Flu Season

Originally posted on Words to Dreams

Throughout history the world has seen numerous deadly diseases, so that begs the question, could there ever be a world killer?

This is a topic that writers of dystopian and post-apocalyptic writers often think about. (I know, we’re a little gruesome sometimes.) In my Country Saga series there’s an element of disease, an airborne plague that the various tribes refer to by different names (the Fire, the Cold, the Scurve). Also, the second book in the Dwellers Saga, The Star Dwellers, finds two of the characters stricken by “the Bat Flu”, a nasty virus caught by drinking water contaminated by bat droppings.

But I’m not the only one giving DISEASE a starring role in their books. Bestselling authors Rick Yancey and Dan Wells each chose to wipe out large portions of the world’s population through airborne killers. Yancey’s most recent novel (highly anticipated and hyped), which I happen to be reading right now, The 5^th Wave, centers on an alien species attacking the earth. Amongst their many sins, the aliens unleash a virus—some mutated form of the Zaire Ebola virus—using birds as the initial carriers. In this case, 97% of the earth’s 7 billion person population is decimated by the disease. Wells isn’t much kinder. His “RM” disease in Partials, which was supposedly unleashed by genetically engineered super soldiers (the Partials), cuts the human population down to a small community of only 35,000 on Long Island. Ouch. Double ouch. They make my little plague look like child’s play in comparison. At least people in Fire Country can live to the ripe old age of 35 years old before my disease kills them off. 45 years old if you live in Ice Country, where the thin air slows the disease down.

So back to the question at hand: does the world need to be worried about “world killer” diseases? The answer, undoubtedly, is YES! In recent times we’ve seen nasty viruses get serious TV time, like the bird flu and the swine flu, causing travelers to reroute their vacations from highly sought out destinations like Asia and Mexico. But even those viruses are nothing compared to some of history’s worst diseases, such as smallpox, the Spanish Flu, and the Black Plague, which killed hundreds of millions of people during their time. Even today, diseases like Malaria, AIDs and Cholera kill hundreds of thousands each year. However, with those diseases, ignorance, lack of education, and lack of access to treatment options are the main causes of deaths. At least on a world scale, those diseases are manageable—they’re not going to send homo sapiens into extinction like the dinosaurs.

So what should we be worried about? Medicine continues to advance rapidly; we’re smarter, more prepared than ever before; we have formal agencies whose only goal is to prevent disease (like the Center for Disease Control). Honestly, as scary and conspiracy-theoryesque as this sounds, the only ones we need to be worried about are ourselves. As humans and our technology evolves, so do the scale and methods of waging war. The fear of nuclear war has bred many a good post-apocalyptic book. Nowadays, there’s little doubt that some serious viruses are being “safely” played with and experimented on in laboratories somewhere. It’s only a matter of time before they’re used in war: for revenge, conquest, or hatred. The results could be devastating.

But there is hope, and I’m determined to end this post on a positive note. There is SO MUCH good in this world. Good people with good intentions, who are determined to fight the good fight against evil, whether it be at home or abroad. In the event of a major world epidemic, whether set in motion by nature or by ourselves, I believe we can fight it, and WE CAN WIN. Just like in some of the awesome YA dystopian novels like The 5^th Wave and Partials. Just like in my books, The Moon Dwellers and Fire Country.

And in the meantime, YA dystopian authors like me will continue to paint the bleakest of the bleak futures, and then turn them on their heads with characters who SURVIVE, who FIGHT, and who PREVAIL, sometimes against the most perilous of odds.

Happy reading!