Thursday, June 04, 2009

Influenza; the virus to end the human race?

In movies, we love to see the human race fighting for their existence.

In Independence Day, we fought against aliens who are highly advanced and have better credibility of weapons of mass destruction compared to what Iraq has.

In Resident Evil, we let lose a virus that created hordes of zombies that is out to kill off the human race.

In Terminator, robots rise up in the future that are bent on exterminating humans as they deemed us as a threat to our own kind.

In Day After Tomorrow, Mother Nature reacts to what we have done and let loose all kinds of natural disasters. It showed us that a second coming of Ice Age is possible.

Back to real life... We deemed that weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or nuclear missles, as the fall of mankind. While the rest of the world go against volatile countries that create or test such weapons, we believed that it will end the human race or bring it to the brink of extinction.

Or our beliefs that our existence is changing the climate. Changing the natural order of things. Changing such that it no longers provides what we need. We believe that the melting of the polar caps will inevitably sink islands and change our temperature.

But looking at things now, i realise that those worries are not as immediate as the basic influenza. Look at how it has changed its structure. How it has the ability to infect livestock and pass it on to humans. This is what we do not see in the movies, fighting against such a simple virus. A virus that can kill and infect more people.

So i forsee that we should not be afraid of machines. We should not be afraid of zombies. Neither should we be afraid of nuclear missles flying across the skies. Extinction is now knocking at our doorstep.