A dystopian novel which almost writes itself?

Monday-Wednesday blog

Unfortunately I don’t have any talents as a novelist. If I did, here’s a dystopian novel which is so likely that it could probably be knocked out in a few weeks by even a moderately-talented writer as it almost writes itself.

Let’s start this dystopian novel with a real event.

The WEF and ‘Disease X’

This week, from 15th to 19th January, the 54th meeting of World Economic Forum (WEF) – its annual jamboree for the rich, famous and powerful – will take place in Davos. The theme of this year’s knees-up is ‘Rebuilding Trust’ and apparently 200 sessions will be livestreamed so we useless eaters can see that nothing nefarious is being planned against us by our rulers.

One of the sessions is titled ‘Preparing for Disease X’. The WEF blurb explains: ‘With fresh warnings from the World Health Organization that an unknown “Disease X” could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic, what novel efforts are needed to prepare healthcare systems for the multiple challenges ahead?’

What this means is that research labs around the world will launch programmes to identify viruses which exist in nature and could spill over into humans and these labs will muck around with these viruses often making them more potent. This will be done supposedly to prepare medical procedures – probably vaccinations – so, if a virus spillover does occur, treatments can quickly be developed.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, for a start, often this work will be done in corrupt countries in often unhygienic, dirty, badly-run labs. And secondly, most technical and scientific developments have both a civilian and military application.

This is the starting point for our dystopian novel – an actual event.

But before we get onto the plot, we just need to provide some context by looking at fatality rates – what % of the population is killed – by previous pandemics

Previous pandemic fatality rates

The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of the European population, as well as approximately 33% of the population of the Middle East.

The 1918 Spanish Flu only killed around 50 million people – 0.6% of the world’s population at the time.

(Incidentally, if my memory serves me correctly, the Spanish Flu actually originated in a US army training camp. But when wartime censors in the belligerent countries suppressed bad news to maintain morale, newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain, creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to the “Spanish flu” misnomer.)

(Another useless fact about the Spanish Flu. During the 2019-2022 Covid pandemic, Australia was heavily criticised for isolating the country. However, during the 1918 Spanish Flu, Australia had a vey low death toll precisely because the Austrlaian government islolated the country requiring all arriving vessels to quarantine offshore to ensure no passengers or crew members were infected.)

If Covid-19 has killed say 7 million. Then that’s just under 0.1% of the world population.

Now back to our dystopian novel.

To be a real threat, a new virus – ‘Disease X’ – needs to have two main qualities. It needs to be highly infectious and it needs a reasonable fatality rate. To be highly infectious, something which can be transmitted through the air by coughing, sneezing and even breathing would be good. As for fatality rates – anything with the potential to kill say 5% of the world’s population would be pretty effective.

For dramatic effect, it would be great if ‘Disease X’ in our dystopian novel killed people by say haemorrhagic fever (like Ebola and, I think, the Spanish Flu) – have them coughing up and drowning in their own blood – or else by destroying their central nervous system.

Now for our novel, let’s assume that a lab somewhere does manage to develop a highly-infectious, 5%-fatality-rate virus and that this little beauty does escape either through negligence or else even through being released by some disgruntled employee.

Fortunately, using the ‘brilliant’ new mRNA technology, a vaccine which is partially effective in preventing death from the virus is developed in only around a few months. Unfortunately there is only sufficient production and vaccination capacity for around 10% of the population. Naturally, these vaccines are given out to politicians, government officials and the rich, famous and influential. We plebs are not considered worth protecting.

The violence starts

As ordinary people start to see their family members sicken (and in some cases even die) from ‘Disease X’, social order begins to break down:

• there are riots as mobs demand vaccinations
• deliveries of vaccines are looted and so have to be guarded by armed soldiers
• some deliveries are hijacked by their military guards as they’re not willing to see their families die while they protect vaccines for the rich and powerful
• soon hospitals and other medical facilities are being attacked and looted as furious mobs search for any vaccines being stored there

The rumours run wild

Next come the phase of wild rumours. These include:

• One rumour is that, as the vaccines are based on the miracle new mRNA technology, they alter the genes of the vaccinated protecting them against serious illness from ‘Disease X’. This means that the unvaccinated believe they can gain some protection by injecting themselves with the blood of people who have been vaccinated. Violent mobs begin attacking houses in rich neighbourhoods on the assumption that people there will have been vaccinated. The rich are strung up and their throats cut while they are still alive so their blood can be pumped out by their still beating hearts and collected to be injected by the unvaccinated
• Another rumour is that different ethnic groups are getting a disproportionate share of the vaccines. For example, Muslims are told that due to Islamophobia Hindus are getting more than their fair share of vaccines while the Muslim community is being starved of the vaccines. Angry Muslim mobs begin attacking Hindu areas destroying shops and homes and killing many Hindus. In retaliation, Hindus start forming defence groups which attack Muslim areas and we have widespread race riots across all our main cities. Already overwhelmed by anarchy on Britain’s streets, the police and military are powerless to intervene Thousands are killed.
• Profiting from the breakdown in law and order, criminal gangs run riot robbing, looting, raping and murdering knowing there are no authorities to stop them.

How it all ends?

Who knows? Eventually martial law is declared. There are curfews every night. Anyone breaking the curfews is either arrested or just shot. Britain has turned into military dictatorship. More people die in the societal breakdown and chaos than are killed by ‘Disease X’.

And for this, we should all give thanks to the wonderful members of the World Economic Forum who deliberately funded the development of ‘Disease X’ in order to save us from ‘Disease X’.

But, of course, these are just the rantings of a failed novelist. These events could never happen in real life.