I knew an old lady who lived through the Great Depression. She described rail-thin guys with sunken cheeks coming up to her family’s back door, begging for a single slice of bread. Her family turned them away because where she lived, if you fed one, you’d have sea of them by the end of the week and in large numbers soon they’d take whatever they could.
Today, it is believed that if the electrical power driving our food-delivery infrastructure was knocked out by something like an EMP, as much as 90% of the population would be dead within one year from either starvation, or the fighting which starvation would produce. I have no idea how different a failure of the infrastructure due to total economic/currency collapse would be, but I can’t imagine it being much different. Of course, historically, the horsemen have not ridden alone. These periods tend to coincide with disease outbreaks.
One thought which has occurred to me is that humans and rodents are not isolated organisms, evolving separately. Since they have often lived together in close proximity, they could be viewed as two interrelated parts of a system, evolving in relation to each other. Rats could, in theory, have actually evolved to carry human pathogens, so if food they parasitize became scarce, they could infect a number of the weaker, nutritionally deficient humans, kill them with disease, and get a fresh influx of dead meat to survive on. Any rat population which did this could easily outlast any which did not during a famine, and that is basically how Darwin works.
Pathogens, even viruses, jumping species (zoonosis) is not impossible, or even uncommon. Indeed, even RNA plant viruses (very similar in structure to Ebola) can actually multiply in the human GI tract (some even speculate they might be co-opting GI bacterial cells for reproduction). This will yield increased numbers of infective virus particles in the host’s stool, though it will produce only mild illness in their temporary hosts.
Notice, in the paper referenced in this article, how it is the older, and probably more immunocompromised rats which carry the greatest number of viruses, including a virus for a hemorrhagic fever. Right now, each city in the country is producing an excess of food, and presumably some of that excess is drifting down to the rat population, keeping them well nourished and able to suppress such pathogens in their populations. However, as the economy turns, that will change.
First, food banks would begin to more aggressively scrounge food from places where it is currently being thrown out. Then an increasingly large population of homeless/unemployed would spread out, taking even more of the waste food, from places where it isn’t even judged suitable for the food banks.
That will bring an immunocompromised, nutritionally-deficient homeless population into close contact with an immunocompromised, nutritionally-deficient rat population, that is itself spreading out in search of food, and which will become increasingly laden with a large number of pathogens capable of infecting healthy humans. As this transpires, these diseases will be adapting, using their weakened hosts as living petri dishes. Played out in tens of thousands of cities globally, with literally hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, it is not difficult to see where that could lead, or why pestilence rides with all of the other horsemen. All it will take is one pathogen to arise successfully, evolve the ability to transmit easily, and it will spread.
Already, a New Yorker has come down with Ebola, and I can’t help but wonder if any of the virus he shed in his stool prior to being detected could have mingled with the rat population in the sewers, and produced a few rats that are carrying Ebola as we speak, as well as all the other viruses they seem to carry normally. Rats shedding Ebola would give videos like this one, of rats scurrying around donuts at Dunkin Donuts, a slightly different flavor.
Add in population-mixing bringing a flood of new diseases, due to idiot politicians advancing immigration from disease-ridden third world populations, (especially given the enterovirus found in the rats above) and things get real interesting.
The inevitable response to the illness and death this will produce, will be fiercely strong amygdala pathways associating the leftist rabbits with hatred and rage, especially among those who lose children. Those pathways, once set, will not easily be over ridden. When the pendulum swings, it will swing wildly.
I’m not a biologist, and I don’t play one on TV, so I don’t know the methodology of how a pathogen present in one species can leap to another species, though I know it does happen. What would it take to prevent a pathogen from, say, rats, from transferring over to humans?
Or, a better question is how do we control rats so they don’t become a problem? We’ve been living with rats in cities since Mesopotamia (probably even back in the caves). But this is the 21st Century; surely we can come up with a way to eliminate this threat, right? If it could be done, what would it take? And, with the way that biology seems to work, developing defenses against various pathogens, is it necessarily a good idea to completely eliminate this threat?
Basically, the pathogen has to match up genetically, or be close enough to work. That means for a virus, it has to have docking proteins that fit structures on the outside of the host cell it will infect, like a puzzle-piece. It has to have the right sequences to turn stuff on and mesh with the cell machinery. It has to have means of stalling the immune response. It has t have ways to stop the cell itself from shutting down it’s take-over inside the cell.
A lot of these things that need to match can be conserved between species, to the point the matches are close enough for some replication to start. At that point, the immune system should stop things, before the virus destroys the host. But it is a race. The better the matches, and the weaker the immune system, the longer the replication goes on, and the longer the replication goes on, the more likely it is those matches will get closer, since the virus is adapting as it moves, with the best matching mutations moving faster.
Your last question is the real issue. These things come through, because like it or not, we devolve as we reproduce. Nature is designed to remove the devolved specimens to keep the species in top form, so when we keep everyone alive artificially, a lot of weaker specimens survive, spread their genes, and eventually, something will take them out.
We’ve gone a long time without a major pandemic. My guess is we won’t be able to hold it off forever, and if history is any guide, one is loading up for some time in the next two decades. Rather than try to stop it, buy lots of canned goods, and have well water you can get in a power outage, so you can isolate yourself.
…………………Rats could, in theory, have actually evolved to carry human pathogens, so if food they parasitize became scarce, they could infect a number of the weaker, nutritionally deficient humans, kill them with disease, and get a fresh influx of dead meat to survive on. Any rat population which did this could easily outlast any which did not during a famine, and that is basically how Darwin works………………
I think this is a common mis-construct of Darwinism.
what you write happens but not in the way you state it.
the adaptation works in a negative manner. the creature with better adaptations gets to procreate more and those without procreate less and maybe eliminated over time.
adaptations favor one over the other but they are not conscious. it is a bit of a joke on us as we are in a period where the Darwin selection favors those who don’t need or rely on modern technology. The more educated have fewer offspring and the less more offspring in effect dumbing down the population. those who live in the bush in Africa/India will have a leg up on anyone in a modern city.
love your blog. keep up the effort.
cheers
Thank you General, Will do.