PANDEMICS- Hostile Power Takeover? Learnings on Urban & Domestic Warfare, âDisease: Bacteria Part 1, Fundamental Considerationsâ:
Letâs say the hostile power is more technologically advanced & half robot/half machine or full machine, so seemingly unkillable. Organic beings are very vulnerable to having disease used as a weapon against them.
Disease can be a major benefit to this type of hostile power & it would be an incredibly powerful weapon. This allows the destruction of an organic-based domestic population & it can also allow the harvesting of resources to build new bodies and/or reuse of the entire body depending on the disease process.
There are many insidious ways diseases develop & spread. This process DOES NOT just occur in a laboratory. Remember that there are many different âgroupingsâ of entities we refer to as pathogens or things with the ability to cause disease.
Bacteria are an important one. Bacteria & other pathogens can reproduce by multiple means. Here Iâm going to speak about bacteria with the capacity to do Bacterial conjugation. This involves passing characteristic between two different bacteria similar to how sexual reproduction can pass on characteristics. This is overall an important conversation because a lot of the most complex & common life forms in our daily lives also spread these characteristics through similar principles through sexual reproduction.
> A lot of bacteria to our awareness are able to pass on characteristics. Bacterial DNA contains the âinstructionsâ/âresourcesâ for bacteria to either have or not have characteristics.
-Bacterial conjugation for example allows one bacteria to attach to a second bacteria & send resources to the second bacteria. After this process, the second bacteria is able to transform and display the characteristics transferred to it. Example: Bacteria A can change colors like a chameleon. Bacteria B cannot change color. Once Bacteria A attaches to Bacteria B and they are compatible, Bacteria A passes on resources to Bacteria B. Bacteria B then acquires the ability to change color. Bacteria B now can change color & has attainted the same advantage as originally only bacteria A had. Now Bacteria A and Bacteria B can change color like a chameleon.
- The other way characteristics form & occur in a bacterial population is through mutation. If a bacteriaâs DNA is altered or mutates then it can produce a bacteria with new traits & characteristics. Radiation for example, like from X-rays, often causes mutations. Sometimes mutations do ânothingâ we can really perceive with our eyes. But overtime, they will eventually create large changes and can produce huge benefits for bacteria. For example: A bacteria could have always have been wiped out from nuclear weapons then overtime from mutations it can acquire the ability to survive living inside an area with nuclear radiation.
-This is a very important concept to fully understand so that you can become cognizant of how insidious this process is when discussing what bioterrorism in the modern world can look like. Pandemics are not caused just from mysterious lab leaks. The practices we do everyday are still contributing to the next pandemic occurring.
-This also gives everyone a better understanding of how MRSA or an antibiotic resistant bacteria really was âmadeâ inside our hospitals.
> Bacteria can possibly have random or genetically engineered characteristics.
-If there are 100 random bacteria on an isolated surface that formed there naturally, some will have favorable characteristics to cause severe disease. But, some bacteria will not have those characteristics to cause severe disease. The bacteria lacking these deadly characteristics, but are still part of the same family of bacteria, would be considered weaker pathogens (weaker pathogen meaning they would cause less severe disease in organic beings).
-**But it is important to remember, If someone purposefully put bacteria down on a surface there is a chance it will not be a random distribution in strength of bacteria & they will mostly all be bacteria with strong characteristics. That group would probably be closer to 100 out of 100 of the bacteria carrying the deadly characteristic.**
>There are 2 main basic premises (which can be further subdivided and added onto when discussing what makes pathogens strong, but for now Iâm discussing a more fundamentals explanation) we consider when determining bacterial pathogen strength: number of bacteria & the amount of deadly/harmful characteristics each bacteria possess.
-Reducing the overall number of bacteria in a group of random bacteria does not always mean you make a pathogen less strong. (Example: Purposefully killing 50 bacteria out of 100 and now there are only 50 bacteria in the group.)
If you destroy many of the weaker bacteria & only leave strong bacteria to reproduce, pathogens overtime can get stronger & more deadly. So, by destroying only the weaker bacteria in a group of bacteria, you slowly make pathogens stronger through this natural process & it doesnât have to occur inside of a laboratory. To make a bacterial pathogen less strong by focusing on decreasing the overall number of those bacteria that exist in our world, you would also have to consider how many of each strength you eliminate. This is because we currently we do not use practices that wipe out groups of bacteria 100%, so we must consider these two elements together instead of separate when evaluating pathogen strength. Example: Lets say there are 100 bacteria and you wipe out 90. Bacteria A can cause humans to be paralyzed. Bacteria B cannot paralyze humans. Out of the 10 bacteria still alive, if all 10 are Bacteria A then you have eliminated the chance people would be infected with the less severe version of the disease, with Bacteria B. In the long term Bacteria A now has a strong chance to reproduce & when Bacteria A infects people it would then cause paralysis in everyone & the population could collapse. In another scenario, consider if you wiped out 90 bacteria out of 100, but you did it purposefully. Out of the 10 bacteria left, 9 were Bacteria that were Bacteria B & couldnât cause paralysis. The last 1 out of the 10 left was Bacteria A. Then when those 10 bacteria reproduced it effectively helps âdiluteâ this negative characteristic in this bacterial family. Based off randomness & probability, when there this group reproduces to the size of 20 bacteria only approximately 2 of them may carry Bacteria Aâs paralytic characteristic & 18 will carry bacteria Bâs characteristic that does not cause paralysis. So, even though we canât stop the bacteria number from growing, since we mindfully intervened we can still divert the trajectory of the pathogen from becoming a pathogen with the ability to become âpandemic levelâ and/or very very harmful.
>Two ways pathogens can get weaker is by lowering the amount of bacteria in the world & by lowering its severe disease characteristics, but this these two categories have an important interplay.
-This is an oversimplified explanation of how disease spreads & evolves, but the fundamental principles are VERY important to the overall understanding of whatâs occurring. Imagine a group of bacteria you count has 100 total bacteria. 50 of them carry a gene to cause paralysis in humans & 50 do not carry this gene. When 100 people come in contact with the 50/50 bacteria distribution and get sick only 50 out of 100 of the people get paralyzed. This allows the other 50 people time to work on vaccinations & interventions to stop everyone from eventually being paralyzed.
-But, if you kill the 50 out of the 100 bacteria that do not carry the gene for paralysis then your bacteria group went from 100 to a total of 50 in size. In the short term the spread of the disease is likely to go down, as it is less likely people will randomly spread 50 objects instead of 100. BUT, those 50 bacteria with the gene to cause paralysis will only reproduce with other bacteria that also have that gene. So this bacteria, since you wiped out the 50 that donât cause paralysis, now ALL cause paralysis & anyone who comes in contact with this bacteria strain will get paralyzed. So eventually with time the group of 50 bacteria will reproduce to 100 & spread at the same rate as they were originally, but now they cause more harm to people.
>When you unknowingly touch a colony of bacteria on an object or life form, you pick up a random sample of random âstrengthâ of bacteria.
>****PLEASE READ: you can ALSO pickup a sample of bacteria that is all âstrong bacteriaâ but this is NOT usually a natural occurrence you will see & is suggestive someone or something altered the bacteria and purposefully put those bacteria there. A group of bacteria that looks like it formed organically vs one that was purposefully placed there can be differentiated with taking samples of surfaces and people & counting how many strong bacteria vs weak bacteria there are, but we as a population do not regularly test for this in this way. Due to this Iâm going to speak with the viewpoint of natural bacteria groups that have a gradient of âstrengthsâ. In an ideal world we would identity groups of bacteria that have gradients of strength of bacteria vs groups of all similar strength, as interventions to stop them from becoming strong pathogens work DIFFERENTLY.)
>After you touch those bacteria they attempt to multiply and stay alive on you. Then if you touch other things they can be placed on another surface or thing. Sometimes they are placed on other surfaces in an environment or you touch your body & they are placed closer to an entrance to the inside or your body & then they are able to enter your body.
-This process will cause one of the following to occur: bacteria will stay in the area you touched & colonize it, they will die when attempting to enter the body, the bacteria will give you a disease , or in some cases the bacteria will live symbiotically inside you & help your body. If a bacteria lives symbiotically with you & does not cause harm then we do not refer to that as a pathogen, but rather just as a bacteria.
>Anytime you wipe out a group of bacteria by taking out 100% it causes that pathogen to get weaker overall, but the issue is that we do not do interventions that wipe out 100%.
-Currently anytime you clean an object in the hospital with a sanitizing wipe, you always kill less than 100% of the bacteria. This leaves behind a certain % of bacteria & they will be the strongest of that group of bacteria, because they were able to live even though you applied a cleaning product on them. This means the strongest bacteria left, even though there are less after cleaning, are now reproducing over and over again & getting stronger.
-So, when there is an environment with a large amount of bacteria variability (so all these new patients with new exposures to new bacteria that travel and touch things all the time), with shared equipment, with not 100% effective methods to destroy pathogens, & this long list of variables, we slowly produce very strong & deadly pathogens inside of hospitals.
-IF someone purposefully puts deadly bacteria ontop of a surface inside a hospital and it is a group of 100 strong & identical or cloned bacteria with no difference in genetics then wiping them out through imperfect cleaning will overall reduce pathogen deadliness. This is because there are no âstrongerâ pathogens vs âweakerâ pathogens. They are all the same strength in this example and therefore will always get weaker when you reduce their number because they wonât reproduce to be more deadly.
>People often think when people are trying to cause them harm that would only occur when someone makes a pathogen in a lab & then deceptively goes and places some near you. This is not accurate.
-With knowing this do you see how for a hostile power there is actually LESS incentive to going through with all that work & instead a hostile power can abuse the system to cause harm? If you expect biological warfare to ONLY come out of a lab, this means you would be looking for the wrong patterns of behavior & pathogens will spiral out of control.
A lot of practices we currently use now unfortunately heavily contribute to this process that causes pathogens to get stronger.
