I think the most likely way for life as we know it to end is biological warfare. Biological warfare is basically when someone uses an extremely deadly and extremely contagious pathogen, to get rid of an enemy. History has shown that deadly diseases can wipe out entire populations. For these reasons, most nations signed an act called the Biological Weapons Convention, around 1975, which banned the development, production, and stockpiling of biological weaponry. They also agreed to provide information annually about research laboratories, vaccine production, and biological defense research. There are many different methods of biological warfare though, not just the normally assumed attacking humans with infectious diseases part. It is also possible, that someone would attack the food supply, which could successfully disable a region. There are a few diseases that make prime candidates for spreading disease among humans, one such pathogen being Bacillus anthracis, or Anthrax. Anthrax is spread in the form of spores, making it into a prime candidate for an aerosol spray, and the most dangerous form of anthrax is inhalation anthrax, or directly inhaling the spores. Lastly, attackers may target the food supply with diseases such as Rinderpest, a virus that mainly affects cows. It is a respiratory infection that could successfully wipe out a cow population fairly quickly.
http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Bio/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1769905/
https://web.archive.org/web/20100330012033/http://www2.dpi.qld.gov.au:80/health/3957.html
No comments:
Post a Comment