The lung disease from the Black Death, had a estimated death rate of 100% as well. Granted, it didn't spread so quickly because it killed it's victims within 48 hours.
Deadliness is only one metric for picking a plague virus. Getting it to kill fast gets you the burnout problem. At the extreme it can "burn" though its hosts faster than it can effectively spread. In practice it doesn't have to be that fast since deliberate quarantine measure can be enacted.
For a plague spread from person to person to be effective it has to remain unobvious and infectious for a good portion of its life cycle. While rabies is very deadly it has the problem of the worst method of spreading (bites from mammals) and produces victims with very obvious problems.
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Agreed with the above, from what I was told concerning the Bubonic Plague it's high spread was a result of the time it toke for people to feel the infection in which time they still carried the disease. IIRC 80% of the infected died, but they only did so after several days in which they had plenty of time to spread the disease to other people. It killed 1/3 to 1/2 of a much less dens populated Europe and that wasn't even iirc airborn. I know the sociaty today are different etc. but if we are hit by something akin to the above (lets imagine a bactaria, immune to our antibiotic as a result of prolonged exposiure to the various forms of biotics from modern Agricultural swine production) I think it'll get really, really nasty.
That's easy to answer and address: The already proven bio-diesel that can be grown from a microbe will "magically" become easier to implement at treatment plants, eliminating our dependency on petro-derived diesel.
Wrong. If by decades away, you mean that in the past tense (as in, they could have been implemented decades ago), you'd be correct.
As fact, it would take less than 2 years to build out a super-system of hydrogen fueling stations and have one at the very least, every two miles of every highway in America. That includes places like "no one in town" Montana and Alaska, too. I posted about this, in another thread, already. The total cost, I believe, was only $2 billion. That did not take into the account the "breakthrough" solar-powered hydrogen making shoe-box machine that costs less than $500, in every single damn home in America. There's also the easy to implement microbe diesel solution. It would cost a little less than $2 million for each treatment plant, to get the little microbes running.
The "fresh water epidemic" is both a hoax and a lie.
Consider that the previous 40 years contained, on average, 5 billion people. Consider that the average for the previous 40 contained, on average, 2.5 billion. Consider that the previous 40 contained 1.75 billion. Consider that the previous 40 contained 1.35 billion.
Then consider that the next 40 will contain, on average, 8 billion.
Add up the totals for the previous periods I listed (I broke it up, because, there was a geometric growth for a while, so I had to be fair and make the "averages" more "average" without giving a "biased" lean towards the very "latest" previous 40 years.)
10.6 billion.
Compare that to 8 billion.
Already, we see a problem with that. Already, we know that the number is wrong just by going from 2010 to 1840.
Much less the "20 billion" estimated to have been born, lived, and died, before our current 7 billion.
In other words, Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund, is wrong. I have no idea where he got his numbers from. He probably "inflated" his number by the modern "consumerism" fatasses of America. However, we are talking about the largest population growths occurring in the poorest of poor people, which would equate to even less food than the people of the previous 100+ years.
I'm actually quite sure you could have come to the same conclusion without my help. It's just that we are so used to taking "scientists" for their word when they make sweeping statements like those.
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I agree. Odd that despite me disagreeing with every one of your points, I still agree with the main one.
I agree. Our population growth cannot and will not be sustained.
You raise valid points with most of your arguments but given the money and power of the oil cartels I think implementing alternative fuels would be harder than you think.
The water situation is not a hoax, it's not just drinking water
The worlds aquifiers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquifier are in decline and they supply most of the water for farming
Food? Well this one IS solvable, if people quit eating meat. More grain can be produced per acre than meat. Problem is people around the world seem to want to eat more meat, not less.
__________________ There are more humans in the world than rats.
Related factoid: The US (alone) gets enough freshwater everyday in rainfall to provide more than 4500 gallons of water per person in the world even if we reached a population of ten billion. Even if 99.9% is lost to farming, the purification process, or lack of collection area there's plenty to go around if an effort is made.
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
I'm always skeptical of any "crises" the pop-up or are whined about. Usually, there's more "truth" than is being told. Not a conspiracy, but it "grabs" attention if it's called a "Crisis."
That's pretty cool.
I also think that we could easily turn seawater into drinking water, in no time, with little money. In fact, we do that already. The fact that the "water crisis" fails to acknowledge that almost makes the "water crisis" criers, laughable. Some could say, "But, no major efforts are being made." Do you honestly think that we would allow hundreds of millions of industrialized citizens die of dehydration before we "put up" just a few hundred more desalination plants in each country? We already have well over 12,000 in place, already. Additionally, the Middle East already makes and used something like 70% of all the desalinated water. Surely their old technology could easily be implemented to other nations in a very short period of time.
It's a hoax because more "clean" water is reaching everyone than ever before. The amount of clean water we have reaching people is greater now, per capita, than it was just as little as 20...no, even 10 years ago.
For a "crisis", we are certainly purifying/desalinating/distilling more water than ever before. In fact, as the link provided, we will continue on our upwards trend until "good" water is penetrating every country/clime/people. (99%+)
That probably has a little something to do with our species evolving off of a diet comprised with 60-80% of meat calories. It's kind of "in our genes" to eat meat.
If the "grow or print meat" points I brought up, are explored, in the future, the meat issue will not be an issue, either. lol
Can you imagine? Going up to a vending maching, ordering food, and then it prints your food for you? hahaha That thought of it makes it seem like a Star Trek replicator.
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Last edited by dadudemon on Feb 22nd, 2011 at 03:17 AM
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