Read The Nightmare Scenario Online
Authors: Gunnar Duvstig
The Nightmare Scenario (45 page)
The infection never reached Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Cuba, or the North Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Fifteen cities in Europe and Russia were also saved.
Still the death toll was unprecedented. Eight hundred million people lost their lives. No event throughout the history of man had caused as many casualties.
Worse, an estimated 500 million children were now without parents.
Naturally, the hardest hit were the countries in the developing world. They were the last to receive the quick-test. They were the last to be given the vaccines. And theirs was the societal infrastructure least able to cope with the situation. Apart from some remote areas in sub-Saharan Africa and the mountain regions of Chile, no place was spared.
Hank continued on as the Director-General of the WHO for two years. During that period, the system of global response to infections was completely overhauled. All national disease control authorities were put under the WHO’s command. They were funded by the UN budget and not by the nations in which they were located. A rapid reaction force of thirty thousand troops, specially trained in enforcing quarantines through non-lethal means, was established. It could be called into service with forty-eight hours’ notice, and would, in such a case, be put under the direct command of the WHO.
When Hank retired, a man completely unknown to the medical community took over Hank’s role as the global czar for disease control. His name was Boris Yevchenko.
Hank’s last act as WHO head was to raise a six-foot tall, polished black granite monolith outside the head office in Geneva.
It had the profiles of three faces carved into it and the dedication read:
“To those who led us in our greatest battle; who shouldered the onerous responsibility of protecting humanity against nature’s wrath; who paid the ultimate price in the service of mankind, and taught us all, that, when faced with a dire threat, it is indeed better to be safe than sorry.”
The profiles carved in the stone were those of Dr. Yelena Petrova, Dr. Rebecca Summers and Dr. Aeolus Pentecost Hughes.
And I declared that the dead
,
who had already died
,
are happier than the living
,
who are still alive
.
But better than both
is the one who has never been born
,
who has not seen the evil
that is done under the sun
/Ecclesiastes 4:2--3
THREE YEARS LATER, MIDDAY, PAPUA PROVINCE, EASTERN INDONESIA
T
here were three kids left in the line. It wasn’t exactly the optimum conditions for giving vaccine injections. And yet here she was, sitting on her backpack on the floor of the only concrete building in the village, built in the center by some NGO many years ago. Maintaining sterility took quite a bit of effort.
The first kid came forward holding out his right arm, struggling to keep it steady, obviously frightened. His mother spoke what sounded like reassuring words, while tightly gripping his left hand in hers.
Rebecca wiped his arm with alcohol before administrating the intramuscular dose of ViCPS thyroid vaccine. The boy’s face scrunched up in pain but shone as soon as Rebecca rewarded him with a Snickers bar.
It had taken a long while to establish the trust of the people in the villages she visited. It had taken even
longer to alleviate their fear of her medical tools. She discovered that she could usually judge temperature by hand and didn’t need a thermometer. And as for her stethoscope, she only really needed it for heart conditions, the lung inspections she could now do relying on nothing but her ears.
For some of the vaccines, though, there was simply no alternative to the needle, and she’d been forced to stand firm. Most villagers now accepted that.
When the last kid was done, she patted him gently on the back and left for her bike. The children followed her in a trail, waiting for one of her surprises. As always, she had one. She pulled out a whistle from her pocket and blew into it. As the shrill sound rose through the jungle, the kids went wild. She threw the whistle toward them and as it hit the ground they all jumped for it, fighting over who would get the prize.
She hit the throttle hard and sped off, dirt spraying over the scrabbling kids behind her, driving their exhilaration further into a complete frenzy.
When she arrived at the abbey, she was soaked. Both her jeans and her T-shirt had large sweat stains. She slowed down and gently stopped her bike. The abbess didn’t appreciate noisy arrivals disturbing the peace.
Sister Maria, who came skipping out from the abbey holding her skirt with her left hand and a manila folder in her right, greeted her.
“Sister Cordelia! Sister Cordelia!” she shouted, “There has been a delivery for you. It’s from the World Health Organization!”
On an ordinary day very little happened in the convent and their lives followed a strict routine. Rebecca never ceased to be amazed by what trivial events would create excitement among her fellow sisters.
“Sister Cordelia. I sneaked a peek myself. I hope you don’t mind. It is instructions on what if you see certain symptoms among your patients, you know?”
Rebecca scoffed, and then gently put her hand on Sister Maria’s shoulder.
“Sister, you can keep the file. I can assure you I know what to look for. And if something like the Black Flu were to come again, I know what to do. Because
this
time, if it comes to me, I
will
stop it at the source.”
Leaving Sister Maria behind and walking toward the building that was now her home, she couldn’t help thinking that if she’d been here, in this place, three years ago, none of it – the Black Flu, the Big Collapse – none of it would ever have happened.
NOTA
AUCTORIS
(Author’s note)
The purpose of writing this book has been to describe a possible future scenario with a certain degree of realism. Because of this, considerable effort has gone in to making the facts, both medical and trivia, as accurate as possible. Charvet really has 200 shades of white cloth; Pablo Neruda really had a bespoke green ink; etc. The descriptions of peoples’ and societies’ reactions to the infection are based on actual eyewitness accounts from various historical epidemics.
As for the medical realities most of the statements are either factual (e.g., bats carrying influenza), probable (e.g.,
encephalitis lethargica
as a consequence of a resurgent Spanish Flu) or at the very least possible (e.g., increased virulence from higher density of arginine in the receptor bindings)
At some places in the book, though, veracity has been sacrificed for dramatic effect.
The following claims, and the implications that follow from them, are not true:
- In the real world, Carlo Urbani’s eulogy, printed in the New England Journal of Medicine, was written by: Brigg Reilley, Michael Van Herp, Dan Sermand and Nicoletta Dentico.
- There is no evidence of NATO personnel staffed on the Swedish NDRE flights over the Baltic Sea, although allegations have been made by journalists, supported by the extra parachute present in the DC-3 that crashed in 1951.
- ‘Cooking up’ an immunofluorescence test based on a multitude of historical reagents is definitely conceivable, but by no means
standard practice. In most cases you either have it, or you don’t, in which case developing the test from scratch takes at least a month. - As any soldier will testify to, cars don’t explode from being hit by a bullet, even if it hits the tank – yet this must be the archetypical example of poetic license if there ever was one.
- The only place where Chlorazine has the properties required to keep Singapore safe from bats is in Michael Crichton’s
The Andromeda Strain
. There are however others substances that could be used to the same effect. - The author is not privy to the contact protocols of the DIA, although it is a fact that callbacks and IPS phones are used by other intelligence agencies.
- There are no facts, although there has been ample speculation on the topic, to support the idea that the Soviet government managed to retrieve a living sample of the 1918 influenza.
- US researchers did replicate and grow the 1918 influenza from the completed gene sequence for research in 2008. In that sense the western world now also ‘has it’. To date, however, there have been no results from this research that would alter the course of events described in this book.
- There is no reason to believe that there is a North Korean bio-weapons lab in Chouch’on village.
- Research into rapid cushion tests has to a large extent been performed in corporate labs. Not
all these findings are public domain. Yelena’s effort to develop the test reflects available public knowledge, but not necessarily all that is currently known to man. - The quote from Ferdinand Foch, although often stated this way, is inaccurately translated and exaggerated. The actual quote is: “
Ma droite est enfoncée, ma gauche cède-tout va bien - j’attaque
!” which in a literal translation would read: “
My right gives way, my left yields, everything’s fine-I shall attack
!” - Although the SHOC exists, the WHO does not currently, in any way, operate as described in this text. A central premise of the story is the changes that Aeolus Pentecost Hughes has made to the organization.
- Aeolus statements about Ebola predate the 2014 outbreak. Although, it might seem otherwise from the reporting in the press, this event actually proves his predictions about the diseases devastating local consequences in Africa, the low risk for an epidemic in the Western world, as well as the utter unpreparedness of the international community to deal with a serious epidemic.
- The portraying of certain governments, agencies, organizations and people as incompetent, unmotivated, sinister or dysfunctional is pure conjecture without any form of substance behind it.
Obviously, writing a book with the ambition of accuracy across such a broad range of subjects is a collective effort. In this context the author would like to thank: TS, FS, AMF, JW, MV, AE, RG, JF, TB, LG, KP, CT, FL, IP, JR, IR, DB, GG, DH, EV, WF, DW, AA, FS, JO, CL, SN, CC, NA, JO, CC, MW, PZ, EM, MS, NL, MS, MG, LR, JM, AP, JP, DT, DS, KS and
for their support, knowledge, critique, corrections and perspectives. A special thanks go out to guides and healthcare professionals in the Maluku Islands, none more so than Mr. Rusti and Dr. Kesto.
UOCABILARIUS
(Glossary)
Organizations
| CDC | Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the national (in the United States if not otherwise stated) civilian authority for preventing and dealing with epidemics |
| DIA | The Defense Intelligence Agency. The central producer and manager of foreign military intelligence for the United States, subordinate to the DoD. |
| DoD | Department of Defense |
| Executive Outcomes | A private South-African military company selling ‘regime change’ or ‘regime preservation’ in Africa. As an example of their activities they defeated the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone in 1995. The company was formally dissolved on 31 December 1998, There has been speculation that the army is still in operation under another name |
| Fort Detrick | The headquarters of USAMRIID |
| Majestic 12 | The mother of all grand unified conspiracy theories. Supposed codename for an alleged secret committee formed to investigate the Rosewell UFO crash |
| NORTHCOM | A Unified Combatant Command of the U.S. military tasked with providing military support for civil authorities in the U.S., and protecting the territory and national interests of the United States within the contiguous United States, Alaska, Canada |
| NSA | The National Security Agency. Part of US military intelligence responsible for signal intelligence |
| SHOC | Strategic Health and Operations Center, the room at the WHO headquarters in Geneva, with communication links to local offices, which acts as main coordination point for the outbreak teams |
| USAMRIID | United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the military equivalent of the CDC in the United States |
| WHO | World Health Organization, the primary UN organization for global health issues. |