From the "Your gov't hard at work dept."

[ShadowHM]

What really scares me as a *plausible* reality is an Ebola virus mutated with an airborn virus in a lab as a biological weapon released on the public. However that might only lead to an 85% death rate. If an entity really wanted close to 95% eradication of an entire nation, then they could tease the Ebola virus into another strain, and mutate that with an airborn virus, and release these two (or even three) different viruses out at the same time. This would kill millions seemingly overnight, and billions within days, and *could* actually happen.

I have neither time nor energy to spend on being scared of such a scenario.

This may well be the same sort of attitude wherein people who live right downstream of massive dams minimize the danger of a dam burst. But the kind of coordinated effort to actually realize your scenario requires a lot of people to jointly and separately accept the risk that they, too, will be part of the 85%, because such events have no borders.

I have spent the time to make sure that I do have the sort of preparation advocated for the Zombie Apocalypse, though. The likelihood of (mostly) well-intentioned people taking (perfectly legal) shortcuts on poultry CAFO's* creating our next epidemic is high.

*CAFO = Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations, the owners of which are currently advocating that any public or media surveillance of their operations should be severely curtailed, if not made illegal.