Laboratory Bird Flu Strain Could Kill Millions
December 20, 2011, Submitted by: Ken TweetEuropean scientists have developed a stunningly deadly strain of the bird flu virus, H5N1, a virus so dangerous that it has killed 60 percent of those it has infected… but the thing is, they want to publish the details of how they did it.
The research was undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility, and scientists are in little doubt that the newly created strain of H5N1 – resulting from just five mutations in two key genes – has the potential to cause a devastating human pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.
From The Independent,
“The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive,” a senior scientific adviser to the US Government told The Independent, speaking on condition of anonymity.“The worst-case scenario here is worse than anything you can imagine.”
Critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory – as well as opening a Pandora’s box for fanatical terrorists wishing to make a bio-weapon.
A senior source close to the Biosecurity board, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Independent that the National Institutes of Health, which funded the work, is about to make a decision on how much of the scientific paper on the H5N1 super strain should be published, and how much held back.
It may be though, that Pandora’s box has already been cracked open, and who’s to say that the university research has not already been copied and in the hands of many others there or elsewhere.
A virus this deadly cannot even be comprehended by most people, especially while trying to imagine the speed of which it could spread around the world, and the utter devastation it could wreak upon our way of life and world economies.
The best chance to survive such a killer virus would be to hunker down in your home and avoid contact with others. The only way this could be achieved would be with an adequate quantity of food and supplies. This sounds like yet another reason to shore up your preparedness supplies!
Using supercomputers to respond to a potential American health emergency, scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have developed a simulation model that makes stark predictions about the possible future course of an avian influenza pandemic.
Based on today’s environment of world-wide connectivity, beginning with 10 infected people arriving in Los Angeles, the simulation predicts that the pandemic will spread quickly throughout the continental United States, peaking about 90 days after the initial introduction.
Simulation of a pandemic flu outbreak (4mb Quicktime)
To be fair to the flip-side of this fearful report, the research was undertaken in an attempt to create a strain which could be applied to a vaccine. Unfortunately it opens the door for deadly abuse. Be prepared.
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As often the case with “bleeding hearts,” their intentions are good but they fail to realize that there is in fact evil in this world. This failure prevents common sense questions e.g. “what if bad guys got this information?” or better yet, “maybe we should be performing this research in a more securable area?” While the scientist is obviously brilliant, he lacks any “street smarts” and is completely naive. A virus like the one they created can be used for incredible destruction. Evil will take what they meant for good and possibly use it for devastating results….facilitated by a lack of common sense.
When I was in the military acting in the NBC (nuke, bio, chem – now less alarmingly referred to FSTR – full spectrum threat response) weapons response arena, we used to call Chem / Bio weapon agents “the poor man’s nuke.” I can only imagine if a fanatical islamic terrorist (yes, I said it — Islam and Terrorism in the same sentence, where’s the PC police) group got their hands on this. Nearly makes me sick just thinking about it.
Ken offers some advice on how to prevent contracting such a virus but in today’s interconnected global travel world, prepping for this scenario is incredibly challenging. Especially if our gov’t is slow on getting the word out if it makes it to the U.S.
Merry Christmas
Ditto. It is also quite alarming as to how fast something ‘could’ spread, given today’s global travel as you mentioned. There would be very little warning and time to react once the word got out.
If you have the means/space….would also recommend improvising a quarantine room where possibly contaminated friends/family could wait a few days to ensure they are not sick before entering your hunker down location. Ideally this room would be on separate air system than rest of your home/retreat/location. Also would recommend the doctors / nurses masks, surgical type gloves etc…also read MSBs other posts on how to keep a strong immune system naturally.
Merry Christmas
@ US Citizen; You are right, a quarantine area should be set aside for everybody, even if it is your children. If they’re infected, you can’t save them. Let me give you a “for instance” so that people can grasp this situation. It’s almost like a “trillion dollars”. It doesn’t mean anything to anyone. I live near a town of about 105K people. We are hospital “rich” in that we have 3, 500 bed hospitals here. They run at 98%+ capacity, which means they can absorb (total) 15-20 patients a day! This equals 180 hospital beds in a 90 day period, max. We have about 200K in the county so with a 60% mortality rate and the hospitalization requirements we would need over 90 days, would be hospital beds for 120K people which would mean that people that could be saved would die because there would be people in the streets waiting for hospital beds. This is 2 orders of magnitude If a person could otherwise be saved, they would die from lack of care from the overloaded system since you can’t tell up front who would die and who would survive, if given care. I have the quarantine contingency built into my plans but it is tents. Hope it isn’t in winter. Survive well. Enjoy.
It would be a very grim scene… so many dead and dieing, and no where to put them. The system would be massively, and I mean massively overloaded. Systems today are designed with hardly any extra capacity or overhead whatsoever. If something comes along like this, it all ‘breaks’. Be prepared…
@ US Citizen (Ex-US Military Officer). I so much concur with your statements. Biological weapon scare me a lot more so than the most powerful nuke, in fact more so than cobalt bombs. A biological weapon just keeps going on and on as long as there is fuel, human bodies. A nuke uses up its fuel in a few seconds and the reaction is over. Even the radiation from a salted nuke does have 1/2 lifes and is usually contained over an area.
With a bio weapon as long as there is a human being the virus or bacteria has its source to continue, its reserviour. That is any human being anywhere. These terrorists scum absolutely salivate when they see a highly contagious pathogen that has a fatality rate of 30% or more (about the fatality rate of smallpox). One other virus that scares the hell out of me is if they ever find a way of weaponizing it is Lassa Fever, because it only takes a small faction of some of the most contagious viruses, only a few individual germs to make someone sick from it and is deadly.
Something else that bugs me so much is the porous Mexican border in which drugs flow into the States and seldom are intercepted, as drugs are very similar in consistency to many bio weapons like Anthrax. I wish someone would say that they want to close the Mexican border, not to illegal immigrants, but to the grave potential of a tens of million dead type bio weapon getting into the U.S. Tell those that are upset about discrimination against the “poor” migrant worker, that they are trying to protect EVERYONE in this country including the illegals from some extremely awful terrorist weapon from getting into the country.
The Mexican border is so porous some terrorist could probably smuggle over a thermalnuclear weapon and get away with it. I bet you as an ex-Military officer wish they would use the US army to throughly patrol the border region and prevent a horrifying terrorist weapon, like some new biological highly infectious and deadly, from getting into the U.S. It is so frustrating to see how vulnerable this country has become from terrorism.
Agree, Really does make you wish we had secure borders. I’m no expert on the borders but I think the northern border is fairly porous as well. We just happen to constantly hear about the southern one due to all the trafficking. If someone is a border security expert, please chime in.
What is so scary about the avian flu is the 60% mortality rate and the scientists just made it transmittable by air….nasty.
Merry Christmas
@ US Citizen (Ex-US Military Officer). Why I said the southern border is so dangerous is because Mexico is closer to all sorts of known terrorists hot spots that have gangs such as MJ-13 that are affiliated with Venezuela and Chavis that would love to hit the U.S. in just about anyway. The terrorist group Hezbollah is known to have all sorts of tentacles throughout Central American and Mexico. Some of the other worse gangs come from such countries as Guatemala and Honduras that are a short distance from the southern tip of Mexico. The country of Mexico is sort of a type of lawlessness run country that all sorts of terrorist organizations could easily get into and in all likelihood have sorts of links with the really awful terrorist groups that would have some of these bio-weapons ready to use against the U.S.
I would hope at least that the country of Canada, a member of NATO, the Commonwealth would have some regulations and protection against foreign terrorists getting some horrific weapons into it. Canada like all countries have a drug problem, but you would hope that there would be some decent intelligence that would prevent some nightmare weapon from getting into its borders. Canada is a first rate country and Mexico is still a third world country with practically no law enforcement and that what worries me the most. Just the vastness of the Canadian border with the U.S. makes it very porous, but lets really hope that the Canadians are doing their part to prevent some terrible bio weapon from coming across the 49th parallel.
I think that about a quaratine room is a very good idea, even when someone gets the common flu as it is not fun to get sick anytime of the year. Much of sickness comes from people forgetting to throughly clean their hands as much more concentrated amounts of a sickness is going to be on one’s hands. Most people get sick this way and not from the very dispersed air particles as what I read long ago in the Reader’s Digest. That does not count of course for really nasty airborne pathogens such as a ramped up Bird Flu, smallpox, Lassa Fever, or some other very contagious germ that is concentrated in the upper respiratory system of the person sick.
2 questions: why would someone create such a deadly virus, “on purpose” and 2, why would you advertise it to a world already gone mad? The only answers I came up with are disturbing and evil.
@ chiller. One word to your questions, EGO. Many so called mad scientists create doomsday devices because they have been laughed at and ridiculed by many, and it is to say to those, “see what I have done”. It could also be individuals trying to break the barrier of science to actually come up with a new way of treating deadly diseases, maybe that is. I like what you came up with though, evil and disturbing.
What media outlet in it’s right mind would publicize such a heinous and hideous article?
Unfortunately, here is the viewpoint that most scientists would take on this subject.
http://teddysratlab.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-research-ethics.html
Merry Christmas
@All; While I would not diminish the seriousness of this, most genetic experiments use a “fail-safe” of some sort so that it cannot be released. They will use it to “attack” a particular tissue sample within a certain window of time to determine the “mortality rate” but it has a “kill switch” in it that deactivates it after so many iterations of reproduction, so it can be controlled. They don’t usually disclose what the kill switch is. So even if you stole an original sample from the lav it wouldn’t make anyone ill. I don’t know that they did this, as I have no inside information, however, this is a standard protocol for doing this type of scientific research. It does scare me that someone would do this. It must have some political significance that I don’t see. Survive well. Enjoy.
I have been working on how to purify massive amounts of potable water. The final thing is to figure a reliable way of sterilizing my 5-gallon bottles without using large amounts of the water I will have pasteurized & filtered. Putting the bottles in the sun for a day’s time seems promising but not totally reliable. Steripen seems good but not for large objects like the bottles. Anyone know which wand might be best over large areas?
Thanks!