I haven’t experienced this phenomenon in SA much. I also sense a bit of cynicism in this regard on this forum. (I steer clear of MyBroadband!)
So I guess it’s more of a western (rich) world phenomenon?
Nothing like survival to get your attention.
Came here looking for the burney stuff you put in food.
/leaves disappointed.
Must be the silent R 
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Think I’ve told this story before … a new version.
Once read a novel, or two three, about a virus that starts popping up in the fringe media. Disassociated reports, nothing tangible. Google Analytics shows a telling picture.
A little while later, more and more reports of this new virus, reports of areas people are dying in droves. Mainstream media hardly notices. Google Analytics, prepper sites etc, internet, “blows up”.
Sometime later, WHO gets involved, and shiite hits the fan properly. Main media is in a frenzy. Worldwide panic sets in.
Back to real life, I saw fringe reports one Nov/Dec about an obscure virus in China, the same as in the novels. By Jan/Feb told the wife, mmm, interesting, were living the novels, ha ha ha I lauhged. By March I told the wife, lovey, let’s play “Prepper Prepper” just for fun? She was game all the way.
3 days later, lockdown.
The joke is, in the novels, the authors nailed it to a T bar the 80%+ death rate. And when one goes back to one novel that caught one’s attention at the time and reads the bio, one discovers the author is a female, a Colonel, a scientist working in a lab for USAMRIID, involved in planning for “What if”, and she writes novels about her work for fun.
Conclusion I came to, Prepping and Preppers, I don’t think it is a stupid idea to think about what if, and what one would do if ever something happens again.
BUT, each one is on their own. There is not a chance in @(#&*%$& that people will agree even just talking about it, less in real life IF it really happens.
O, and when groups do agree, it can lead to way over the top. Sweeping each other up into a frenzy.
O, one thing novelists like to write about, “one is none and two is one”.
One reads that one-liner repeated in novel after novel, maybe thinks about it for a moment, sees the costs, and parks the idea.
Yeah, I did that.
Until recently when my one inverter started having a problem.
Walking the talk on Prepping, it is expensive and rather complex.
Station Eleven is a REALLY good TV show about living through such a global event. Think it’s on Showmax now. Need to pay attention though, it gets complicated 
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We started watching it.
Find the books more intense, and detailed.
Most series/movie ideas came from authors. If a novel grabs a producer’s fancy, it can become a movie/series.
Just like this one:
Deon Meyer has a book called “Koors”, also translated into Dutch as “Koorts” and English as “Fever”.
Similar story line. Except here (spoiler alert!) it turns out by the end of the book that the entire thing was engineered to reduce the world population, and our protagonist and his son survived only because one of the conspirators gave them the antidote beforehand. Then he goes off to live with the woman (his mother) who caused all the grief…
It was a good story, but man did the ending feel like a cop-out. And the lead character (the upstanding stoic secular all-knowing guy who starts the new community) and then painting the priest/pastor character as bad started working on my nerves after a while… too Dan Brown-ish. Still, good story overall.
Koors, did not grab me, got about halfway, and gave up.
Novels that make me wonder is when some scientist on a mission tampers with stuff like Ebola (fill in any other really bad virus) and the thing gets away from them, accidentally or on purpose.
Then sometimes I quietly ponder on all the labs all over the world, Gov and/or military-funded, some big private ones, some we don’t know about, creating really bad things so that they can find a cure, learn, understand, test, or that some assume their enemies are crafting bad things, so keep one step ahead.
That “wargames” are played all the time in meeting rooms, anticipating the worst of the worst.
Most of the time I consider not thinking about it anymore. As “they” say, it is all fiction.
Then I think “the truth sometimes is stranger than fiction”.
Yup, the “gain of function” and “lab leak” theories. Possible. The question in these discussion is how plausible it is. Does it fit the facts? Hard to say when you’re a continent away and they are not exactly letting foreigners into help investigate.
Of course it is true that scientists ARE genetically modifying viruses in order to induce mutations and to try and get ahead of the thing. So all of this has grounding in objective reality. But you still need to prove that that is what actually happened in the most recent case.
And once you’ve done that, you need to prove that it was deliberate and malicious.
In the most recent case, one particularly glaring problem is that we cannot figure out where the thing came from. If it was a lab leak, if it was an experimental thing that got out, we should be able to figure out it’s lineage fairly easily. This latest one… closest they got was 86%… to one normally seen in bats. Or something like that.
It does not sound like much, but 86% is a terrible match. Human beings and Chimps are way closer to one another, and as we know… that few percent makes a heck of a lot of difference!
But mostly in all of this, I think of what CS Lewis wrote about your enemies (granted, this was during a war):
Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
And that is why, when given the option of the juicier version of the story that makes “them” look bad, vs the more boring variant that makes us all look stupid… I tend to side with the latter.
But it is all a matter of philosophy in the end.
Yeah, that part, alluded to that already. Slippery slope as CS Lewis pointed out, and humans are prone to slip at times.
Like parent/s with kids who are extremely desperate, they come across a family also with kids that have resources but not enough to share. If they share, they have less of a chance. If they don’t share, the desperate people will get more desperate.
Philosophical conundrum, yes, that goes out the door when you are desperate.
Jip, and that far with your comment about “when you’re a continent away and they are not exactly letting foreigners in to help investigate.”
When a virus jumps from animals to humans, sometimes it can really bad, until immunity is reached, or a vaccine/cure.
When a virus jumps from humans to animals. Not that bad for humans, maybe sometimes for food production. Can be kinda controlled.
But when a virus jumps from animals to humans, then jumps back to animals in the wild, heaven forbid years later it jumps back to humans having mutated some more. We prefer to hope it mutates out of existence.
Why is it bad some may wonder, because when it jumps the barriers, the side it lands in, has no immunity at that moment, so the virus can mutate, and get much worse, or not.
By the time we learn that it is really bad, like from wild animals to humans, sometimes it can be too late for some of us.
It strikes me that there’s a cult around this topic.
The cult has actually become the topic…
I once met an American in a bar in some way out US state (Nevada comes to mind)
He was hooked on turning back the clock and getting everyone back to riding horses: Automobiles were the problem and we needed to dispense with them and get back to our roots.
I don’t know if this also became a cult and attracted a following 
No need to start another thread!
Do you think that the ‘p’ word could be used as the name of a RE group (much like this one) I’m thinking that it might be a good one since here in SA it’s not quite the emotive word it is in the rich world.
I’m wanting to start a Whatsapp group in the peninsula that the locals can discuss their challenges in surviving load shedding and whatever else…
Kind of easy access for the locals…