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posted by martyb on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the shtf-scenario-4a dept.

The Washington Post is reporting that the Center for Disease Control's director is warning that the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak may not be containable. The ongoing conflicts in the region might ensure that the disease becomes entrenched instead of coming under control. If it becomes endemic to the province then it will become impossible to trace contacts, stop transmission chains, and contain the outbreak. Apparently 60% to 80% of the newly-confirmed cases have no known epidemiological link to prior cases, indicating loss of control and fewer options for prevention or treatment. High level political attention is becoming needed at this point for there to be a solution.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:34PM (13 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:34PM (#760375) Journal

    Alright then, Mr. Tommy Troll. Please explain how a nuke is going to wipe out a virus. You do realize that Chernobyl today provides homes to every kind of wildlife that has ever thrived in the region? Well - except maybe the dinosaurs, mastodons, and sabre toothed tigers. Or, the unicorns, dragons, and wyverns. For that matter, where do you hail from?

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:40PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @04:40PM (#760378)

    Well, that's not true. There is a solution to containing it.

    "No people, no problem" —Stalin. (close enough)

    Invalid form key: k9BS9J6JFU

    Somebody should nuke this crap website.

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:15PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @05:15PM (#760396)

      it's also funny how short the key is.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by edIII on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:02PM (1 child)

        by edIII (791) on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:02PM (#760475)

        1.353708655×10¹⁶ is short?

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @09:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @09:27PM (#760492)

          Actually, I think that's a float.

    • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 10 2018, @08:13PM (#760478)

      Invalid form key: k9BS9J6JFU

      Somebody should nuke this crap website.

      Somebody should nuke your crappy toy internet service provider.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by edIII on Sunday November 11 2018, @12:39AM (3 children)

    by edIII (791) on Sunday November 11 2018, @12:39AM (#760529)

    Not supporting the troll, but dropping the nuke could make it extremely difficult for the virus to propagate. It doesn't do well outside of the human body, especially in firestorm conditions.

    Quite a number of victims will be outright vaporized, which includes the virus. The overall effect is a bit more extreme than wiping down surfaces with alcohol. At the outer edges of the blast zone however, you will have an increasing number of survivors, in varying degrees of distress, and this will include a lot of dead bodies.

    The only real valid question is how does the nuke affect the ability of the virus to spread? It's a real shit question to have to answer, but in all seriousness, if it looks like it is escaping containment and you start having cases in major cities worldwide, it's a question we may want answered. Especially if the DNC proves that it can barely handle being a functional government, much less one capable of dealing with a major threat like Ebola.

    Personally, if we get to the point where it is easier and safer to wipe out infected populations by the city, then nukes are a bad idea anyway. Neutron bombs and conventional MOABS might be better. Still, nothing that doesn't kill the human beings and Ebola instantly, risks far worse spreading through dead bodies and carrion animals that will be eating them.

    They may not be trolling, and that's the only idea that they have for defeating a virus that has been pumped up by Hollywood as the virus to make all of our post apocalyptic fears come true.

    Seriously, if I saw CCTV cameras in Norway showing Aliens (the ones from the movie Aliens), wreaking havoc, those cute blonds be damned. Drop the nuke :)

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:12AM

      by driverless (4770) on Sunday November 11 2018, @11:12AM (#760618)

      It also depends on the form of the nuke. Use a sloika (layer cake) design with Lithium-6 deuteride and sodium so you're producing Na-24 which has a short half-life while producing a ton of gammas. So you light one of those off and a few days later you can walk in and the area will be sterilised, no trace of ebola left.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @01:11PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 11 2018, @01:11PM (#760630)

      a major threat like Ebola

      Ebola is a major hazard, but not necessarily a credible risk.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard#Risk [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @11:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @11:47AM (#763050)

      It wants you to imagine a mirror world where McCain won instead of Obama, and the DNC was in control of congress instead of the RNC.

      Or y'know, Clinton won, but otherwise the same as the past 2 years of Trump.

      Hint for you: It will be just as fucking retarded as the tantrums thrown because 'Black Obama' was in charge, and it will have little to no effect on the continuing mismanagement of the Not So United States of America.

      Really, every day that passes, I hope just a little more for it all to burn right down. God must agree with me after all the fires.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:59AM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @05:59AM (#760585) Journal

    Please explain how a nuke is going to wipe out a virus.

    I'm not going to defend nuking innocent people here, but the key phrase is "contain the outbreak" which is a far weaker thing than wiping out Ebola. Second, kill the carriers and anyone they could spread the disease to, then that would indeed contain the outbreak.

    To the AC who apparently thinks that nuking a bunch of innocent people is a viable solution to disease containment - what happens when the disease appears again? As Runaway noted, containing one outbreak is a far cry from eliminating the disease. So the next time Ebola appears, there will be instant mass panic. Not because Ebola is a fearsome disease, but because there are trigger-happy goons with nukes who have already shown they'll use them. So instead of an outbreak which can be contained with normal, humane methods, we would start with the worst scenario, uncontrolled, massive immigration of infected populations to the rest of Africa. How many nukes will it take then to "contain the outbreak"? Hint: a lot more than one.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 11 2018, @06:30AM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @06:30AM (#760592) Journal

      I may not have the ebola life cycle straight in my mind - but doesn't it propagate in other simians? So, basically, we would have to wipe out all the simians in Africa, along with all the humans - AND whatever else the virus is able to infect. In other words, a true scorched earth, to get the last virus. Except, as you note, so long as a couple of infected humans remain, the disease is portable. Half a dozen refugees escape to Australia, another dozen to Asia, half a dozen more to Europe. And, of course, the US will take in another dozen. To destroy the virus, you have to burn Africa to the ground, all at one go, before any refugees take flight. No more trees, birds, large or small mammals, snakes, or anything.

      In short, that legendary nuclear winter would follow soon after. The earth itself would be uninhabitable, most likely.

      And then, irony of ironies, if we had any people in space, they eventually come back to find - THE EBOLA SURVIVED SOMEHOW!!

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 11 2018, @01:48PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 11 2018, @01:48PM (#760635) Journal

        I may not have the ebola life cycle straight in my mind - but doesn't it propagate in other simians? So, basically, we would have to wipe out all the simians in Africa, along with all the humans - AND whatever else the virus is able to infect.

        If you were trying to eliminate the disease completely via nukes, sure. But Ebola is not endemic to humans, thus, there is a far lower threshold to containing an outbreak of Ebola (at least for the first time, until the target population figures out that nukes might be used in the future) than there is to eradicate it in the wild.

        Except, as you note, so long as a couple of infected humans remain, the disease is portable.

        They'd still need to survive long enough to spread it to others. I think it's possible to make that extremely unlikely with liberal application of nukes.

        To destroy the virus, you have to burn Africa to the ground, all at one go, before any refugees take flight. No more trees, birds, large or small mammals, snakes, or anything.

        Just the parts that Ebola has shown up at. Maybe a third to half a billion people. Of course, we could just develop an easy to produce vaccine that would render the whole thing a minor health issue, but what would be the fun in that?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday November 12 2018, @06:26PM

        by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Monday November 12 2018, @06:26PM (#760995) Journal

        Dunno if anyone else replied, but not only simians. Bats, also. [cdc.gov]

        And for anyone looking for why Ebola is so hard to fight, it isn't the virus. Frontline [pbs.org] took a look at the Sierra Leone outbreak in 2014. (Which they also think they traced back to a patient zero and a bat.) Basically, it took the virus migrating to the United States for affirmative and direct international action to be taken.

        --
        This sig for rent.