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I think he is right and that eventually the world is going to see something really big that kills many people and it is God's way of thinning the herd. What do you think?
I think you are correct except God has nothing to do with it. There is no "if it happens", it will happen whether induced by man, a superbug or some other major event like a meteor strike or large volcano blowing it's top... The only questions that remain are the "what", "when". For that matter man ultimately will be extinct from this planet at some time in the future, it's inevitable.
A man at work was quite outspoken when he said that he thinks the Swine Flu is a good thing if it kills off some of the world's population. He said the world is hugely overpopulated and it needs a war or huge epidemic to "thin the herd" a bit. He says that the only way that the earth is going to survive in the future is a mass die off of people and maybe the swine flu may be the ticket.
I asked him if he would grieve if his family and friends died from a huge mass epidemic of the flu. He said sure but that would be fate and God's will.
I think he is right and that eventually the world is going to see something really big that kills many people and it is God's way of thinning the herd. What do you think?
Did you ask him to volunteer to go first for the good of the world's population?
I think you won't have to worry about the world population. Nationalized healthcare will take care of it, I suspect the elderly will be the first victims of rationing. Then it will be the disabled and the overweight. Maybe the smokers will go after that, then those without a qualifying IQ. We've already got a woman's right to choose murder.
Spanish flu killed 40 million people in the space of two years from 1918-1920. The Black Plague killed even more but over a much larger period of time during the 1300's and accounted for the earth losing a quarter its inhabitants- so at both these periods of time the population of the globe was significantly less than today. Pandemics have occured at various times in our history, but i hardly believe there is a link due population growth on its own, otherwise why is the population trend always going up even in spite of these pandemics.
However, the more people are confined to a particular area and the less they engage in hygienic practices, the more likely things like this will happen.
If you consider where the largest concentrations of dead were in the Black Plague, your looking at population centers. More people crowded into a cramped area with less hygene and you get an intense epidemic. Cities lost sometimes all but a quarter of their inhabinets.
Just crowding more people into the same space will create an epidemic which seems to spread quickly, but there are multiple means of contact. And the overall health of those exposed...
Health has a direct effect in epidemics. The countyside with those weakened by deprivation made sure there would be a heavier tole in pesants. I think this would make a repeat performance too. Its never directly how many people are where alone, but their own circumstances of life too which effects death counts
We have more people but the poor are not in such dire health as in the 14th century so in a moderate epidemich it would balance out. In a major one that might not make a big enough difference.
A man at work was quite outspoken when he said that he thinks the Swine Flu is a good thing if it kills off some of the world's population. He said the world is hugely overpopulated and it needs a war or huge epidemic to "thin the herd" a bit. He says that the only way that the earth is going to survive in the future is a mass die off of people and maybe the swine flu may be the ticket.
I asked him if he would grieve if his family and friends died from a huge mass epidemic of the flu. He said sure but that would be fate and God's will.
I think he is right and that eventually the world is going to see something really big that kills many people and it is God's way of thinning the herd. What do you think?
Something I found fascinating in the History Channel's description of the Black Plague was that those in very rural Europe, who were poor and yet had little contact with the outside world, were able to stand on the sidelines and allow most of the pandemic to sweep right past them. They had always eked out a very meagre living on very meagre property, but simply because of their placement off of heavily traveled thouroughfares, were able to survive. As the richer and more well-traveled among them died out, they found their place in the recovering world as people who could provide food and other basics to the handfuls in the cities that survived, and many actually became quite wealthy.
Sorta what I was going for when I moved to the back of beyond and left the populations and cities behind. I think that pandemics, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, and natural as well as manmade disasters happen, not as a god's will to punish, but as a natural outcome of historical, chemical, physical laws that most of the human population tries to ignore or circumvent. (Of course to believe this, you have to believe in the god that I do - who started the world and who has to operate purely within the boundaries of natural law - and who really doesn't get involved in the minutiae of everyday or everycentury occurances.) Rather like trying to control the weather, mitigation always fails, because there are simply some things that people choose to ignore or figure into their survival calculations. When humans insisted on stopping the burnings of the underbrush and wanted everything to grow "naturally", what they did was produce a lot of combustible fuel for the inevitable massive fires to burn unchecked through their homes and communities. Trying to alter nature just makes nature more sneaky and stubborn, to breed superbugs, to produce pesticide resistant insects, to follow natural laws that humans, no matter how hard they try, cannot circumvent, no matter how many lawyers they hire.
Will this 'pandemic' destroy the human population, and is that a good thing? Well, as Scarlett O'Hara said, "Not when WE'RE the ones who are being winnowed out!" No one wants to believe that it could happen to THEM, but it is ok if it happens to all of those "other" people. Groups of folks huddled together do not produce survival techniques, they produce dependent hoardes that self-immolate. It is the way of things, and planning against it, shrieking against it, or trying to change it merely by a force of concentrated will simply doesn't work. Wild animals know it, but humans don't. Which is what makes it so entertaining to watch - from the sidelines. There's no rapture coming, no salvation for the innocent or the guilty - and the more one tries to run from, ignore, dispute, rail against, and hide from natural law, the more rapidly it approaches. I have a fatalistic viewpoint - stuff happens, one does what one can individually, and waits for the unpredictable yet inevitable. If I die, or if you die, or if billions die, it doesn't matter in the great scheme of things - it only matters personally when you're the one puking blood. None of us, no matter how many toys we collect, gets out of this alive - what matters is what we did while we were here. Shrug.
From the outspoken guy in the office, "If half of the poor people in overcrowded India and China would die out due to the flu, then global warming and deforestation would be decreased significantly"
Wouldn't the world be better off with 3 billion people than 6 billion?
Something I found fascinating in the History Channel's description of the Black Plague was that those in very rural Europe, who were poor and yet had little contact with the outside world, were able to stand on the sidelines and allow most of the pandemic to sweep right past them. They had always eked out a very meagre living on very meagre property, but simply because of their placement off of heavily traveled thouroughfares, were able to survive. As the richer and more well-traveled among them died out, they found their place in the recovering world as people who could provide food and other basics to the handfuls in the cities that survived, and many actually became quite wealthy.
They were the lucky ones though. There were also many small towns and villages that were completely wiped out by the plague because nobody had developed any of the natural defenses against diseases. Urban populations usually create pandemic diseases but the ones who survive the disease biologically speaking are much stronger than those who were able to escape it. Think about the Natives in the New World and their experience with small pox and other diseases spawned in Europe. It is unknown how many actually died from exposure to European diseases but its estimated in the millions. Basically just because you live in rural small towns does not necessarily make you any safer. But I am referring to real diseases, swine flu is a joke like SARS was.
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I think that pandemics, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, and natural as well as manmade disasters happen, not as a god's will to punish, but as a natural outcome of historical, chemical, physical laws that most of the human population tries to ignore or circumvent. (Of course to believe this, you have to believe in the god that I do - who started the world and who has to operate purely within the boundaries of natural law - and who really doesn't get involved in the minutiae of everyday or everycentury occurances.) Rather like trying to control the weather, mitigation always fails, because there are simply some things that people choose to ignore or figure into their survival calculations. When humans insisted on stopping the burnings of the underbrush and wanted everything to grow "naturally", what they did was produce a lot of combustible fuel for the inevitable massive fires to burn unchecked through their homes and communities. Trying to alter nature just makes nature more sneaky and stubborn, to breed superbugs, to produce pesticide resistant insects, to follow natural laws that humans, no matter how hard they try, cannot circumvent, no matter how many lawyers they hire. 
