Fear the Walking Dead

[Zouji]

The problem with a fast spreading contagion is that you may never find the point of origin while the contagion is active. It takes a LOT of records to identify the source of an outbreak if it is widespread.

So the people on the ground and maybe even the CDC in the show didn't know where it came from.

The best thing about these shows is that the Zombie (whatever contagion) can show you a potential model of a disease spread (at least at the beginning). Once enough people have died due to the contagion the number of people that will get said contagion diminishes as the population thins out. Granted like the Zombies eating survivors a super contagion will kill a great many survivors simply due to the collapse of the infrastructure. Tuberculosis, Typhoid, and Dysentery, would probably make a BIG comeback in that world.

Also the next massive die off of humanity probably won't come from wars, but from a man made pathogen that escapes a lab somewhere. That thought should give you pleasant dreams at night.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979_article">http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979_article</a><!-- m -->

An estimated one third of the world's population (or ≈500 million persons) were infected and had clinically apparent illnesses (1,2) during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. The disease was exceptionally severe. Case-fatality rates were >2.5%, compared to <0.1% in other influenza pandemics (3,4). Total deaths were estimated at ≈50 million (5–7) and were arguably as high as 100 million (7).