May 26th, 2008

(no subject)

So I watched Andromeda Strain on AE. This was done well. The acting was solid. The story was tight with flawed and human characters. The disease is appropriately creepy.

Thats the thing that started me thinking. There is something really scary about diseases in general. It is not a monster or a psycho you could conceivably fight. In most cases you can't see it coming. Once you get a disease there is not a lot you can do about it. Go to a doctor and hope they have something to help.

We live in a modern world. The cold or flu does not "generally" kill people in the modern world. There are some dangerous diseases still floating around. Aids is still killing in the west as are a few other things.

In the third world it is a different story. They are still dying from diseases all but unheard of in the west. In 2002 Tuberculosis killed a little over a 1000 people in the US. In Tanzania, on the other hand it killed 10,875. In the US 380 people died of aids while in Tanzania it was 4,869. Take into those numbers that Tanzania has a little over 36 million people in it and the US has 291 million. Disease is still a horror in the third world.

But the notion that will get to people in the western world, the one that terrifies me is the notion of some new disease coming along. Imagine some thing we are not ready for coming along. No vaccines and and no cures. No treatments or immunities. Something that kills absolutely and without regard to any mitigating factor.

That is why stories like Andromeda Strain and other disease based horror stories are so damn scary.

just some thoughts.