25th June 2005, 11:57 AM
There is too such thing as no such thing. Yeesh... A little skepticism goes a long way...
If they rose from their graves, well that's what I'm talking about. First of all it won't be world wide all at once. The first time it happens, a government steps in, burninates them, problem solved. And also, how exactly is this thing getting spread underground?
And yeah, we have a LOT of death but only so much of it is animatable. If we're talking skeletons rising up, or even dust, what's the difference between that and animating plain old rocks?
One thing to keep in mind with mosquitos. If the disease suddenly mutated, it could not mutate all at once. It would start out with one single instance of the mutation. This would have to be spread to other mosquitos by blood, human blood, because mosquitos feed specifically on humans and nothing else (fleas also have specific species to feed on specific other animals, like rat fleas, cat fleas, dog fleas, and human fleas, which will only feed on something other than their specific preference when forced, like if you give a cat a flea bath). You see, evolution doesn't happen simultaneously everywhere, it's sort of... slow. What I'm saying is, that zombie disease couldn't just swarm in in all mosquitos instantly, it would happen slowly. And, if it's causing people to turn into the living dead, people notice that. If it starts in Africa, well there is the issue of these people going to scientific authorities or just trying to get rid of it with a witchdoctor. That could result in a lot of zombies before someone who can see what's going on does something about it.
But anyway, the real problem would be a creature that normally has nothing to do with humans and the disease spreading amongst it's kind (the only way it could spread among it's kind without us noticing until it's too late)... well, actually in that case, encounters that cause zombie outbreaks would still be rare. Though total elimination would be near impossible in that scenario, we as humans would still notice any outbreaks really quickly, they would be very rare, and we'd clean them up pretty quickly. Not an ideal situation, but not an end of the world one either.
Here's an end of the world one. A zombie infection (and in all these cases I've assumed finding the cure is something that would take a long long time, too long) that can be transmitted by the air. Something along those lines isn't normally in sci-fi, I don't think anyway, but THAT would totally screw us. The disease would then be able to spread like the plague and infect living people without us noticing. This version would be able to kill you and then bring you back.
So anyway, there are situations that could result in total human extinction, but not the standard movie kind. I know that zombies have the amazing ability to bring the enemy into their numbers, and that's great and all, but I've played Warcraft 3 as undead many times. I'm fully aware that something like that does NOT promise victory.
Oh yes, perhaps we could talk about getting smashed by a large body from space. That's fairly likely (relative to the entire life history of the planet), though it would be at least 25 years away simply because if anything was going to hit us sooner, we'd know about it already and be getting our affairs in order.
If they rose from their graves, well that's what I'm talking about. First of all it won't be world wide all at once. The first time it happens, a government steps in, burninates them, problem solved. And also, how exactly is this thing getting spread underground?
And yeah, we have a LOT of death but only so much of it is animatable. If we're talking skeletons rising up, or even dust, what's the difference between that and animating plain old rocks?
One thing to keep in mind with mosquitos. If the disease suddenly mutated, it could not mutate all at once. It would start out with one single instance of the mutation. This would have to be spread to other mosquitos by blood, human blood, because mosquitos feed specifically on humans and nothing else (fleas also have specific species to feed on specific other animals, like rat fleas, cat fleas, dog fleas, and human fleas, which will only feed on something other than their specific preference when forced, like if you give a cat a flea bath). You see, evolution doesn't happen simultaneously everywhere, it's sort of... slow. What I'm saying is, that zombie disease couldn't just swarm in in all mosquitos instantly, it would happen slowly. And, if it's causing people to turn into the living dead, people notice that. If it starts in Africa, well there is the issue of these people going to scientific authorities or just trying to get rid of it with a witchdoctor. That could result in a lot of zombies before someone who can see what's going on does something about it.
But anyway, the real problem would be a creature that normally has nothing to do with humans and the disease spreading amongst it's kind (the only way it could spread among it's kind without us noticing until it's too late)... well, actually in that case, encounters that cause zombie outbreaks would still be rare. Though total elimination would be near impossible in that scenario, we as humans would still notice any outbreaks really quickly, they would be very rare, and we'd clean them up pretty quickly. Not an ideal situation, but not an end of the world one either.
Here's an end of the world one. A zombie infection (and in all these cases I've assumed finding the cure is something that would take a long long time, too long) that can be transmitted by the air. Something along those lines isn't normally in sci-fi, I don't think anyway, but THAT would totally screw us. The disease would then be able to spread like the plague and infect living people without us noticing. This version would be able to kill you and then bring you back.
So anyway, there are situations that could result in total human extinction, but not the standard movie kind. I know that zombies have the amazing ability to bring the enemy into their numbers, and that's great and all, but I've played Warcraft 3 as undead many times. I'm fully aware that something like that does NOT promise victory.
Oh yes, perhaps we could talk about getting smashed by a large body from space. That's fairly likely (relative to the entire life history of the planet), though it would be at least 25 years away simply because if anything was going to hit us sooner, we'd know about it already and be getting our affairs in order.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)