I remember having an “End of Days” conversation with my
brother. I studied physics and he
Biology. Naturally, I reckoned that it
would be due to nuclear detonation leading to catastrophic loss of life as we know
it.
He was of the opinion that some
pandemic, biological in nature, was by far the more deadly and more likely
culprit for wiping out huge sections of the population.
You may be dismissive but Chernobyl had just
happened and I felt pretty secure in my argument. In addition, The New Scientist of 6th July 2013
provided worrisome evidence that the earth itself has made its own nuclear
reactors 2 billion years ago. While
mining in the Oklo area of Gabon (West Africa) for uranium the French
alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission discovered evidence of 16
natural fossil reactors between 1.5 and 10 metres across. These, it is thought, ran on and off for a few hundred thousand years until they exhausted their
supply of uranium. Strangely disturbing that the earth could create its own
nuclear reactors isn't it?
Meanwhile, my brother could counter with the 1918 flu
pandemic (January 1918 – December
1920), which was an unusually deadly influenza
pandemic, involving the H1N1 influenza virus. Sounds worryingly familiar today doesn't it? It infected 500 million people across
the world and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the
world's population at the time.
Because it involved the immune system response,
this pandemic targeted not those with weak immune systems, like the very young
and very old, but instead the fittest and most vital of the world’s
population. In my Grandmother’s home they lost two young men of the twelve in that family within a week of each
other. I can remember my father saying
that he was told they had to carry the coffin of one son through the bedroom of
the dying second son. These horrors do
lodge in the mind, they happened once already and who is to say they may not
happen again?
This was a really interesting read and all very valid points. To add to your brothers idea of a biological scenario. Look at AIDS.
ReplyDeleteLiving in South Africa has really opened my eyes to the devastation this disease leaves in its path.
Where literally a whole generation has been lost.
The rural areas are populated by the very young and the elderly (the gogos/grannies). Its a sad reality that "Almost 25% of all South African children under the age of 15 have lost at least one parent to AIDS." and it just keeps rising.
gosh you are right dear Shomaise xxx
DeleteVery thoughtful provoking
ReplyDelete