The Coming Plague
Written in 1994, this harbinger of doom was right on target.........even without looking at the impact of climate change.
Thus pandemics of increasing frequency and intensity are old news to the informed.
book, copywrite 2002
Plagues by Kris Hirschmann
Regarding plant diseases:
"...the biggest problem of all is the continuing spread of monoculture, which may well turn out to be agriculture's Achilles heel. Acres upon acres of genetically identical plants are, in the words of one scientist, 'like a tinder-dry prairie waiting for a spark to ignite it.' That spark could be an unknown fungus, or it could be an old one that has found chinks in humankind's defenses. The battle to identify and prevent the spark will be difficult...'Fungi, especially the troublesome sones, just do not give up.'
Foolscap science fiction convention
Panel entitled The Next Great Plague.
According to the panelists, it takes a rare combination of conditions to creat a "perfect storm" like The Black Death.
The conditions:Originally Posted by TimWalker
1. Mass hunger. People live on the brink of famine.
2. Mass superstition; a lack of rationality. People often blamed the Black Death on "poisoned wells", "witchcraft", and "the Jews" instead of poor sanitation and hungry rats that couldn't stave off fleas.
3. Weak, ineffective government.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
How much of the planet already fits that description, and once the 'perfect storm' pandemic gets started in that part of the world (which it will, more likely sooner than later!), how easily could it spread to places like Europe and North America?
