Well, it simply isn't true that the world will end today. That planet-killer comet has largely broken up and will miss Earth today, astronomers report.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/14/scitech/main20120573.shtml?tag=stack

This is a perfect example of the left and the willing idiots that follow them.

"It's a snowball effect on the Web," Yeomans said. "You get one or two folks who make an outrageous claim, and a bunch of others pile on. Some folks are actually making a living this way."

Quote from: quiller on October 16, 2011, 05:05:06 AM
Well, it simply isn't true that the world will end today. That planet-killer comet has largely broken up and will miss Earth today, astronomers report.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/14/scitech/main20120573.shtml?tag=stack

Jeez, I wish I would have known about that yesterday. I spent the whole day huddled in the basement in the fetal position, a pot on my head, rocking back and forth feeling sorry for myself because all life on earth was going to be snuffed out.

Quote from: arpad on October 16, 2011, 09:06:24 AM
Jeez, I wish I would have known about that yesterday. I spent the whole day huddled in the basement in the fetal position, a pot on my head, rocking back and forth feeling sorry for myself because all life on earth was going to be snuffed out.

Boy, if all life were going to end tomorrow, or next week; there are some supper models I'd like to look up (no reason they wouldn't throw some on me - except their crowded schedules), and the Porsche dealership would probably give me a car, not to mention the crowds down at first class restaurants (who cares about the bill, champagne for everyone!). Question is, do I want to be right under the comet when it hit and go out in a flash, or would I prefer to be on a hill somewhere watching as that cloud of superheated rock vapor came over the horizon. Instant death versus spectacular last vision, hmmmmm?

The end will come when a maniac with nothing to lose detonates the weapon we cannot survive. I think it'll be biological, spread globally through an outward-fanning group of suicidal volunteers. They get innoculated with "Virus X," then go sneeze in the waiting-room of major airports (or, introduce gas in the ventilators, bypassing the security checkpoints altogether). Enough carriers, and it becomes a matter of time for those with any contact with the outside world.

Quote from: quiller on October 17, 2011, 01:56:34 PM
The end will come when a maniac with nothing to lose detonates the weapon we cannot survive. I think it'll be biological, spread globally through an outward-fanning group of suicidal volunteers. They get innoculated with "Virus X," then go sneeze in the waiting-room of major airports (or, introduce gas in the ventilators, bypassing the security checkpoints altogether). Enough carriers, and it becomes a matter of time for those with any contact with the outside world.

I have the same problem with that scenario that I always have with Zombie movies - how the hell does the zombie plague get spread to islands that sit out in the middle of oceans? So the world wide disease gets around - and people in Fiji start wondering why the tourist planes suddenly stopped showing up. It is possible for isolated pockets of humanity to survive.

True enough about isolated pockets, although regional travel would spread "Virus X" there as well, just not as rapidly. If you haven't seen it recently, get the Anthony Perkins version of On the Beach as one terrific film on that very spread of the end of the world (theirs being nuclear fallout).

One of the factors about disease that's become clear in the last couple of years is that lethality and infectiousness are, if not mutually exclusive, in opposition to each other.

The more lethal a pathogen the quicker it kills the means by which it reproduces. Not so good if you want to make more copies of your particular genome.

Does everyone remember Ebola? Turns out Ebola pops up fairly regularly in the Congo but it's so lethal that it kills the infected population before the disease can spread. So Virus "X" would have to have a pretty peculiar set of characteristics to be real; it's has to highly lethal to be scary, it's has to be highly infectious or who cares, it's got to be infectious while allowing the host to be pretty much symptom free for as long as possible until they drop dead.

A second term for Obama's more likely and since it's more likely, scarier.

Quote from: quiller on October 18, 2011, 10:01:23 AM
True enough about isolated pockets, although regional travel would spread "Virus X" there as well, just not as rapidly. If you haven't seen it recently, get the Anthony Perkins version of On the Beach as one terrific film on that very spread of the end of the world (theirs being nuclear fallout).

Wouldn't the infectious disease have to come out of a major population and/or travel center? If you gave a deadly disease to Inuit, the chances of it spreading before it annihilated the population would be minuscule. And if I fly a plane up, look out the window, and everyone is dead, I'm not getting out the plane. As for a major travel spot, given the choice I'd release the deadly virus in Mecca during the Hadj. Not only are their pilgrims from all over the world, many of them will be from regions not noted for their general cleanliness (wiping your ass with your hand could prove a problem during an epidemic) or medical services. Besides it would help if I'd also found a vaccine for the disease, which I could distribute in the non Muslim world.

A while back, Stephen King wrote a crackerjack of a story called "The Stand," which dealt with this issue. Sure, it was fiction, but take a look and you'll see how dependent the whole scenario is on personal mobility, a thing the United States has in SPADES. Giles correctly pointed out that an outbreak of a mass killer disease in a third-world country is likely to quickly die there. But one that takes hold in the US, especially one with a days- or weeks-long incubation period, could decimate the population.

Just a happy thought for your Tuesday evening...  :P :P :P