Would it be possible to create a Armageddon virus??

[Dosile]

Now, this being said you would have to be either insane or just really mentally challenged to do this.. but here is my theory and my question.. of would this be possible to create a Armageddon virus?

 

It is a common myth and story in most horror movies that a flesh eating monster re-animates after death and then roams to kill more and then transmit the virus to others... these monsters are known as Zombies. While fake in most part - with scientific breakthroughs and such that we have now it brings to life the question of if this could truly happen?

 

Now to get myself straight I'm not saying creating a new virus from nothing. But I am saying that what if I (in theory) wanted to create a massive pandemic that would spread rapidly but kill the infected rather quickly as to stop an army of these infected people and rather just kill them off slowly while attacking and spreading the virus through bites? The dying quickly would be so that the people who create this virus have the chance of living and not having the world taken over by the infected masses.

 

Well... myself being somewhat of a scientist would suggest a mixture of Ebola and Rabies. Now we run into the most obvious problem that rabies in the human body is fatal and is Zoonotic (i.e. transmitted by animals). However, with the proper set of scientists working on creating a mutated strain of the virus it COULD be possible to make it transmittable through humans. Not that anyone has ever tried it - WHY WOULD THEY!? But it is possible. That would be the cause for biting and spreading through violence (i.e. zombies). Where the Ebola comes in... is for the dying rather quickly as to not have an army of these infected people. Morphing these two would be a quick and horrific virus that would swarm through the population and would be... a... zombie virus.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here... but it IS possible. It's just waiting for the proper team of people to get together and formulate the idea into reality. The swine flu and avian flue were harmless to humans and Zoonotic.. but once mixed together... is now H1N1

 

Thank you.

[Daecon]

Airborne something-fatal?

[Pericles]

Just to clear this up... are you saying that the virus kills the person then reanimates them?

 

If this is what was implied then no it cannot happen. Once a person is dead that is it.

[Sisyphus]

So you want a rapidly fatal disease that spreads by making humans crazy enough to bite one another?

[insane_alien]

seems a crap armageddon virus, you'd want an airborne highly virulent virus that doesn't show any significant symptoms for perhaps aweek or two THEN kills you quickly. this gives it plenty of time to spread unnoticed and by the time it is, its too late.

[Sisyphus]

seems a crap armageddon virus, you'd want an airborne highly virulent virus that doesn't show any significant symptoms for perhaps aweek or two THEN kills you quickly. this gives it plenty of time to spread unnoticed and by the time it is, its too late.

 

Indeed. Something like ebola is really nasty, but the fact that it shows symptoms and then kills so quickly makes it much easier to contain. Compare with HIV, which is comparatively very difficult to transmit (basically just sex or blood sharing), but becomes an enormous pandemic because the period without symptoms (but with ability to transmit) is so long. If it was anywhere near as easy to transmit as a cold, everyone would have it.

[AzurePhoenix]

You want something with a decent but practically short period before symptoms manifest, with airborn virulence. so yeah, flu? cold? Once rabies symptoms manifest it's too late, with some madness, so that's good... smallpox is a classic... ebola is bloodily explosive and equally fatal.... Yeah, those've gotta be my Top Five Pick for chimeric strain.

[jmytrance]

Correct me if I'm wrong here... but it IS possible. It's just waiting for the proper team of people to get together and formulate the idea into reality. The swine flu and avian flue were harmless to humans and Zoonotic.. but once mixed together... is now H1N1

 

Thank you.

 

This sounds somewhat scary! what if there are other more virus will occur same as this idea of mixed together.

[Jimmy Neutron]

I recently posted a blog article with some thoughts on this topic. Check it out.

 

http://theiconoclast.info/?p=138

[NZL]

H1N1 pandemic panic is so unnecessary.

Every year, a comparable number of people die due to the regular flu, but you don't hear about that in the news.

[ivanp84]

Modern biological warfare is more something like "virus-induced gene silencing" (VIGS), where changed virus induces severe changes in host cell transcriptome. The result can be lost of adaptive immune response, tumors, ... even radical behavior change, like fatal insomnia, madness. In that purpose you can use more common viruse than ebola, marburg or machupo; you'll use more like EBV or RSV, then is harder part to incorporate gene (which encode gene silencer) in theirs dsDNA or ssRNA, respectively. EBV is maybe easier task, but RSV is more virulent... That apocalyptic thing is silent killer... But, as it always is, there is no perfect crime, someone will find that new virus is synthetic, because you cannot change any genome without leaving some ATGC evidence - signature.

Because I live in very evil part of Earth, I'm very concerned about chemical/biological warfare topic. Few days ago I read that shqipe terrorist group had biowarfare facility during 1999. war, also they had transfer abducted Serbs to Albanian town of Burrel, where doctors extracted the captives' internal organs. [more info on HRW site: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/04/15/human-rights-watch-upr-submission-albania]

[SL]

So you are specifically looking for a virus that is transmitted by bites? I doubt it would have the potential to cause a pandemic based on some practical issues.

The rabies virus causes a severe and finally lethal inflammation of the brain, which would result in hallucinations and like symptoms, which might cause the person infected to try and bite others. This inflammation would siginficantly lower the chances of them successfully biting and infecting anyone around them (consider the temporary disability caused by diseases like tick-borne encephalitis if it isn't promptly treated).

The virus you have in mind would have to cause severe aggression in the patient (for example by altering the limbic system) without damaging any other parts of the brain, which would be hard to achieve.

Besides, after the first couple of cases would become publicly known and the source of infection is identified (It shouldn't be too hard even for a very nearsighted doctor to find the bitemarks), it's too easy to avoid infection for the disease to pose a serious threat.

So even though I have no doubt that it wouldn't be too hard to cause a pandemic, "Zombie viruses" probably wouldn't be the the way to do that.

[scuzfly]

I had an immunology teacher tell us all you'd need is to make something airborne, highly concentrated, contageous and stable so you could walk into an international airport with a small Binaca container and spray a couple areas. People would carry it onto planes without knowing it and spread it all over the world.

 

Didn't think much of it until swine flu broke out and we saw it all over the USA. Then I started thinking of 12 monkeys.