What will happen to cities if a pandemic occurs?

January 30, 2006 10:57 AM

What will happen to cities if a pandemic occurs?

How would the city be cut off from the rest of the world? What would that be like? Would people be advised to stay where they are? If lots of people left, what problems would they have?

posted by stokast to grab bag (23 comments total)

CBC's 'Fifth Estate' did a very disturbing program on this very topic. It would suck.
posted by GuyZero at 11:01 AM on January 30, 2006

Department of Health and Human Services pandemic influenza plan
posted by logicpunk at 11:06 AM on January 30, 2006

imagine katrina... times a lot more. and the government's plan would be as good.

on the philosophical part on your question, on the other hand, i don't think it will be as dire as people make it out to be. despite false (and racist) claims to the contrary, human beings did not hurt one another in a time of extreme panic and discomfort. i think it says a lot about humans (and about our science fiction, horror, etc) that we fear turning on each other in cataclysms but manage to maintain morals and ethics (albeit modified for survival) in even the direst situations.

some interesting perspectives can be found here on "collapse" theories.
posted by yonation at 11:23 AM on January 30, 2006

(shit, above bolded point refers specifically to katrina)
posted by yonation at 11:25 AM on January 30, 2006

Somewhat relevant AskMe from last March.
posted by mediareport at 11:27 AM on January 30, 2006

This is where decent science fiction tends to shine.
posted by 31d1 at 11:50 AM on January 30, 2006

Just a side note ... I had ringside seats for the Rodney King riots ... when things turn sour, it's possible for every societal norm, across every spot on the socio-economic spectrum, to go completely whack-ass haywire. While I don't think every doomsday scenario will come true, I wouldn't exactly be surprised if they did.
posted by frogan at 11:55 AM on January 30, 2006

I recall the CBC documentary making an interesting point. You could opt to leave the big cities, but things like Hospitals, good medical care and emergency-health infrastructure tend to be centred in them. Fewer people than you might think would opt to leave.

(Add to the fact that it manifests in most people as not much more than a normal, if somewhat bady flu... was your hands and try not to lick any subway poles. You'll be fine.)
posted by generichuman at 12:14 PM on January 30, 2006

It should be noted that civilization survived the Spanish Flu pandemic with a mild hiccup. So I don't buy the collapse of civilization as we know it scenario.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 12:16 PM on January 30, 2006

"The Stand" was good, but King doesn't spend a lot of time expounding on containment.

Outbreak had a quarantine in it, if I remember correctly. It's inifinitely less entertaining and more crappy than "The Stand". Bonus: you'll finish it faster.

I don't see cutting a whole city off from the rest of the world working very well ... unless the city is on a big island, or course.
posted by clearlynuts at 12:27 PM on January 30, 2006

Yes, civilization survived the Spanish Flu pandemic, but the world has changed a lot since then. Population is more dense (in every sense of the word), and our self-sufficiency skills probably don't compare to a lot of folks from 1918.
posted by owen at 12:40 PM on January 30, 2006

With what owen said above, remember also that in 1918, travel time and opportunity was much, much different, so the 1918 flu was a relatively slow burn through the population. Societal breakdown was forestalled because it was happening in slow motion.

A true pandemic today would be everywhere at once.

/shudder
posted by frogan at 1:08 PM on January 30, 2006

The Stand? Outbreak? Camus will come back to haunt you two.
posted by forrest at 1:12 PM on January 30, 2006

human beings did not hurt one another in a time of extreme panic and discomfort.

Well, not true. While it wasn't as widespread as the media made out, women WERE raped, and there was violence. It's not true to say that no one hurt anyone else during that time.
posted by agregoli at 1:22 PM on January 30, 2006

Well we can always hope that there is truth to the recent discovery Of a vaccine that is supposed to be 100% effective (at least in animals).
posted by UMDirector at 1:29 PM on January 30, 2006

owen: Certainly, on the other hand, transportation capacity has increased dramatically. We have medicines to treat most secondary sources of infection as well as most symptoms. At least in the U.S., people are in general quite a bit more affluent than in 1918 as well. Our slums may not be nice places to live, but they are a world better than the tenements of the early 20th century. And its not as if residents of central New York, Chicago, London and Paris were living off the land either in 1918.

I would argue that the double whammys of WWI and WWII were much more devistating because not only did you have a large chunk of population sent into a meatgrinder of wars, but you also had profound damage to basic transportation, production and infrastructure.

The critical factor in this is the actual mortality rate. There actually was a pandemic in the 1950s and 60s as well, but because the mortality rate was relatively low, it went unnoticed. Pandemic just means that the infection travels around the world.

frogan: With what owen said above, remember also that in 1918, travel time and opportunity was much, much different, so the 1918 flu was a relatively slow burn through the population. Societal breakdown was forestalled because it was happening in slow motion.

18 months is hardly "slow motion." But the converse is also true. Increased travel speed and capacity translates into an increased ability to move critical resources to affected areas.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 1:33 PM on January 30, 2006

owen: Population is more dense (in every sense of the word), and our self-sufficiency skills probably don't compare to a lot of folks from 1918.

Well, considering we're discussing cities, parts of many cities were actually denser than they are today and they were a lot less sanitary. (See Lower East Side of Manhattan, for instance.) And from what I understand, people weren't doing backwoods survival during the pandemic.

frogan: With what owen said above, remember also that in 1918, travel time and opportunity was much, much different, so the 1918 flu was a relatively slow burn through the population. Societal breakdown was forestalled because it was happening in slow motion.

Didn't the flu spead fairly quickly due to the war, what with those who were particularly susceptible (in this case, healthy young men) being all packed together in dirty ships & camps being sent all around the world?

I'd say that it won't be anything as bad as people think. The media will be inane and some people will lose their shit. You'll either be dead or else it will all pass and it'll be something interesting you lived through.
posted by dame at 1:37 PM on January 30, 2006

being all packed together in dirty ships & camps being sent all around the world?

Sure it did, among that population. Now consider that ships take time to get across oceans, and trains take time to get across praries, but flights leave international airports for virtually every spot on the planet 24 hours a day.
posted by frogan at 3:08 PM on January 30, 2006

frogan: Sure it did, among that population. Now consider that ships take time to get across oceans, and trains take time to get across praries, but flights leave international airports for virtually every spot on the planet 24 hours a day.

And the pandemics of '57 and '68 with decreasing travel time and decreasing mortality reveal exactly what about this trend?
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:52 PM on January 30, 2006

Scenarios at FluWiki. The CanadaSue narrative, imagining the impact of pandemic flu in Kingston, Ontario, is absolutely gripping reading.
posted by gimonca at 4:33 PM on January 30, 2006

I absolutely second reading the CanadaSue fictional scenario. Just don't do it before bedtime. Also, check out John Barry's book on the 1918 flu pandemic. He goes into detail about how different cities and municipalities dealt with the pandemic, with various degrees of truthfulness, planning, responses, and outcomes. Philadelphia comes off as notoriously bad; many people there died needlessly because of decisions made at the municipal level, notably allowing an Armistice Day parade to go forward when people should have been told to stay home and avoid crowds. A week later, there were corpses everywhere.

In the event of a modern pandemic with 1918-style mortality rates--which, keep in mind, was only 2%-2.5% of the population, though 55% of all pregnant women who caught it died--I expect the cities to be a pretty awful place. But I expect everywhere to be a pretty awful place, because a pandemic will strike everywhere, by definition. However, there are reasons why being in a big city during a pandemic wave may be more sucky than being in other places.

For one thing, many cities do not produce any food; they ship it or truck it in every day. During a pandemic, the world's "just-in-time" no-warehouses business model may fray considerably. All it would take would be a number of factory workers or truckers or supermarket empoyees being too sick to work, or having to stay home because of quarantines, or taking care of a sick spouse/child, or fear of infection, and all of a sudden, no food gets to Boston or Peoria or wherever. Things snowball and people start to panic.

Or let's look at logistics: where, exactly, does the city put tens of thousands of corpses? Well, you know that Monty Python "bring out your dead!" schtick with the bodies being piled onto the horse-drawn cart, some not-quite-dead-yet? Yeah. That actually really happened, during 1918-1919, in many American cities. School gymnasiums got turned into morgues. Bodies were hung from the rafters to make more room.

Or how about sewage and trash collection? If you live in the country, you can burn it, or use a septic tank, or just dig a frickin' hole in your backyard. In the cities, any breakdown in people doing those crucial jobs would just add to the misery, and the disease potential.

Also, cities are more likely starting point for a pandemic, because they have both air travel hubs for overseas locations and dense populations: easy to bring in a germ, easy to spread a germ.

Or to put this all another way: my Manhattan-resident siblings have a standing invitation that in case the flu goes human-to-human in the US, they will be renting a car and driving straight cross-country to Los Angeles and staying with me and my husband for the duration of the pandemic wave. (Air traffic will likely be grounded by then.) Because in Los Angeles, despite our history of city-wide riots, we have access to 40% of the nation's food supply in-state and people grow food in their backyards year-round. New York City? Not so much.

(I lived in Manhattan during and after 9/11, and spent part of that morning in a large supermarket on the Upper East Side. I stood on line with hundreds of people, inching forward, and watched as the shelves all around me were cleaned out by people with a frightened--and frightening--look in their eyes. Let's just say the experience has burned its way into my brain, just a tad.)
posted by Asparagirl at 8:06 PM on January 30, 2006

Related MetaFilter threads on pandemic influenza:

October 7, 2005
June 20, 2005
May 5, 2005
posted by Asparagirl at 8:20 PM on January 30, 2006

Asparagirl writes "fear of infection, and all of a sudden, no food gets to Boston or Peoria or wherever. "

This is one of the things that the big Montreal Ice Storm taught me, always have at least a couple weeks of food and other survial supplies on hand (even if it's proccessed card board like pop tarts or something). In the case of a disaster your basically on your own for at least three days and longer if the disaster is wide spread. Never let you gas tank drop below 30%. Buy TP when your down to a two weeks supply not when you mount the last roll. Have a weeks worth of water. Think about what you going to do if the temperature is in the minus 20s and the power is out for a week. You shouldn't need to be running to stand in line at the store for last minute supplies. Breast feed rather than using formula. If you go the formula route have several weeks supply on hand. Know what to do if lack of water means the toilet doesn't flush.

Asparagirl writes "Or let's look at logistics: where, exactly, does the city put tens of thousands of corpses?"

Luckily Canada has hockey arenas and curling rinks everywhere, I understand other countries aren't quite so blessed. Course if the power is out and it's warm things are going to get ripe.
posted by Mitheral at 8:08 AM on January 31, 2006