Why did I choose plague? I chose it for
an incredibly sinister reason that is
based in science because I I am a
non-fiction author. Biological war
scenario is sold in the non-fiction
section.
The Soviets, and this is what Dr. Hine
told me part of the Soviets super plague
weapon they were working on is they
engineered into
the the Urcinia pestus bacteria a gene
for euphoria.
Stay with me here. You for you get
plague, you get flu, you get sick, you
go home and you get under the covers
>> and you do not infect as many people as
you would because
>> multitude. Yeah. [gasps and sighs]
>> They infected a gene for euphoria
because they wanted people to be if you
you have euphoria you you want to go to
a disco.
>> Wow. And when what Hine told me that
that really sort of freaked out the USA
doctors and scientists and said that is
straight up evil that you would actually
think that through and that's why I
chose that because I wanted it to have
an analogy in the real world.
>> So does yours have the euphoria thing?
>> Absolutely. It is genetically modified
to have euphoria. So the first 24 hours
people are spent euphoric and they only
essentially collapse into the disease
when the euphoria wears off and now
they're shedding
>> Mhm. [clears throat]
>> bacteria. They're infecting people like
nobody's business. And they've been at
places like discos.
>> Okay. So you got a bunch of happy people
dancing around. How does that
transmission chain begin in your book?
The transmission chain begins. I'm not
going to totally spoiler alert all my
plot points, but outbreak in in in
Siberia,
you happen to have a group of
international hunters
who come across a scientist.
When they get on their planes
to go home to five or six of the seven
continents
>> in a great mood,
>> in a fantastic mood. One of them shot a
wolf, you know, and uh there begins the
spreading.
>> I also have a scientist that goes to a
priest to confess what he's done and
a person there gets infected who is a
student at UCLA, gets on a plane and is
immediately in Los Angeles. So, the
outbreak, spoiler alert here, but this
you learned this pretty much in the
beginning. The outbreak happens in Los
Angeles in a homeless camp because I
learned from all the epidemiologists
that I work with that
the homeless population is so incredibly
dangerous to public health epidemics.
>> Why? [snorts]
After 9/11, the CDC created a nationwide
syndroic surveillance system called
Bioense.
So you have 7,000 more than 7,000
hospitals, urgent care facilities,
emergency rooms, ex feeding information
to the CDC in real time about an
outbreak so that an outbreak stops
before it becomes an epidemic, before it
becomes a pandemic.
>> America's 800,000 homeless people are
not part of that system.
All of the epidemiologists I talked to
spoke of their great fear about
transmission occurring in that kind of a
situation.
>> And Los Angeles is kind of ground zero
for that.
>> We have 75,000 homeless people. We have
4,000 homeless people on Skid Row with
no healthcare, with no facilities. No,
we're we're way past the time where
America could have just nuked the host
country.
>> We're at hour 24 36. Absolutely. I mean,
you know, containment is possible. You
could if you had if you had transparency
from the host nation, right? If Russia
had asked in my scenario,
>> it has to be done by them though. But
there's no time. You can't even get to
Russia in the amount of time you need to
contain it.
>> People in Russia.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Fair. Yeah, you you don't
have, you're right, the resources to be
able to uh galvanize
100,000 hazmat suit wearing special
forces people to go and say, "Hey, stay
in this area and you know, set up
barricades and and sentry checkpoints
and all that sort of stuff."
>> Although we actually do like if you
could contain something before it
balloons and becomes huge. And this is
the same in the United States. to take
the reader through once the outbreak
happens, you learn, you know, we have a
a a force or a it's called a CBRN
response force here in the United
States. Chem those are that's the WMD,
chemical, biological, radiological,
nuclear. They all train the same. We
have 18,000 individuals that are ready
to go at all times,
>> but they wouldn't that 18,000 people are
in America.
>> Yes.
>> So, it is on the host nation.
>> Yes,
>> it is on the host nation. And Russia has
those same their troops are called
Arabz. They have those troops too and
they could deploy them and they do and
that's what happens in the scenario once
we see they've deployed those troops. We
know but now it's too late.
>> Right. Right
>> now the cat's out of the bag.
>> Right. So speed from a containment
perspective from a from a a restriction
of how lethal this could be. Speed of
containment is
>> everything
>> paramount. Most
>> everything everything and it could be
stopped. And then you have the same
situation in the United States where it
could be stopped. But this is where we
get into your brilliant analogy which is
that no one trusts the system. And
that's where you see in the scenario
that I write everything breaks down. And
to have learned as I did that what
really
makes the defense department
extremely uneasy is not necessarily the
original outbreak but the secondary
effect of anarchy and insurrection that
happens in response. When does deilution
happen?
>> So in the scenario I write because we're
dealing with plague which is fast. It's
a fast killer.
>> I take the reader from outbreak
to anarchy in 6 days. That is how fast
it happens. And on day six we have
devolution. Devolution.
>> Okay. Okay. Well in that case we'll get
to that. Uh so homeless encampment LA
student UCLA student goes back.
LA is not great. densely populated.
>> He's a premed student and he does proono
work there at the at Skidro,
>> which is literally the worst place for
him to be
>> and he gives you know that's a super
spreader event. Those homeless camps are
super spreader events and that's what
happens.
>> What what are the contributing elements
or the characteristics of a super
spreader event? High density.
>> Yeah. Poor poor poor air flow,
>> right?
>> So you got you know tents. You have
pretty good airflow if you're in a
>> tent outdoor environment if you
[clears throat] under a bridge.
>> It's tents. It's inside tents. But more
than anything, what you have is a very
serious problem. First of all, you know,
you've got free clinics. I mean, I spent
quite a bit of time down on Skid Row
interviewing people about this. Um, and
you've got, you know, no public health
care. You've got long lines for these
free clinics. And you have first
responders. You have these brilliant
nurses and doctors who work down there.
a lot of them pro bono also diagnosing
people. You're trying to differentiate
between fentinol overdosing, you know,
tuberculosis,
flu, acute flu, real serious problems
that almost every homeless person has,
physical health problems with what looks
like a bad cold
>> and, you know, coughing up blood,
another, you know, mistaken for
alcoholism. So I take the reader through
the science of this so that you can
really see the close proximity of
alarmism and there's nothing wrong here
>> which everybody wants to do. They want
to reassure the populace. They want to
try and stave off the anarchy and the
civilizational
citizenry collapse. But also by doing
that you don't galvanize the sort of
response that you need to stop it from
happening. And when you do galvanize it,
what was really the most surprising to
me was that once on so once the defense
department goes from what's called war,
that's a warning order to exord, which
is execution order, right? That's like
get ready to go and go with guys in
biohazard suits to try to mitigate
damage. It's too late. It's too late.
And I was really stunned to learn that
at that point the pivot is not let's try
and protect the population. It's let's
we need to protect critical
infrastructure.
>> What does critical infrastructure
consist of?
>> Everything that keeps society running.
Roads, water systems, um of course
nuclear power plant, every single DoD
facility. And that's where those
initially the 18,000
SEAB burn forces in their suits and
their gas masks go and then the entire
defense department gets deployed. And
what's really shocking is again this is
not Annie's imagination. These are
wargaming
situations that are gamed out.
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