Collapse of Civilisation II

wkwillis

1. If the virus dies after a week in your body, then it is possible to hide out and avoid death.
2. If the virus is persistant in your body, then even if you hide out for a month and 99% of humanity is dead, you will still be exposed as soon as you meet someone that has had, and therefore still has, the virus.
 

Admiral Matt

Well, option two means we do end up with an actual cross-section of the population, for better or worse. But with option one, there will be a really heavy slant towards paranoids, shut-ins, and survivalists. Naturally, I prefer option one, because since reading The Stand I have become a bit paranoid myself. A 25% chance of survival is a lot better than a 1% chance!

I'm curious: What do you think of the chances of island nations? How feasible would it actually be to seal off a place like Cuba or Samoa? I'm inclined to think that tourism, smuggling, and boat-traffic would make it all but impossible for islands of any real size.
 

Doctor What

Admiral Matt said:
Well, option two means we do end up with an actual cross-section of the population, for better or worse. But with option one, there will be a really heavy slant towards paranoids, shut-ins, and survivalists. Naturally, I prefer option one, because since reading The Stand I have become a bit paranoid myself. A 25% chance of survival is a lot better than a 1% chance!.
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Hey--us loonies have to stick together! Mind you--can you imagine a society made up of just paranoids, shut-ins and generally 'odd' people?

Oh wait--there was a short novel written in the early 70's --Edmund Cooper's All Fool's Day--that had an end of the world scenario there and the story picks up years later after the disaster. In that book--weird sunspots give off a type of radiation that makes 'normal' people suicidal but 'abnormal' people are resistant--eventually only insane people are left alive on earth. Very odd but interesting book--I recommend picking it up if you ever see it.

Admiral Matt said:
I'm curious: What do you think of the chances of island nations? How feasible would it actually be to seal off a place like Cuba or Samoa? I'm inclined to think that tourism, smuggling, and boat-traffic would make it all but impossible for islands of any real size.
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Any islands of real size, I agree. What about tiny specks of land that nobody goes to? There must be dozens, if not hundreds, of little islands like that in the south pacific and other places where it's just too much trouble to go to on a regular basis. Indonesia has dozens of (sparsely populated) islands like that, the Galapolos islands and Easter island are in the middle of nowhere and I'm sure a few minutes with an almanac and Google will turn up a lot of others.
They're already used to being on their own, so they'll have a good chance of surviving (if not thriving).
 
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