{"id":17778,"date":"2016-02-14T17:35:23","date_gmt":"2016-02-14T22:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17778"},"modified":"2016-02-14T17:35:23","modified_gmt":"2016-02-14T22:35:23","slug":"could-the-post-pandemic-chaos-of-the-division-really-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17778","title":{"rendered":"Could the Post-Pandemic Chaos of &#8216;The Division&#8217; Really Happen?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<h3 class=\"article-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/read\/ubisofts-tom-clancys-the-division-is-too-real\" target=\"_blank\">Could the Post-Pandemic Chaos of &#8216;The Division&#8217; Really Happen?<\/a><\/h3>\n<section id=\"yw0\" class=\"motherboard-portlet motherboard-portlet-about\">\n<div class=\"author image\"><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"wrapper article-content-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"left-column article-left-column\">\n<div class=\"article-scroll-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"article-content rich-text\">\n<p>It starts on Black Friday, as shoppers storm high street stores in search of the next bargain. Little do they know that the hard-earned cash they\u2019re spending carries something lethal.<\/p>\n<p>Within hours, as consumers mingle and move across town and country, a highly contagious virus has infected millions of Americans in every city.<\/p>\n<p>By the time symptoms of the virus manifest, it\u2019s already too late to prevent the pandemic engulfing the nation. Panic ensues. Borders are closed. Streets, towns, whole cities are quarantined.<\/p>\n<p>Caught off guard, the collapse of the US government commences. Critical public services\u2014water, transport, electricity, food\u2014breakdown, as supply-chains fall apart.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Could it happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before you start hoarding baked beans in a makeshift backyard bunker, this scenario of rapid social collapse is not a prediction. It\u2019s fiction: the brainchild of developer Ubisoft Massive, for their eagerly anticipated game\u00a0<em>Tom Clancy\u2019s The Division<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Except, to make the scenario as plausible as possible, the developers drew on a wealth of scientific data. If a pandemic really did hit New York City,\u00a0<em>Tom Clancy\u2019s The Division<\/em>\u00a0provides a surprisingly authentic representation of how it could play out.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last few decades, scientific assessments of the risk of a pandemic have viewed the threat with increasing seriousness. And it\u2019s now widely recognized that our societies are woefully unprepared.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s worse is that the risk is not from bio-terrorism\u2014but from industrial civilization itself.<\/p>\n<p>In 2006, the US Department of Homeland Security issued a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.dhs.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/publications\/cikrpandemicinfluenzaguide.pdf\">\u00a0guide<\/a>\u00a0on pandemic preparedness, which warned: \u201cThe mounting risk of a worldwide influenza pandemic poses numerous potentially devastating consequences for critical infrastructure in the United States. A pandemic will likely reduce dramatically the number of available workers in all sectors, and significantly disrupt the movement of people and goods, which will threaten essential services and operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Could the Post-Pandemic Chaos of &#8216;The Division&#8217; Really Happen? It starts on Black Friday, as shoppers storm high street stores in search of the next bargain. Little do they know that the hard-earned cash they\u2019re spending carries something lethal. Within hours, as consumers mingle and move across town and country, a highly contagious virus has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[11654,2092,607,12382,1266,12383,856],"class_list":["post-17778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-motherboard","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-pandemic","tag-post-pandemic-chaos","tag-social-collapse","tag-the-division","tag-virus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17779,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17778\/revisions\/17779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}