There is nothing laudable about refusing to refuse violence in a situation as supposed, refusing the limited harm of shooting the runner would possibly result in the much much greater harm of a widespread superplague.
Personally I’d rather have the former on my conscience, shooting the runner, than the latter.
This again is supposing the scenario is as originally posited and without fighting the hypothetical.
Hell I agree with Typo Negative, if its as virulent and dangerous as suggested they should nuke the entire area (from space, just to be sure)
The conditions described are “hellish.” Uninflected people are at high risk of being infected, infected people are not provided with treatment (even palliative treatment), and people with unrelated problems are not getting medical care.
There is no security, and in those situations rape tends to break out, among other violence as people squabble over blankets or cell phones or whatever. Basically it’s a jail without staff, and lots of people get killed in jails even with security. Again, picture how many people- kids even- are likely to get raped when there are no police, no likely consequences, and nowhere to run (I guess some women could engage in sex-for-security, which is also not awesome.)
Communications facilities are likely limited and the dying can’t say goodbye to their families- and maybe not even give them news about what is happening. Without maintainace, sanitation facilities will become overwhelmed and there will be overflowing toilets everywhere.
Any government willing to do that has something nasty up their sleeve. It’s not a normal thing to do. I’m getting out of there, probably to hike to Canada or something. Obviously I’m going to stay out of human contact for the 21 days, not go on a tour of local elementary schools and shopping malls.
(And note that if this was a normal quarantine, where people had security, medical care and contact with their families, my answer would change. My response is due to the assumption that any government that would take such a bizarre approach has clearly gone off its rocker and can’t be trusted.
I might run, but only after showing signs. No way am I going to die of some wicked, liquefying germ over the course of days or weeks. And if I run and fail to get seen, I run back, dress up in dayglo orange and skip into no-man’s land while singing the Star-Spangled Banner at the top of my lungs until someone wises up and pops me.
And as the soldier, I turn the runner to putty. Doing so serves several drives. First, running is inhumanely selfish and the runner is evidently totes cool with giving this gift of disease and quarrantine to millions of other people–fuck 'em. Second, if they’re sick I’m probably doing them a favor, possibly granting them a wish. Third, there will no doubt be witnesses–anyone else contemplating running might rethink it, and actually survive the plague.
I’d feel kinda bad about having to grease someone. But the whole situation is bad, and sometimes “not worse” is the best you can hope for.
I wouldn’t want to die as gruesomely as Ebola seems to be. If I were coming down with Ebola symptoms there, I think I’d make a run for it, thus committing suicide by soldier.
If you escaped quarantine, you wouldn’t be escaping the hellish conditions. You’d just be spreading them to the rest of the world. I know you said you’d avoid human contact for 21 days, but that’s not very pragmatic. Where would you get food or other neccessities? You could hunt and fish, but you’d need the equipment for that. You’d need blankets or warm clothes, and a knife and a backpack and, and, and. But even supposing you somehow managed to escape with your well-equipped backpack, and managed to avoid all human contact for 21 days, you don’t know that the incubation period is still 21 days. This is a new ebolavirus, and if it’s been altered to be transmissable by inhalation, it could very easily behave quite differently in other respects. Maybe it has an incubation period of 87 days. Maybe it can now be vectored via mosquitoes, ticks, or fleas. With the current strain, we already know it can infect dogs, though we don’t know if it causes disease in them or if they’re able to transmit the virus to humans. We certainly have no idea if the new strain does. Perhaps shortly after you start noticing symptoms, you hurl up last night’s squirrel dinner. Various animals come along and clean up after you, including a pet dog off for a run. The dog winds up catching ebola from this and in the next few weeks it licks its owners face numerous times, bites the neighbor’s cat, and curls up for nap with the toddler. You wind up dying all alone in the middle of nowhere, but now, thanks to you, the virus lives on.
With the scenario as written, were I the soldier I’d definitely shoot. Probably be so afraid of the virus that I may not even be too traumatised over killing someone, since I could rationalise my actions as being for the greater good and all that.
Were I the civilian? I’d probably again be so terrified of the virus that I’d run, given a decent chance. Of course, I’d stay away from anyone else for the 21 days or more because how horrific to be the cause of a global pandemic! But I do think I’d be so scared of being trapped with all the diseased people, that escaping would seem like the only way to stay alive. And I like living. And we are talking spur of the moment, opportunity to escape. I doubt my theoretical and morally thought-out opinion that I should stay quarantined for the benefit of the rest of society would overcome my panic and my desire to get far, far away from the death germs, if it was actually happening to be honest
Obligatory nitpick, to get it out of the way: dying of Ebola is a nasty way to go, but it’s not the unstoppable super-plague everyone and their cat seems to think it is. Remember SARS? Remember bird flu, a disease that ended up being so nonthreatening they had to start calling it ‘avian flu’ to get people to properly panic?
That said, in the abovementioned situation (assuming it was a disease that could actually do all the things everyone fears Ebola can), I’m not going anywhere. As to letting someone else escape- presumably, I’m a trained soldier, and know how to fire a gun with at least a modicum of accuracy. A bullet through the leg, and you’re not running anywhere. If I do miss and send it through your head, or cut your femoral artery, well, bullets don’t ask questions. But it’s not like you weren’t warned.
*shoots Essured as s/he makes a break for it, “NEXT!!!”
People are assuming its a man that’s trying to break quarantine, what if its a woman, or a child?
I don’t think a woman has any more right to life than a man so I personally wouldn’t hesitate in that case, but some might, if it was a child then that’s a different and much more difficult decision.
Tears to a river. 2 year old or 42 year old–you’re not killing a person, you’re saving lives*. If you overthink it, the vector gets away and more people die.
maintaining the hypothetical, assuming the quarrantine is absolutely necessary and all that.
With regular Ebola I agree, so I hypothetical’d it up a bit by making it airborne.
Never heard of them, sound up my alley though, thanks for the recommendation.
MD, sorry.
As per the OP although the quarantine is maintained with deadly force food and necessities are still being dropped in. Even hypothetical people have to eat!
As per the OP, the lone figure (who could be a man, woman or a kid - orders are to shoot regardless) is walking towards the perimeter, not running. They’ve still ignored the spoken warning and the shot across the bow, though.
As a possibly infected civilian, I wouldn’t leave. I’d just try to occupy myself with helping out or avoiding infection. But I wouldn’t risk infecting others.
As a soldier, I’d do anything I could to close the distance between myself and the runner and attempt to physically escort them back to the quarantine. If it was obvious that I couldn’t, I would shoot to wound, and if that failed I would aim for the center of mass. Not sure I could actually handle this next part, but I would want to identify the person and do what I could to make things up to their family. It wouldn’t be easy, but if I shot I only had to live with letting one person die, if I didn’t I’d have to live with possibly letting untold hundreds or thousands die.
But then this kind of ruthless calculus is easy from an armchair. I could easily see myself choking under the stress of the moment.
If an infected child poses just as deadly a disease threat as an infected adult, what is the practical difference? Ebola transmitted from a child is just as lethal as Ebola transmitted from an adult.
I really don’t get what you’re suggesting here.