Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Cosmetic Shift

I'm sitting here watching "Doomsday" on DVD and I realize, wow, we actually, with today's arrival of my Woot-bought home theater system, have a pretty kick-ass multimedia/entertainment system!

And then, obviously influenced by watching the movie, this question pops into my head, and I realize, while it's a great question, it also might make a cool idea for a book/movie:

What if there were an airborne pandemic; symptoms started out with quick, painful death but mutated, once about 75% of population had been wiped out (virus survival mechanism kicking in?). Switch to only outcome of disease is basically making every human uglier according to dominant species standards (perhaps severe and constant skin rashes and discoloration, and severe acne, or something similar that did not affect physiology or physical abilities in any other way). No cure or inoculation can be found.

A universal cosmetic shift in human appearance, in other words.

How would uninfected humans react to that 2nd stage of the virus? How extreme might the measures still taken to halt the virus, quarantine those infected, go? How many would die, be systematically killed, in the name of stopping an infection that simply changed our appearance? Would it simply be better to let the virus infect all? Could you make such a decision?

Now back to the movie and my beer...