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Welcome to Armageddon Online - Disaster News, Future Scenarios, Preparedness and Survival |
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Current Events
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April 27, 2013 |
It's time for the world's public health officials to pay very close attention to the new bird flu outbreak in China first detected in March. To put it bluntly, there are now some seriously dangerous developments occurring around the new disease outbreak in China that infectious disease specialists and international public health specialists need to track closely.
Let's start with three new developments reported on earlier this week by Jason Koebler, U.S. News & World Report's science and technology correspondent: the first reported case of the new bird flu strain outside China; the fact that any potential vaccine tests in animals (not humans) may be up to six weeks out; and, more ominously, that Chinese officials suspect that there may be cases of human to human transmission in the 100-plus reported cases (which include 22 deaths). |
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April 25, 2013 |
While U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden suggests there is no cause for panic over the H7N9 influenza strain and says that Americans, “go about their daily lives,” this unusually dangerous virus has concerned officials at the CDC to such an extent that they are rapidly working to develop an effective vaccine in the event it makes its way to North America.
According to the World Health Organization, the H7N9 bird flu virus is one the most lethal influenza strains ever identified. The first case appeared in China in late February and has since spread to scores of others, with at least 109 cases having been reported to WHO thus far, 22 of which have resulted in death. This amounts to a kill rate of 20%. These are laboratory confirmations, so in all likelihood there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others who may be infected with the virus that haven’t received medical attention. [SHTFPLAN] |
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April 22, 2013 |
During the 24-hour period ending at 4 p.m. on Sunday, China confirmed six new cases of human H7N9 avian influenza, including five in Zhejiang and one in Jiangsu.
The National Health and Family Planning Commission said in its daily update on H7N9 cases that a total of 102 H7N9 cases have been reported in China, including 20 that have ended in death. Of the total, 12 H7N9 patients have been discharged from hospitals after receiving treatment, and the other 70 patients are being treated in designated hospitals, according to the commission. |
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April 19, 2013 |
Rescuers are combing through leveled homes and apartment buildings in the hunt for survivors following Wednesday night's fire and explosion at a small fertilizer and grain-storage company near Waco, Texas.
Initial estimates put the number of fatalities at up to 15, with more than 160 people injured. The blast had enough energy to trip US Geological Survey seismographs as a magnitude 2.1 quake.How did such a powerful explosion happen? |
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April 18, 2013 |
Authorities in China say that members of a family infected with the H7N9 flu virus may have contracted the virus via human-to-human transmission, according to the website of the English language Chinese newspaper China Daily.
The family's 87-year-old father was the first person in China to die of H7N9, according to the paper. The man's elder son was also infected, and his younger son may have been. Authorities are looking into how the sons may have caught the virus. |
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April 18, 2013 |
A fertilizer plant explosion in the town of West, north of Waco, has killed as many as 70 people and injured hundreds. However, no official numbers have been released.
Meanwhile, the residents of the town of 2,700 are being asked to evacuate due to ammonia fumes after the explosion of West Fertilizer. The plant is located at 1471 Jerry Mashek Drive, just off Interstate-35. School buses and ambulances are being used to evacuate residents from the area. Firefighters had been called to the plant to battle a small fire around 7 p.m. Crews were working to bring the blaze under control when the explosion happened around 7:50 p.m. |
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April 17, 2013 |
Picture Analysis: Boston Marathon Bombing Culprits Identified?Reports that the FBI/DHS have identified a potential suspect or suspects are now emerging. According to Reuters, at the time of this writing no arrests have been made. There are however, persons-of-interest. A press conference is scheduled for later today, but for the time being law enforcement officials are keeping mum. Nonetheless, alternative media and internet users have been conducting their own investigations. And some of the evidence for who the culprit(s) may be is quite compelling. As you’ll see from the pictures below, it’s possible that a white, middle-aged lone wolf American male was involved. Or, with two bombs, one must consider the possibility, counter to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, that this was not a ‘lone wolf’ attack and that it was carried out by members of foreign terrorist organizations. The analysis in pictures below, provided by Infowars.com, shows various potential suspects. And if we’re looking at this, you can bet the FBI, DHS, and others are doing so as well, on a much larger scale. {SHTFPLAN} |
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April 17, 2013 |
Carbon-dating of a structural beam from a Guatemalan temple confirms that the Mayan Long Count calendar did end on December 2012, leaving no room for further doomsday prophecies and miscalculations claims.
The Long Count is a complex system of bars and dots that consists of five time units: Bak’tun (144,000 days); K’atun (7,200 days), Tun (360 days), Winal (20 days) and K’in (one day). The days are counted from a mythological starting point. |
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April 16, 2013 |
The deadly attacks in Boston Monday left a city and a nation searching for answers. But it has also drawn attention to an odd historical phenomenon that happens around this time of April.
April 15 will be forever linked with the horrific bombings in Boston during the Boston Marathon. At least three people were killed and another 144 were injured during the bombings. April 16, 2007 was the date of the Virginia Tech University massacre where Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 students and faculty to death and injured 23 others before committing suicide. |
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April 16, 2013 |
The new bird flu virus evolved from three other influenza viruses, researchers say. Genes from the three viruses combined in a new way to form the new H7N9 virus, which has so far sickened 60 people in China, 13 of whom have died, according to the latest update from the World Health Organization. There is no evidence that the virus can spread from person to person, but authorities are continuing to monitor people who have been in close contact with those who have become sick.
The details of how the three viruses came together to give rise to the new strain, which has never been seen before in humans, were published by Chinese researchers in a report Thursday (April 11) in the New England Journal of Medicine. Experts say flu viruses are known to evolve at a particularly fast pace. [LS] |
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April 15, 2013 |
Two huge explosions rocked the Boston Marathon finish line at Copley Square just before 3 p.m. today, apparently causing numerous casualties, some possible with traumatic injuries on streets crowded with runners, spectators and post-race partiers, while a top city official said police were finding “more devices.”
City Council President Steve Murphy, who was at the finish line when the two explosions happened, said, “Police sources say they are finding more devices.”
Herald reporter Chris Cassidy, who was running in the marathon, said, “I saw two explosions. The first one was beyond the finish line. I heard a loud bang and I saw smoke rising. I kept running and I heard behind me a loud bang. It looked like it was in a trash can or something. That one was in front of Abe and Louie’s. There are people who have been hit with debris, people with bloody foreheads.” |
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April 14, 2013 |
A genetic analysis of the avian flu virus responsible for at least nine human deaths in China portrays a virus evolving to adapt to human cells, raising concern about its potential to spark a new global flu pandemic.
The collaborative study, conducted by a group led by Masato Tashiro of the Influenza Virus Research Center, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, appears in the current edition (April 11, 2013) of the journal Eurosurveillance. The group examined the genetic sequences of H7N9 isolates from four of the pathogen's human victims as well as samples derived from birds and the environs of a Shanghai market. |
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April 11, 2013 |
In 1953, with the United States and the Soviet Union testing hydrogen bombs and the cold war increasingly frigid, that ominous minute hand of hers stood just two ticks from the symbolically catastrophic 12. By 1991, after the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, it retreated to a relatively reassuring 11:43 p.m.
But the Doomsday Clock, which Mrs. Langsdorf drew for the June 1947 cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as a way to evoke the potential devastation of nuclear weapons, did not stay in reverse. Before Mrs. Langsdorf died on March 26, at 96, the board of the Bulletin, which adjusts the minute hand according to its annual assessments of threats to humanity, had set the clock to 11:55 p.m. |
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April 11, 2013 |
A Pentagon-funded team of scientists have constructed a machine that functions like a human brain and would enable robots to think independently and act autonomously.
Researchers for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have created a device that “looks and ‘thinks’ like a human brain,” James K. Gimzewski, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, told National Defense Magazine. The program is called “physical intelligence” and is capable, “without being programmed like a traditional robot, of performing actions similar to humans,” making it the first incarnation of a robot that can perform “truly autonomously” without human input. |
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April 10, 2013 |
Two more patients infected with the H7N9 strain of bird flu died on Tuesday, bringing the total to nine, Chinese state media has reported. The two patients were from China's eastern Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, state media said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that there is no evidence that the H7N9 virus is being transmitted between people - most cases come from poultry. A total of 28 people in China have been infected by the new bird flu virus. |
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April 01, 2013 |
- New research shows coronavirus affects many organs and kills quickly
- 'It could be more virulent than Sars' says microbiologist
- Announced this week that second British man has died from virus
A new virus which has claimed the life of a second Briton is potentially more deadly than Sars, scientists have warned. The mysterious coronavirus, which has emerged in the Middle East, attacks the respiratory system and was only identified six months ago. So far there have been 11 deaths - with the World Health Organisation this week saying a second British man has died. |
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March 24, 2013 |
Officials say a vial containing a virus that can cause hemorrhagic fever has gone missing from a research facility in Galveston, but say there's no reason to believe there's a threat to the public.
The University of Texas Medical Branch said Saturday that there was no breach in the security its Galveston National Laboratory and no indication of wrongdoing. Officials suspect the missing vial containing the Guanarito virus was destroyed during the lab's cleaning process but the investigation continues. |
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March 18, 2013 |
H1N1 Swine flu is thought to have killed 200,000 people globally and Australian experts are concerned that the disease now has much more potent pandemic potential than it had before. [LINK]
Tamiflu (oseltamivir) is now powerless against the strain H1N1pdm09 that has been found in people in the community rather than sick patients with serious underlying conditions and weak immune systems. Zanamivir (Relenza) still has some effect but it is not widely held in stock in the community or in hospitals.Lead investigator Dr Aeron Hurt, from the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, said:“The greatest concern is that these resistant viruses could spread globally, similar to that seen in 2008 when the former seasonal H1N1 virus developed oseltamivir (Tamiflu) resistance and spread worldwide in less than 12 months.” |
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March 18, 2013 |
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They look like something you’d see at a Star Trek convention, perhaps worn with a pair of fake pointy ears. And that’s entirely fitting, given that these high-tech specs are about to propel us into a sci-fi future few could have envisaged a decade ago. Google Glass has had the tech world giddy with excitement since it was unveiled nearly a year ago. Last week, at the South By Southwest technology convention in Austin, Texas, a Google designer gave the first demonstration to a rapt audience. |
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March 17, 2013 |
The usual grump when looking back at old predictions about the future is that a lot of the things promised back in previous decades are nowhere near fruition. It’s the old “we were promised jet packs” cliché. But reading a piece from 1988, in which the Los Angeles Times Magazine tries to predict a day in the life of a 2013 family, has the opposite effect. Some of its predictions have not only come true, they been overtaken by reality.
The article, written by Nicole Yorkin, who later went on to become a screenwriter and producer for television series such as Battlestar Galactica and FlashForward, traces a day in the life of a fictitious family. It begins in the morning when their coffee maker turns itself on (tick) and ends with one of the family reading the collected Jackie Collins in bed on a laser disc (semi-tick). Meanwhile, the entire family’s data is stored on credit-card-sized computers called “smart cards” and films are watched on “ultra-thin, high-resolution video screens”. |
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March 14, 2013 |
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Maybe you're familiar with the Doomsday Clock. It's an analogy started by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to track how we close we are to the apocalypse by way of nuclear war or other global disaster. Midnight means the end of the world. Artist Tom Schofield went ahead and turned that analogy into reality with this clock, which automatically checks the Bulletin's site for updates on the human race's demise. Cheery! |
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March 10, 2013 |
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria with the potential to cause untreatable infections pose "a catastrophic threat" to the population, the chief medical officer warns in a report calling for urgent action in Britain and worldwide. If tough measures are not taken to restrict the use of antibiotics and no new ones are discovered, said Dame Sally Davies, "we will find ourselves in a health system not dissimilar to the early 19th century at some point".
While antibiotics are failing, new bacterial diseases are on the rise. Although the "superbugs" MRSA and C difficile have been reduced to low numbers in hospitals, there has been an alarming increase in other types of bacteria including new strains of E coli and Klebsiella, which causes pneumonia. |
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January 12, 2013 |
As Washington focuses on what Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will propose next week to curb gun violence, gun and ammunition sales are spiking in the rest of the country as people rush to expand their arsenals in advance of any restrictions that might be imposed.
People were crowded five deep at the tiny counter of a gun shop near Atlanta, where a pastor from Knoxville, Tenn., was among the customers who showed up in person after the store’s Web site halted sales because of low inventory. Emptying gun cases and bare shelves gave a picked-over feel to gun stores in many states. High-capacity magazines, which some state and federal officials want to ban or restrict, were selling briskly across the country: one Iowa dealer said that 30-round magazines were fetching five times what they sold for just weeks ago. |
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January 10, 2013 |
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The flu is currently at epidemic levels across the five boroughs, New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley announced Thursday. Officials said a full 5 percent of emergency room visits are flu-related. “It’s a bad year. We’ve got lots of flu, it’s mainly type AH3N2, which tends to be a little more severe. So we’re seeing plenty of cases of flu and plenty of people sick with flu,” Farley told reporters including WCBS 880′s Rich Lamb. |
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