Epidemics past 1947

I don't think this is ASB, because we're dealing with a real disease that, and there was risk of it spreading further I think.

Anyway, here's my question, could Ebola, in the 1980s outbreak, have spread to the rest of the world, and have become a global epidemic? Or was it inherently impossible for this to occur?

To broaden the question, could any disease have reached epidemic levels that didn't for luck and/or timely intervention reasons in OTL? Again, global epidemic.
 

mowque

Banned
Easy but Ebola is a bad choice. It kills people way too aggressively. Stick to influenza of some type.
 
True, Ebola is too aggressive, however even if it did wipe itself out, it still could've caused A LOT of damage before going out. Also, if I'm reading correctly, that disease is 4 BILLION years old. Now, I'm probably wrong, because I don't see how the hell any life form could've lasted that long, but still...

Supposed reason for said age is that it before hand circulated around in rain forests until humanity stumbled upon it.
 

mowque

Banned
Also, if I'm reading correctly, that disease is 4 BILLION years old. Now, I'm probably wrong, because I don't see how the hell any life form could've lasted that long, but still...

Supposed reason for said age is that it before hand circulated around in rain forests until humanity stumbled upon it.

I have no idea what this has to do with pandemics?
 
Talking about the disease itself. And it does matter because of how it emerged, and therefore how others would/could've emerged.
 
What sort of plague are you looking for? The Biopreparat was fairly good about containment but you could have something get loose in 1992 or so for mass destruction, or the ones from the leftovers in Unit 731 that tore loose across China in the late 40s. For something natural you have several rounds of cholera in the last few decades, along with Marburg Virus, Hantavirus, and others. Do you want end-of-civilization or just something that scares everyone into international action?
 

mowque

Banned
Talking about the disease itself. And it does matter because of how it emerged, and therefore how others would/could've emerged.

Like I said, I'd stick to more crowd oriented illnesses. Flus and other respiratory things. Then you can can kill alot of people.
 
Okay, yeah, excellent point. Question is... which one could emerge into epidemic level? Within those. Flu probably wouldn't work out because of attention paid to it.
 
I don't think this is ASB, because we're dealing with a real disease that, and there was risk of it spreading further I think.

Anyway, here's my question, could Ebola, in the 1980s outbreak, have spread to the rest of the world, and have become a global epidemic? Or was it inherently impossible for this to occur?

To broaden the question, could any disease have reached epidemic levels that didn't for luck and/or timely intervention reasons in OTL? Again, global epidemic.

Ebola might be able to kill up to tens of millions in Africa, but all these rumors about a possible super virus that could kill, like half, of the world's people, have been greatly overblown.
 
Okay, this epidemic I want to scare nations like the USA into having things like universal healthcare, and the whole world to advance medical science more.
 
It's hard to imagine any conceivable disease more frightening then OTL AIDS, particularly if anti-retrovital therapy can't hold it off indefinitely.

Ebola is the opposite of what you want: it shows symptoms too quickly, kills too fast, and even then many people recover (AIDS OTOH had effectively 100% fatality until the mid 90s)
 
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Okay, Ebola, depending on the form, has an 80-90% fatality rate. AIDS is more lethal perhaps, but it doesn't kill you nearly as quickly either(10-15 days.) However, yes, doesn't have much chance of spreading.

Perhaps SARS gets out of control.
 
Actually, I just changed my mind. While AIDS is nearly as frightening as it gets, a global outbreak of fatal prion disease with a LONG incubation period (+10 years) would be TERRIFYING. You could conceivably have the entire populations of nations spontaneously coming down with fatal neural degeneration, with absolutely no hope of treatment: only the strict vegetarians would survive, which is a terrifying thought in itself :D

This is as close to a real-life zombie apocalypse style complete societal breakdown as I can conceive short of global nuclear war or an alien space bat invasion.
 
Fatal prion disease? Never heard of that, which scares me to say the least, and I'm also probably dead judging by the amount of meat I eat.
 
Fatal prion disease? Never heard of that, which scares me to say the least, and I'm also probably dead judging by the amount of meat I eat.

Mad cow and related diseases.

There is some evidence from New Guinea of some variants having a multi-decade incubation period before the rapid onset of symptoms, which given the right (i.e. wrong) agricultural practices could result in nearly universal infection before anyone realizes what has happened.

This is so frightening and so plausible in fact I'm going to do some research and turn it into a proper what-if... Hell, it'd make a best-selling novel given the popularity of 'zombie apocalypse' type survivalist fiction, and the fact that it's actually plausible (unlike the usual rabies-variant disease scenarios, which would be trivial to quarantine IMHO)
 
WAIT! That's incredibly possible with the current American agriculture system. You know how EASY it would be for a epidemic of something like Mad Cow disease would be from our current agricultural practices with cows?
 
WAIT! That's incredibly possible with the current American agriculture system. You know how EASY it would be for a epidemic of something like Mad Cow disease would be from our current agricultural practices with cows?

I'd say less-likely now that prion disease is minimally understood. AFAIK much more attention is now paid to isolate brain and spinal matter from meat, and to not feed livestock other livestock.

A civilization-ending pandemic is more likely if it comes on suddenly out-of-the-blue a la mad cow in Europe (or course prion disease was observed and studied long before in New Guinea but it didn't go anywhere or get any attention until young European brains started melting). More likely still the longer the incubation period (mad cow is already terrifyingly long IOTL).
 
Except right now they feed chickens remains from other chickens, and cows are kept in conditions that could easily spread disease. For that matter, it already has with E.Coli. Hmm, how big could an E coli outbreak get?
 
True, Ebola is too aggressive, however even if it did wipe itself out, it still could've caused A LOT of damage before going out. Also, if I'm reading correctly, that disease is 4 BILLION years old. Now, I'm probably wrong, because I don't see how the hell any life form could've lasted that long, but still...

Supposed reason for said age is that it before hand circulated around in rain forests until humanity stumbled upon it.
The natural reservoir for Ebola virus is some sort of mammal, probably bats although no one knows for sure. Since mammals didn't evolve until less than 200 million years ago, I don't see how it could be 4 billion years old. There weren't any rainforests, or any plants at all, 4 billion years ago.

There is some evidence from New Guinea of some variants having a multi-decade incubation period before the rapid onset of symptoms, which given the right (i.e. wrong) agricultural practices could result in nearly universal infection before anyone realizes what has happened.
Modern quarantine practices already prevent most animal products from crossing borders, and any that does is meant for human consumption, so prions that do get through would stop there since we don't use dead people as animal feed nor are the majority of people cannibals. The agricultural practices that spread prions are also not widespread outside of the western world. Since most people don't have easy access to meat like those of us in the First World do, the spread of prions would be pretty limited anyway.

Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis could be a possibility. Although it's not the most infectious, you would probably catch it from someone you meet on a daily basis, especially since it can be contagious while the victim has nothing more than a persistent cough.
 
About Biopreperat I remember reading that they did lose containment at least once during the cold war. Perhaps this gets worse than OTL and goes pandemic
 
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