might also be because people there aren't as well fed etc. as the other nations that have cases? Mexico might not be quite as poor as a lot of countries, but it isn't nearly as wealthy as Western Europe or the USA.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

We can't really talk about that possibility, though, because it smacks of "their hospitals are dirty 'cause they're brown people" mentality among the more carefully PC. It's a possibility, I haven't heard great things about the Mexican healthcare system, but actually I'm not entirely sure that that should make as much difference as it appears to. IANAE (it's my new abbrev for today), but my guess would be that if this bug behaves like by all accounts a pretty mild flu everywhere else in the world, one would expect it to behave like a pretty mild flu in Mexico. Maybe it should be spreading faster or whatever if the hospitals are sup-par, and as such old folk and young children would be more at risk, but (and again, not an expert) I don't think it should be killing healthy young people in Mexico when everyone elsewhere has, well, manflu.

[cybik.livejournal.com]

True. I am waiting to see what happens though, since I don't think we're going to be able to predict what happens.

And I'm certainly not panicking - I think calling it manflu is probably right.. (That made me laugh madly for about a minute, by the way!)

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Wow, that first sentence I wrote was really ugly.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

If my A-level biology teacher was right, it's single mutation on the HIV that would make it transmitted by droplet infection. The same is true of Ebola, I read recently somewhere (probably the guardian).

But yes - it's alarming how we're distracted we are. Doesn't regular flu kill thousands each year in the UK anyway? Isn't AIDS the great pandemic?

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Also, SARS anyone?

[andrewducker]

No thanks, trying to give it up.

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

olol