Or you could have HIV mutate so that it's an airborn virus. There's a very few people with immunity, but they'd be so few and far between mankind wouldn't be able to recover. It takes longer to show symptoms and kill, but that ensures more people get infected before quarentiens are established.
When you spoke about aliens enslaving a human and all that, strangely I was reminded of the movie "V" and that other one with the lizard people, who's title evades me at the moment. There are many ways to destroy the earth though while leaving it intact, the thing is, if you want a quick death a virus seems to be the only way to go since the effects of super volcanos and such takes at least a good 48 hours or more to completely spread to it's full compacity. Although I don't know how you want to work out your story, I have this strong urge to suggest the movie "Lost in Space" to you. Perhaps my reasoning is because of the father coming back "a few years later" to find his family dead and that one doctor the only survivor though evolved. Maybe there is some way you can use this idea to your advantage.
The problem with ebola (in this context that is...) is that it's so lethal that it kills off those who are infected before they are able to spread the disease too much. Of course, if you have aliens involved I guess they could just sprinkle the whole planet with the ebola virus... Otherwise I'd go with a disease that have long incubation and that few people are immune to. Smallpox perhaps, they still have some specimens of it for research.
Small pox (Variola Major) is a fragile virus that can only exist in human hosts. The most common variation kills around 35% of non-inoculated victims. Two variations (Flat Small Pox and Hemorrhagic Small Pox) constitute a very small percentage of outbreaks but are 98% lethal. It has an incubation period of 12 days to two weeks and is not contagious during that time. The disease then produces symptoms and contagious exposure for another two to three weeks, assuming the person lives that long. The big problems for this disease, as a mechanism for world wide human elimination, are 1) that 65% of victims survive and become permanently immune, and 2) the virus can not survive in any other medium but human cells. Consequently, the Variola virus actually ends its own existence when it runs out of new humans to infect. I have done an enormous amount of research on this virus for a book I am currently writing. You'd be better off to postulate a multiple species virus like bird flu and mutate it into a new, uniformly lethal virus...maybe a hybrid between Bird Flu and one of the hemorrhagic viruses like Ebola, Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever or Rift Valley fever. Such a mutated virus could be transported by rodents, birds and mosquitoes so that it can continue to replicate and spread outside humans.
Aaah, I see. I'm afraid my knowledge of diseases are limited to what I pick up from those of my friends that study biology... My thought with smallpox was that humanity would be very unprepared for an outbreak of a disease that supposedly have been completely eradicated. Of course, as you say, if a disease spreads through animals (or better: air) it will be much more effective. Though, if you want to get rid of everyone a disease is probably not a good way to go. It seems like there's always someone who's immune... Oh, I just remembered a not-quite-so-plausible scenario: I've read that when the first test of a nuclear bomb took place they weren't exactly sure what capacity the bomb would have. Some people thought it would be less devastating than it was, and apparently someone feared that it might somehow ignite the oxygen in the athmosphere, causing a disastrous chain-effect. Don't quote me on that since I read it somewhere on wikipedia ages ago, but if you're an alien you just might be able to fool an astronaut with that scenario...
They'll be a new series coming out on syfy, about how the world will end in 2012 without the earth being torn to shreds. I didn't catch all the details but I seen the add and it reminded me about your thread. Check it out, and hope it helps.
Just thought that I'd say I've adapted the plot so that I no longer need the planet to appear completely intact. Thank you all for your ideas.
You're talking about the end of humanity then, not the end of the world or all life on Earth. Realistically mankind is a hearty species; we adapt to new environments and our bodies adapt to and learn to fight off disease (those who survive). Widespread disease would cripple us as a species but not everyone would die. Look at historical examples like the plague and even Ebola. People survive. Nuclear winter (or a gigantic asteroid) could wipe us all out but it would be everything, not just humans. In other words, short of an apocalyptic type alien invasion that destroys all human life, I can't think of anything that would kill off mankind but leave other things living.
How glad am I that I came across this thread! I'm planning a story where a severely mutated form of HIV becomes airborne and wipes the population out in a week, leaving a few naturally immune people to try and survive together. Can anyone elaborate some points to consider in my scenario? I have a pretty good idea how to "sell" the idea that the whole planet gets infected in the space of a few days, a narrative device where the spread is communicated in a similar way to that used in The Stand - he spread this to her, and she spread it to them, and they spread it this way...etc. etc...
Neo...aside from the basics, no utilities, no food, and in four days of no one taking care of them--all nuclear power plants would begin to melt down... You can have your survivors encounter a great many things in their struggle to survive. No one here can make a plot for you, that is part of being a writer...thinking of the "what if" scenarios.
i got one for you. the neutron bomb. theres stuff on wiki that could help you, but basically, the neutron bomb sacrifices sheer destructive power for powerful, penetrating radiation. although most neutron bombs nowadays still have a massive explosive yield, back in the day they wewre seen as a way to stop a russian tank blitz in the cold war - wipe out the men in their tanks, leave europe intact. of course exactly what the plan for the people living in europe was, im not sure. ive pretty much just looked this up. the jist is that someone insane enough with the rescources could probably wipe out most of the worlds human population with some well placed neutron bombs, while still leaving a significant portion of the nature of the planet intact. in theory.
The only thing that bugs me is how the immune people are going to locate each other. I don't know how many survivors you plan to have, but I can imagine people wandering around for a very long time before coming in contact with any other survivors.
Highlight some points... what exactly? I can write out my immediate thoughts on it though. 1) The reason why there is very little fear of the HIV retrovirus ever becoming airborne is due to the fact that for a virus to become airborne it must lose a majority of it's DNA (RNA in the case of retroviruses) to become light enough to float. In the case of HIV it has been speculated that in order to become airborne it would have to lose so much RNA that it would become a weaker version of the common cold (also a retrovirus). 2) A natural immunity to a virus is very likely, there are even people who have chronic HIV due to the fact that their bodies can keep it check, though not kill it off. That is what natural immunity usually means, you are still infected but to such a low degree you have very little symptoms from it. 3) Keep in mind that HIV doesn't kill the person, it only allows another virus to do the job of killing the subject. So the if you wanted to do HIV there would have to be a second infection that would be so widespread as to help cause the collapse of civilization. 4) HIV takes years to turn into full blown AIDS, between 2-12 depending on circumstances and health of the subject. So, it wouldn't be something that would have a sudden impact. Given this, I would personally say that the idea of an airborne version of HIV killing the majority of people is not very likely at all. In order to make it more effective it would have to have extra sequences added to its RNA base, which would make it even less likely to be airborne. However.. there are a LARGE number of viruses that are far more deadly and likely to be easily widespread, most are already airborne or very easily could be. Hemorragic (spelling is wrong) Fever for one, or Encephilitis Letharigaca (spelling also off) for another. The first is similar to what you would see if you ever watched the movie Outbreak. The second is a form of encephilitis that causes the infected person to become disoriented and enter a deep comatose state and has no known cure.
The problem with neutron bombs is that they are only 1/10th the yield of their conventional nuclear cousins. That being said they are still quite dangerous to anyone close enough to be struck by their fast neutrons. These bombs can deliver a massive radiation dose (80 gray) almost instantaneously to the occupants of a Russian tank (i.e. T-72, T-80, T-55) despite the radiation shielding at about a kilometer. So air burst detonation over a tank formation would completely "neutralize" it. That being said they hardly "kill people and leave the buildings intact." Only 30% of a neutron bombs radiation is emitted as neutrons. I'd stay away from the concept of nuclear winter, as it has mostly been disproven as hype. The month with the largest decline in temperature would be July which would have a temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit vs its standard 70 degrees. Furthermore fallout from a bomb is not a long lasting danger. A "hot zone" that has radiation levels at 1000 R/h (it takes 350-500 Röntgens in an hour to kill a human) will have decayed down to 100 R/h after 7 hours and 10 R/h after 48 hours.
