Imagine we're in another pandemic, and the disease has been deliberately engineered

to be more contagious and way more lethal than COVID-19.

That's right, it's a man-made pandemic, and the virus is so deadly, it kills roughly half the

people that infects. So if you and your spouse catch it, at least one of you will probably die,

and maybe you both will. Likewise, any other duo, you and your best friend, you and your kid,

the President and Vice President, and an uncontrollable outbreak is underway. Next, imagine this

outbreak sweeping through a power plant. Did the lights stay on? With half the staff dead or dying

and the other half thinking they're next? And if the power goes out, how do we reach the internet?

And with no internet, how do we find out, well, practically anything that we need to know to

navigate this unprecedented existential threat? Now imagine you're a frontline worker,

at the power plant, or caring for the sick, or delivering food. People are getting wiped out at

50 to 100 times the rate of COVID. It's a coin toss as to whether you'll survive if you get sick.

Do you report to work? Or do you hunker down with your loved ones at home?

Until you all get really hungry? Supply chains disintegrate in situations like this.

The grocery store is that actually opens, sell out, not just out of toilet paper,

then they don't get restocked. And pretty much everything else disintegrates too.

For all of its horror, COVID hasn't shut down the power, the water, law enforcement, or the flow

of information. But something this lethal could just shut them all down. And while you may be

more imaginative than I am, I just can't picture civilization surviving and encounter with something

this deadly. And the problem is, we're on a collision course with some version of this scenario.

Hi, I'm Rob Reed. And I've been worried about artificially modified viruses for a few years now.

My background is that I'm a long-time tech entrepreneur who went on to become a writer.

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