what makes a disease deadly?

I am writing a story, in which a mad scientist (based on Ted Kaczynski) wants to kill as many people as possible with an artificially created disease. The idea is, that more complex societies are better able to solve many small problems (wildfire, etc.) compared to hunter-gatherer societies, because of the possibility of resource distribution. However, complex societies are affected more strongly by big problems, because so many systems are interdependent. So, if enough people in food production, energy production etc. die, then everything collapses. People today are very dependent on Walmart etc, and if the food distribution failed, we could not just quickly go back to local farming.

So my question is: What kind of disease would such a villain use? I picked a bacterium, because it seem to me bacteria are more malleable with genetic engineering. Is that true? How do different factors, like incubation time, the method with which it spreads, and deadliness, affect total kill count? Many of the deadliest diseases like the plague occurred before we had access to antibiotics. Does that change anything, and if it does, would it be realistic for a biology professor to have access to the held back antibiotics to make the bacteria immune?

Instead of killing people directly, would the "stealthy" approach of making people infertile, similar to mosquito killing gene drives, work? Would it be enough to make a portion of the public infertile, or would humanity just evolve resistance to the virus?

posted almost 5 years ago

Jonathan Böcker‭

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