Chuck Baron: A Short Story

It was never supposed to get this bad. A few cases but never like this. Dead line the streets and the biggest question in the city is “Who is next?”. It started out small, this awful plague, but now almost everyone I know has either been infected or has died. I walk down the streets and groaning and moaning are emanating from the houses. Wheelbarrows full of people wheel through town. Everything seems so surreal but my mission had to be the most important thing right now. I had to get water to my brother, who is infected

Infectious epidemics and pandemics have happened all through mankind's history. “They remain the prime cause of death worldwide and will not be conquered during our lifetimes.” The flu of 1918 was one of the deadliest epidemics in history. “It infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide–about one-third of the planet’s population at the time–and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic.” No one knew how the virus spread, there were no antibiotics to fight it, and no flu shots to prevent it. In the final year of World War I, it struck terror in the hearts of people all across Europe and left more death in its wake than the combined military actions of the combatants. “It killed more Americans in a few months than World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the

     When the satellite crashes to Earth, the special team of four people that the government had previously selected, was called to this building. They had samples of the organism, which was found by other people at the crash site sent to the building. They were going to use this sample to research the organism. They hoped to find out what it was and how it killed all of the people who lived in the small town in Arizona. Everything was going well with the research, until the virus started eating through plastic containers and the sterile suits that the workers were wearing. After time, almost all of the workers who were in the building had been killed by this virus. The only person that lived out of the five people who were on the selected team was Mark Hall.

She was the nicest girl in the world. I also had the best swim coach and she shared the same birthday with me. Mrs. Tessena was my first grade teacher and she really liked me because she had my brother in her class. Things in Ohio were

nicest and sweetest lady you could ever meet. We eventually became really close and she

These symptoms were treatable and no one though nothing of it when they were gone. In fact, when the disease began, many health professionals had dismissed the disease as the common cold. And when the disease came about and was discovered. It was being treated as a bacteria and not a virus. This made the treatment and finding a vaccination difficult as it was not being classified in the appropriate areas. This made it difficult to prevent because a disease of this nature at its critical stage is able to be airborne and the masked used to "prevent" the disease was permeable enough to allow the virus to pass through it and infect an individual. It grew to be more aggressive as it turned a victims skin blue and inflamed ones lungs with fluid. At the height of the disease's susceptibility, The life span for both gender in the nation plummeted near a decade.

Pandemics have been recorded throughout history taking the life of virtually anything in its path. A pandemic is defined as a widespread disease crossing international borders with a high death count. The first ever recorded pandemic was The Peloponnesian War Pestilence. The Peloponnesian War Pestilence is dated to be around the years 430 B.C.E. It took place during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens, this excessive pestilence killed an estimation of over 30,000 of Athens’s citizens. The most recent pandemic record was the Influenza AH1N1 virus strain in 2009. The H1N1 virus was later globally spread taking 17,000 lives by August 2010 when it was officially declared to be over. Pandemics have been

The third and final wave of this lethal killer came in the spring of 1919. Although this mutation was less deadly than its predecessor, it still devastated communities as it continued to add to the death toll. This outbreak was responsible for taking away ten years from the average life expectancy of a person, kept people in a constant panic, and “In its wake, the pandemic would leave about twenty million dead across the world. In America alone, about 675,000 people in a population of 105 million would die from the disease.3” Governments and private organizations both scrambled to find a cure and in 1918 they believed they might have found the source of the virus to be a bacteria rather than a virus. They operated under that assumption until

We had a good time and she seems to be doing well. She told me that she started an "adult transition school" and is learning life skills and doing volunteer work with her class. She said that her class volunteered at Walgreens stocking shelves recently. My beautiful Abbie was so sick with the flu and a fever this past week, but is doing better now. My Gracie pie is working hard and Carla and I were suppose to FaceTime her the other night, but Carla has been so sick with a bad cold this week (she is doing a lot better today) that we weren't able to call her and hope that we can call her

He looked so calm but I knew he was as scared as me. It wouldn’t take long for the infected to reach us we had to hurry. Hold on a moment I better at least tell you who I am. I’m Kennith Rennell but everyone just calls me Ken. This is my version of what happened to me and my friends Mattie Day and Joyce Carlyle following October 26 year 2050. Over the last few months Matt and I had been working on a vaccine for the corrupt cancer known as G-23. After intense research we found that we could only make a vaccine.

The killer didn't bother respond to the woman's final message, and instead, continued with his research. It didn't take long to discover more about Vivian; her date and place of birth, previous residences, schooling grades, college applications and employment history, and the deeper he, the more he was encouraged that indeed she was who and what she said.

Mark Shepard was a fantastic investigator-- best in the biz’, so to speak. However, his cadence in relation to matters of the law made him a terrible detective. But the Phoenix City Police Department was lucky to have him, because he was one of the few people on the force that would take on a superhuman without even blinking. Maybe he had balls, maybe he had a death wish- all he knew was the job.

One of those things being how quickly they were able replicate the vaccine (Bhat). According to Raymond Zilinskas, “There is much to appreciate about Contagion from a public health perspective. When the movie's CDC scientists explain the nature and course of the virus, we understand; the mechanisms of person-to-person infection clearly described, and visual models demonstrating the spread of MEV-1 by day and then week are realistic and appropriately frightening. The movie depicts, the panic that grows worldwide in a way that he thinks reflects what actually would happen in a real-life situation. The movie dramatically portrays how a vicious pandemic could shred society: health systems are overloaded, food supplies runs out, and transportation systems collapse. All of these effects are plausible. Yet far from everything in Contagion is believable: officials take nonsensical decisions, the uses of biomedical science are unrealistic, and the portrayal of public health operations is incomplete” (Zilinskas). The film also exaggerated the speed at which MEV-1 spreads and is considered implausible. Just five days after the index case is infected, the “WHO” is already aware of a budding pandemic, and at Day 8 the CDC estimates as many as 267,000 people are infected worldwide. For a real-life comparison, SARS was first detected in Guangdong Province, China, on November 16, 2002—but not identified; nearly three

Chuck Greene was a man of many talents. Whether it be combing strange objects to create stranger weapons, defeating hordes of infected humans throughout a mall setting, or appearing in a dress meant for a mid-20’s lady, it didn’t matter. No talent, however, came close to the love and devotion reserved for his daughter.

the epidemic, about 34 million people were infected. In the year 2001 alone, there were