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‘Most Destructive Pathogen Ever’ Has Created Zombie-Like Apocalypse for World’s Amphibians
‘Most Destructive Pathogen Ever’ Has Created Zombie-Like Apocalypse for World’s Amphibians
“If it were a human pathogen, it’d be in a zombie film.”
A fungal disease which humans have helped to spread among amphibians has led to the decline of 500 species over the past 50 years. (Photo: Centophobia/Flickr/cc)
A terrifying new study details the havoc being wrought by what scientists call “the most destructive pathogen ever” recorded on earth, finding that with help from unwitting humans a “silent killer” has caused major declines of frogs, salamanders, and hundreds of other amphibian species.
Chytridiomycosis, or chytrid fungus, has killed off 90 species over the past 50 years while leading to huge losses of 501 kinds of frogs, toads, salamanders, and other amphibians, according to researchers from a number of worldwide universities. Nearly 125 of those species have declined by at least 90 percent due to the rapid spread of the pathogen.
“We’ve known that chytrid’s really bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was, and it’s much worse than the previous early estimates.” —Ben Scheele, ecologist
The report, published in Science on Thursday, offers disturbing new information about a disease which scientists first detected in 1998—but whose power they didn’t grasp until now.
“We’ve known that chytrid’s really bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was, and it’s much worse than the previous early estimates,” Ben Scheele, an ecologist at Australian National University and lead author of the study, told National Geographic.
Chytrid fungus kills amphibians by eating away the skin of its hosts, leaving amphibians unable to breathe and quickly going into cardiac arrest. The pathogen is easily spread and rapidly destructive to the 695 species it infects.
“If it were a human pathogen, it’d be in a zombie film,” biologist Dan Greenberg told National Geographic.
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Collapse Is Already Here
Collapse Is Already Here
It’s a process, not an event.
Many people are expecting some degree of approaching collapse — be it economic, environmental and/or societal — thinking that they’ll recognize the danger signs in time.
As if it will be completely obvious, like a Hollywood blockbuster. Complete with clear warnings from scientists, politicians and the media. And everyone can then get busy either panicking or becoming the plucky heroes.
That’s not how collapse works.
Collapse is a process, not an event.
And it’s already underway, all around us.
Collapse is already here.
However, unlike Hollywood’s vision, the early stages of collapse cause people to cling even tighter to the status quo. Instead of panic in the streets, we simply see more of the same — as those in power do all they can to remain so, while the majority of the public attempts to ignore the growing problems for as long as it possibly can.
For both the elite and the majority, their entire world view and their personal sense of self depends on things not crumbling all around them, so they remain willfully blind to any evidence to the contrary.
When faced with the predicaments we warn about here at PeakProsperity.com, getting an early start on prudently shifting your own personal situation is of vital strategic and tactical importance. Tens of thousands of our readers already have taken wise steps in their lives to position themselves resiliently.
But most of the majority won’t get started until it’s entirely too late to make any difference at all. Which is sad but perhaps unavoidable, given human nature.
If everybody around you is saying “Everything is awesome!”, it can take a long time to determine for yourself that things in fact aren’t:
Real collapse happens slowly, and often without any sort of acknowledgement by the so-called political and economic elites until its abrupt terminal end.
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