I would’ve thought so if it’s virulent enough. That is, until I took a microbiology course a few years ago during which I found out that since viruses can’t survive for very long (if at all) outside of a host that it is not in their “best interest” to kill off everything that they could possibly invade.
How about a virus that easily moves back and forth between animals and humans, and which mutates constantly in a way that makes it impossible to create a vaccine for it or develop herd immunity (or any immunity).
Let’s say this virus is like that. Through herculean effort, we manage to get it under control for the summer. We lose 1% of the population, and 10% have scarred lungs making them more susceptible to the next iteration. When in fall the virus comes back in a new, more lethal form. It ravages the world again, and this time 5% die. Rinse and repeat. Think of the flu, except with ten times the death rate each year. It’s now environmental, and even if every human was isolated until it was completely gone in humans, it would just transfer back and start all over again one the restrictions are lifted.
This isn’t actually that hypothetical - it’s kind of what the Spanish Flu did. In 2018 it was a milder strain, and by summer people thought they had it beat. Then it came back in winter in a more lethal form, and that’s when most people died from it.
I could also imagine a virus that infects people, but lays dormant for a long time. By the time the effects start killing people, the virus is already in half the population. Some early fears were that this virus could be something like that, with people being contagious for some time before showing any symptoms. Imagine if that ‘some time’ were five years. Maybe it presents at first like a normal mild cold, and over time just keeps getting worse and worse until a few years in people start dying en-masse.
Gag! I typed in “pneum” and hit the wrong autocomplete option. You are right, of course.
The human race has already designed a virus intended to cause extinction. In mosquitos. I don’t know enough about genetics if vertebrates have the same susceptibility, but I assume so.
We thought nuclear weapons were bad, but bio-weapons can be much, much worse.
Edited to add: I just realized that my response is not an answer to the original question, as the virus does not kill anyone.
The ideal genocidal microbe, viral or otherwise, would cause inevitable sterilization, not death. When birthrates hit zero, that’s it.
That wouldn’t necessarily wipe out the HUMAN race specifically, though. We are at the point where, it something like this happened, we should be able to develop an artificial way to incubate embryos. We have enough frozen eggs and sperm to repopulate the species, certainly. The technology isn’t there yet (though I would argue this has more to do with moral questions than a lack of knowhow) but we would have plenty of time to figure it out – until the current batch of children die of old age.
A virus where the virus compelled the infected person to infect others might do it.
Especially if the virus allowed the infected person to continue to infect people after death by turning them into zombies or something.
There is almost no scenario where humanity survives a zombie virus.
Evolution doesn’t strictly care about best interest. It’s just a feedback loop where the negative side effects (e.g. food scarcity) of a positive change (e.g. insanely good ability to hunt) get a vote in the cycle of procreation. But if, for example, your insanely good ability to hunt happens to be just low enough that you’re able to kill the very last rabbit before you perish of starvation from a lack of rabbits, then…no more rabbits.
I don’t see any reason that viruses wouldn’t be in the same space as larger organisms in terms of how evolution plays out. If we have any example, in the archaeological record, of a species evolving to a state where they are able to fully wipe out another species, then we should expect that a virus could accomplish the same.
Of course, human ingenuity supersedes the power of evolution, so that might not be relevant for us in the modern world.
I have to disagree with this one to some extent. Zombies are easily dealt with (if they’re movie-style zombies, even the fast variety). They’re unadaptable, unarmed, and unintelligent. They tend to be stronger and tougher than humans, but their behavior would be so odd that humans would quickly figure out how to avoid zombies.
Unless there’s a long and subtle incubation period or species-jumping, of course, with infestations occurring through methods other than just zombie bites (whichi aren’t subtle).
A/k/a “God’s do-over.”
It doesn’t have to be ‘zombie’ status. There is lots of evidence that the gut biome affects emotions and decision-making. There are viruses that cause otherwise normal ants to climb grass stalks and wait at the top for birds to eat them, as bird poop is part of the virus’s life cycle. Humans have genes that, when expressed make them more attractive to malarial mosquitos.
It’s not so crazy to suggest that one day there could be a mutation in a virus that alters behaviour - say, an increased desire for human contact, or a mental illness that makes you sant to get out of your house and go places, or whatever. Or it could appear in a transmissive animal, such as how rabies often causes bats to leave their protected areas and fly into to human homes. A bat in the wild is unlikely to have rabies. A bat you find in your house probably does.
At least, such an idea (infected humans changing behaviour to spread the virus) shouldn’t be completely discounted as we have seen plenty of examples of behaviour-modifying parasites of varying sorts in many animals.
Syphilis supposedly increases sexual desire, which of course helps propagate this STD.
Having said that, I don’t think altering someone’s emotions will go towards near-total “mind control” on a complex human brain. A person affected by syphilis can still choose not to have sex, or to use protection, or visit a doctor.
He did that once before. This time it would take more than 40 days and 40 nights.
A virus wouldn’t have to be 100% fatal. At some tipping point, society starts to break down, and people who didn’t die from the virus die from starvation or thirst or large hairy individuals who kill them to take their food so THEY don’t die of starvation.
See, e.g., “The Stand,” and similar speculative fiction.
Yep. It’s an open question as to how many people you could lose while still maintaining A modern technological supply chain. Even if we held onto social cohesion and a reasonable government, at some point there just aren’t enough people to do the things needed to feed, clothe, and make all the things we need.
Some people believe that technological growth is essentially a function of population size. For example, you need certain economies of scale to justify massively expensive innovations like new chip fabs, and the supply chains for complex technological products are huge.
In the meantime, as population shrinks the infrastructure would become overbuilt, as we’re seeing in Japan. ‘Stimulus’ becomes very difficult. Adding to that is that half the population generates half the tax revenue, or likely much less as efficiency drops.
ah, the FLOOD!