There are many forms of destruction that may account for the EOTW, and over the course of the year, I'll take potshots at them all. At least the ones I can think of! (Use the comments to offer your own suggestions on how we meet our collective demise!)
Let's start with infectious disease. Now, I'm probably more familiar with this fictional list than the mechanics of real epidemics. I've read some solid books featuring epidemics: The Stand, White Plague, The Andromeda Strain; and I've watched some scary movies: Outbreak, and today, Contagion. Contagion did a pretty decent job depicting the challenges that would face our government, our medical establishment, and society itself in the face of a fast-moving epidemic. We get a glimpse of how a random virus might transmit animal-to-human, and in this global community how easy it is to lose containment of an epidemic. We learn about the term, 'R-nought', which describes the number of additional persons one infected individual will likely infect in turn. The higher this number, the more virulent the strain and the more difficult to contain the epidemic.
Human history is marked with significant outbreaks of lethal diseases, such as the Black Death of the Middle Ages, or the H1N1 influenza epidemic of 1918-1920 that killed conservatively 3% of the world's population. Yet, in the final analysis, and based upon my extremely limited knowledge of this subject, it seems to me that epidemics are all about percentages. Yes, we could have a major outbreak, perhaps even this year, and such an outbreak would devastate many families and probably drastically change many entire communities forever; however, the percentages game favors our survival from one of these events in the long run.
In short, I'm not buying a pandemic as the final cause of EOTW. Don't sleep any better, though, there are plenty of other catastrophes to discover!
I sign off with this fabulous quote from Contagion: "Blogging is not writing; it's graffiti with punctuation."
Drops from My 2012 Bucket: Feb. 4, 321 days remaining
Mirror, Mirror (Parallel universe with pirate version of Enterprise!)
The Apple (Yup, they're going to find out what kids are soon enough.)
The Doomsday Machine (Planet destroyer ... hey, this could be EOTW!)
Video Mission Update: 36 / 728 hours = 4.9%
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