Quote:
Originally Posted by LongGun1
|
It isn't a question of if but of when.
Spanish Flu example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic
The pandemic lasted from June 1918 to December 1920,[3] spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.[4][5][6][7][8] Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (1.86 billion at the time[9]) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27% (≈1/4), were infected.[5]
============
If 3% of the population died in today's world of 7 billion, that would be 210 million killed and 1.89 billion infected.
Note that no part of the world was unaffected.
There are a few things that will make it worse this time around - more international travel, today's modern communication and 24hr cable fear mongers, just in time inventories and the breakdown of the family will make things worse this time.