This past weekend I saw the movie "Out Break" for the first time. I know it's an old movie, but I don't watch a lot of movies. I just rented a few this weekend. I needed a break!
Well anyway, I thought it was a great movie and I wondered "what if"? I didn't agree with the whole movie though. I think it would be far worse if something like that were to really happen. The crazy thing about this kind of thing is for years we've been warned that some kind of pandemic is coming. There's a lot of terrorist threats of spreading viruses and diseases all over the world, and it's kind of scary. It could be the flu, or it could be something else, but whatever happens lots of people will die. As bad as this will be, on an ever more crowded planet, you can't help wondering whether the survivors might be better off in some ways. Of course we don't think this could happen to us though. Right?
I think people believe that society may have already achieved a scale, complexity and level of innovation that make it immune from collapse.
After watching "Out Break" I think a virus like that one would only be the start of our problems. So far I haven't heard of any scientific study that has looked at whether a pandemic with a high morality could cause social collapse, I mean at least none that has been made public. Does anyone know about the plague that hit Europe in the 14th Century? It had a huge impact, but it didn't collapse. It came close but it didn't. Things are different now, so I think it would have a more devastating effect.
Wouldn't it be easier to rebuild modern society into something more sustainable, if there were fewer of us? Would life ever return to something resembling normal after a devastating pandemic? Would you be ready for an Out Break if it ever were to happen? What about the outcome? Would it be something we could come out of and return to normal?
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