For my triumphant return, after having a small bout with a cold, I am bring you guys the 5 scariest infectious diseases.
5. Meningitis
You might have seen the commercials that have talked about the vaccine for this quick killer, but why does it make it on to my top 5 list? Speed of death, pain of death, and an altered mental state. Without treatment the bacterial, parasitic, and fungal forms of this will 100% kill you within 72 hours leaving you in a horrible altered mental state due to brain and spinal cord swelling. The last thing you'll feel when you contract this killer is a ungodly painful stiff neck and huge horrible blood sack rashes on your body. Did I mention even with early treatment there is a 10% chance of death and a 30% chance of losing a limb.
Even with that said Meningitis only effects around 3,000 Americans a year, there is a vaccine for it that is safe and works well that is getting out to many of those who would be effected. This bad boy will probably be stomped out with the next generation of high school students in places where it is mandatory to get the Vaccine.
4. The Pneumonic Plague
I know what your saying "I've heard of the bubonic plague but whats the Pneumonic Plague?". It essentially causes pneumonia, but kills quicker and spreads faster then any other. Now even though plague is easily treatable if you know which strain you have the fact, that YOU DIE BY DROWNING, from your lungs filling up with mucus, just because you decided to sleep your cold off.
Like I said before, it can be treated if you go to the hospital and if you are of European descent (specifically going back to the 18th and 19th centuries, the odds are you have some natural immunity to the plague. Though the scare factor really is all in the fact it spreads fast, kills fast, and the cause of death.
3. Ebola
Once you get this your goose is cooked. Ebola is a 100% chance of death no matter what. First you get a fever, then you start to get light headed, then you bleed through your pores and die of extreme hemorrhaging (bleeding to death).
This one may sound very scary, but alas it does not spread fast, which is what keeps it away from the top 2 spots.
2. Smallpox
I could do a top 10 reasons this harbinger of doom is scary. Smallpox, is incredibly deadly, fast spreading, has the scare factor to death, and to top it off it may be, being engineered as a weapon even as we speak. That's right, it could be mutated into the most deadly biological WMD ever. Samples of biologically re-engineered Smallpox may have been stolen and it could very well appear, and destroy civilization as we know it.
Okay one thing I didn't mention is smallpox is pretty much extinct as we know it, and those missing samples from the Soviet Russia, were probably destroyed so when international forces came in they wouldn't find out about the biological weapons program. Still a scary thought when you think about the possibility.
1. Influenza
You may be laughing at me for including this. In all honesty I have to. Influenza hasn't changed much over thousands of years, but it has stayed around and stayed strong, with the same potency and evolving with the natural course of humanity. If Influenza were to evolve rapidly it could take on the dominate traits of any of the other diseases I mentioned. Every time a new strain of the flu comes about people fear it will evolve, with good reason. Millions of people become infected with flu in the United States every year. If a new deadlier strain were to come out, it would be game over.
Though it hasn't evolved to become extremely deadly...yet.
