What Is Next On The Hit Parade Of Plagues.

Have you ever played the game of Life, not the board game but the computer game? It is a very simple game but teaches a lot of about Life. Well it is best explained by it’s rules…

Game of Life Explanation

The Game of Life is not your typical computer game. It is a cellular automaton, and was invented by Cambridge mathematician John Conway.

This game became widely known when it was mentioned in an article published by Scientific American in 1970. It consists of a grid of cells which, based on a few mathematical rules, can live, die or multiply. Depending on the initial conditions, the cells form various patterns throughout the course of the game.

Rules
For a space that is populated:
Examples

•     Each cell with one or no neighbors dies, as if by solitude.
•     Each cell with four or more neighbors dies, as if by overpopulation.
•     Each cell with two or three neighbors survives.
•     For a space that is empty or unpopulated:
•     Each cell with three neighbors becomes populated.

Simple right?

But everything in life are govern by them, just look at yeast. Just add a little yeast to grape juice and for the yeast it is like heaven! It is like landing in the new world and they go to work making more little yeast and they make more until all of a sudden it is over crowed with other yeast. And their waste product is poisoning them in own, er… well… their own shit which is alcohol. (Hence wines are limited to the percentage of  the alcohol tolerance of the yeast.)

I read a lot of Science Fiction and many of them revolve traveling from point A to point B and many of the sub plots are about carrying diseases that wipes of solar systems of life.

Now combining overpopulation and our own stargate (Yes, we have our stargate it is called an airplane. It brings you from point A to point B in the matter of hours before you even know that you are infected with a brand new disease.) we had COVID that way. Before we knew how deadly it was, it was halfway around the world.

A ‘plague’ comes before the fall: lessons from Roman history
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
By Colin Elliott
May 15, 2024

The Pax Romana—the 200-year “golden age” of the Roman Empire—was a marvel of diversity, connectivity, and unchallenged hegemony. By the middle of the second century AD, imperial Rome ruled territory across three different continents. Roughly one-quarter of the Earth’s population, some 60 million people, lived under Rome’s vast aegis, and the emperors of the age—most notably Marcus Aurelius—enjoyed the consent of those they governed. The Empire’s elites—witnessing the disciplined legions, widespread religiosity, cultural efflorescence, and dominant economy—likely expected their world order to endure forever.

In the year 166 AD, however, seemingly eternal Rome was caught completely off-guard as a deadly novel disease swept across the Eurasian landmass. It ransacked Rome’s cities for at least a decade and preceded centuries of decline. This major biological event—now known as the Antonine plague—appears to have been the world’s first pandemic.

And I would bet that we can find DNA traces of it today in a common cold.

Although the plague did not on its own cut short Rome’s dominance, it struck an empire that was confronting multiple challenges beneath a veneer of prosperity and growth—factors that modern-day infectious disease experts might recognize as creating the ideal conditions for pandemics. Much remains unknown about the Antonine plague; in some ways, modern scholars are just as in the dark about this first pandemic as its contemporary victims. But interdisciplinary researchers, trying to understand how the plague could have helped push such a powerful empire to the breaking point, have recently been unravelling some of its mysteries.

COVID was probably very close to destroying civilization as we know it.

An interconnected, vulnerable ancient world. Historians still don’t know exactly where and when the pandemic entered Roman territory. But, again, historical circumstances conspired in favor of the novel disease.

An outbreak today can jump continents as quickly as an airplane can fly. Travel and transportation can facilitate the spread of infectious diseases. It may not be coincidental, therefore, that by the time of the Antonine plague, the Eurasian landmass was better-connected than ever before. In 166 AD, for the first time in recorded history, the imperial Han court in Luoyang, China, received visitors from the Roman Empire. Merchants from India, sub-Saharan Africa, Arabia, and Egypt rode the trade winds to ports all around the Indian Ocean. Roman soldiers, seeking to police and tax such abundant trade, ventured well outside Roman borders—as Latin inscriptions in the Farasan Islands of southern Arabia attest. In short, there were plenty of opportunities for novel diseases to cross political and geographic barriers into new populations, transforming what might have otherwise been a regional epidemic into a pandemic that spread across three different continents.

Now from the packed ghettos in the world there could very well be the next plague forming. According to Perplexity...

Here are some of the most concerning diseases:
Influenza Viruses
Influenza viruses, particularly those that originate from animal reservoirs like birds and pigs, have the potential to mutate and gain the ability to spread efficiently among humans, potentially leading to a pandemic. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic was caused by an influenza virus strain.
Coronaviruses
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the threat posed by coronaviruses, which can jump from animal hosts to humans. Other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS have caused outbreaks in the past, and there is a risk of new, potentially more dangerous strains emerging.
Nipah Virus
The Nipah virus, which can cause severe respiratory illness and encephalitis, has a high fatality rate and the potential to spread from bats to humans and between humans. Outbreaks have occurred in Malaysia, Bangladesh, and India.
Lassa Fever
Lassa fever is a viral hemorrhagic fever endemic to parts of West Africa, primarily spread by rodents. It has the potential to cause a pandemic if it gains the ability for efficient human-to-human transmission.
Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever
This tick-borne viral disease can cause severe hemorrhagic fever in humans and has a high fatality rate. It has the potential to spread more widely if it adapts to new vectors or transmission routes.

The world doesn’t end with a bang, nor a whimper, but with a cough and a sneeze.

 

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Hopefully, if all has gone as planned, I'm on the way back to Connecticut.