I’ve always been a fan of End of The World stories. My favorite style of these are called cosy catastrophes, in which the world’s population is dwindled down to just a handful of people who inevitably try to kill each other.
The Demon is the Freezer is not a cosy catastrophe, it’s the true story of the greatest killer in human history-Smallpox. Not as glamorous as Hantavirus or Ebola and saddled with a down right silly sounding name, Smallpox is a mind numbingly nasty bit of business whose sole job in life is to kill people in the most horrible ways imaginable.
The good news is that Smallpox no longer exists in nature. The bad news is that it is in the hands of mad scientists who want to study it. With modern gene splicing and a couple of specially designed ICBMs, the entire human race could be wiped out in a matter of weeks. There was a time when it was thought no one would every use a doomsday device, but those days are gone. There are way too many Apocalypse cults out there that are just waiting for the end of the of the world-so why not give it a little push?
The story of smallpox is one of triumph over nature and man’s overriding stupidity that he can control something like the world’s deadly disease by writing rules on who can study it and how they are to handle it. As with all laws, anyone who has the will to do so, can ignore them and do as they want. There are tales of Soviets breeding tons of smallpox to be used as weapons-and the scary bit is that after the fall of the USSR no one seems to know what happened to all that smallpox. A terrorist’s dream.
I was reminded of Agent Kay from Men in Black:There’s always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do… Not… Know about it!
I think we can safely add Smallpox to that list.
Sounds like an interesting read. I think I’ll suggest it to my book group.