Swine Flu in Southwest USA = Excuse for Martial Law

[INRM]

I just heard on TV the CDC was talking about a swine-flu outbreak from Mexico in the SW USA, eight people in San Diego are currently infected.

Do you think this will end up becoming an epidemic or pandemic and be an excuse for the government to declare Martial Law?


INRM

 

[defaultdotxbe]

Do you think this will end up becoming an epidemic

no

or pandemic

no

and be an excuse for the government to declare Martial Law?

and no

 

[Drudgewire]

Do you honestly think the government is looking or waiting for an excuse to implement martial law?

 

[dudalb]

Somebody has been reading too much Tom Clancy.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

I just heard on TV the CDC was talking about a swine-flu outbreak from Mexico in the SW USA, eight people in San Diego are currently infected.

Do you think this will end up becoming an epidemic or pandemic and be an excuse for the government to declare Martial Law?


INRM

It snowed here yesterday, despite being near the end of April.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

 

[LightinDarkness]

This CT theme song gets old. ZOMG - is *item in news* going to be the excuse to implement martial law?

It never is. Remember how martial law was supposed to be implemented last summer? Last October? Last November? January? It seems like not a month goes by where the CTs cry wolf that martial law is just around the corner.

Its never coming. There are no plans for martial law. Time to wake up, CTers.

 

[zaphod2016]

No, I think martial law would require something more dramatic than a plague.

My money is on dirty bomb.

 

[defaultdotxbe]

No, I think martial law would require something more dramatic than a plague.

My money is on dirty bomb.

i think a pandemic would be worse than a dirty bomb, but thats just me

 

[dudalb]

No, I think martial law would require something more dramatic than a plague.

My money is on dirty bomb.

Or a virus that is REALLY bad. I think an serious outbreak of Ebola could do it.
Ebola is a LOT more dangerous then a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb would have a pretty limited area in it's effects, but Ebola could spread very,very,quickly.
Why is this thread reminding me to get a pre order in at my Comic Book shop of choice for the next issue of the Marvel Comic Adaptation of Stephan King's "The Stand"?

 

[Thunder]

Do you think this will end up becoming an epidemic or pandemic and be an excuse for the government to declare Martial Law?
INRM

yes. and there is nothing we can do about it. we should just accept martial law. i have no problem with it.

frankly, i welcome it. we can use it to get rid of all the traitors and other parasites in this country.

 

[Holler Hoojer]

If this is the beginning of a pandemic, you'll quickly learn three facts:
1, Almost no state, community, or organization has a pandemic plan completed;
2. There aren't anywhere close to enough respirators;
3. There aren't enough troops available for martial law.

There likely would be troops guarding some hospitals and pharmacies. Probably National Guard troops under state command.

 

[zaphod2016]

A dirty bomb would have a pretty limited area in it's effects, but Ebola could spread very,very,quickly.

This is totally true. The problem with Ebola is that it lacks your "money shot".

A dirty bomb would kill, at best, 50,000 people. However, it would kill them all within a very short time frame. It would be shocking, and cinematic.

A viral outbreak would take far longer. The curve would be exponential, eventually wreaking an incredible havoc, but in the early years the disease would remain external; something that happens to "other people". See also: AIDS in the early 80's. By the time the disease went mainstream, there wouldn't be much the government could do anyway (assuming we're dealing with some incurable super-virus out of a scifi scenario; assuming another AIDS-like epidemic, I imagine the methods of prevention would be discovered quickly, and spread by Federal, State and local governments in tandem).

For jack-boot, old-school, black stormtrooper martial law to exist, the mass majority of people would need to believe that the police-state was able to protect them. That makes sense when bombs are going off, and the bad guys are out on the streets somewhere. But when dealing with a disease, vaccinations, education and healthcare can be instituted far more easily, and much more cheaply, than relying on martial law.

Besides, what good is stormtrooper armor and 20' tasers if an air-borne virus is on the loose anyway? Would the agents of tyranny be just as susceptible, or are we assuming "they" have the secret cure, and are inflicting this on humanity just for kicks?

 

[dudalb]

I presume the Martial Law would be used to enforce Quarantine of the areas where the infection is to prevent it's spreading.
Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" deals with this.
Whether or not it is feasible is another question.

 

[fezzic]

For the life of me, I seem to recall reading a story, probably in the 1980s or early 1990s about terrorists using biological warfare against US towns -- initially small towns -- and the resulting uproar caused Congress to suspend the Constitution as the government went all out to stop the terrorists.

I don't recall the exact story, but by chance it was discovered the DNA of the bug used in the attacks was recorded in the CDC computers. Then ensued a whole series of stuff where the US was essentially in some form of martial law or maybe more extraordinary state of emergency.

Long story short. This was all a plot by a VRWC (though not named that) covering decades where the right people had taken up positions in government and were a part of the plot. Naturally, you can see that the bio war terrorists was to stampede the country into an authoritarian rule by the right (I guess to save the country). Anyway, the heroes and heroines of the story chose to invade a conclave of the cabal and threaten to deny them the one thing they wanted -- the USA -- by the brutal expedient of unleashing the bug, by their comrades scattered around the country, and killing basically everyone except the VRWC who all had been vaccinated. The VRWC gave up and promised to reverse what had been done (with the good guys implying that they can still wipe everyone out if they don't). And so with that deus ex machina, the good guys leave and when they are alone, the hero drops the "canister" of bio agent into a trash can as the RAID label was beginning to show through the paint...

In case you didn't figure it out, they had bluffed the cabal because they didn't have the people nor the facilities to do what would have been needed.

 

[Travis]

A viral outbreak would take far longer. The curve would be exponential, eventually wreaking an incredible havoc, but in the early years the disease would remain external; something that happens to "other people".

Depending on the pathogen it could be much faster. The Spanish Flu killed tens of millions in weeks not months or years and spread very rapidly. If something that virulent and contagious comes around again, in an era of jet travel, we could have a world wide pandemic in days.




By the way, I find this idea that government wants to institute Martial Law as strange. Enforcing Martial Law is expensive and stressful which is why the government looks on it as a desperate measure of last resort.

 

[hamelekim]

no


no


and no

Why won't it become an epidemic or pandemic? The WHO and other government health organizations are taking this very seriously.

Also consider that this virus contains European, Asian, and North American pig flu virus all together.

You don't get that kind of mix in the wild. It reeks of an engineered virus. Now whether or not it got out into the wild on purpose is another matter, but it was engineered and it could very easily mutate into something that is extremely deadly and spreads very easily.

The people who got this virus in the US had no contact with pigs, which means they got it from other humans, which should scary you a hell of a lot.

Even if we don't see a major spread right now, don't believe that the worst is over, because it has plenty of time to mutate and come back, and it will multiple times, just like bird flu has.

 

[hamelekim]

Depending on the pathogen it could be much faster. The Spanish Flu killed tens of millions in weeks not months or years and spread very rapidly. If something that virulent and contagious comes around again, in an era of jet travel, we could have a world wide pandemic in days.




By the way, I find this idea that government wants to institute Martial Law as strange. Enforcing Martial Law is expensive and stressful which is why the government looks on it as a desperate measure of last resort.

Governments inherently want to control. Martial law is ultimate control. I don't think the US government cares about cost considering what they have spent on the war in Iraq, homeland security, and now the bailouts for these failed institutions.

I personally don't believe that the powers that be want total control and fear is a great way to do this. People will welcome their slavery just to feel safe from the terrorists, virus, and asteroids.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I just heard on TV the CDC was talking about a swine-flu outbreak from Mexico in the SW USA, eight people in San Diego are currently infected.

Do you think this will end up becoming an epidemic or pandemic and be an excuse for the government to declare Martial Law?


INRM

I'm pretty sure that's the case, since that's what happens with every other disease. West Nile virus led to riots and internment of Egyptian-Americans, AIDS spawned those gulag island death camps, Salmonela the terrors of "Operation Sanitize." Oh, gotta go now, gentlemen at the door for me - late flu season around here means it's back to labor camp for a spell.

A dirty bomb would kill, at best, 50,000 people. However, it would kill them all within a very short time frame. It would be shocking, and cinematic.

You're thinking small-scale nuke. What most people call dirty bomb, radiological, studies show would kill no one, aside from the actual explosion. The dariation is weak, and the main danger after is panic, like that caused when people predict thousands of dead. So to be clear danger = bomb, dirty = nothing added except maybe radiation sickness if you get a chunk of it stuck in you and can't get it out.

 

[AndrewIlluminatus]

Governments inherently want to control. Martial law is ultimate control. I don't think the US government cares about cost considering what they have spent on the war in Iraq, homeland security, and now the bailouts for these failed institutions.

I personally don't believe that the powers that be want total control and fear is a great way to do this. People will welcome their slavery just to feel safe from the terrorists, virus, and asteroids.

You cannot rule the common masses through terrorism and fear for long. They build up a psychological resistance to the terror, so Martial Law would be a bad idea IMO. Much better, IMO, to employ all the sophisticated modern behavioural psychology tools of a scientific dictatorship (as now) where the masses can be brainwashed to love their servitude. Look how the masses were conditioned to love Obama as their saviour, Brave New World is a much better idea than 1984.

 

[Greediguts]

For those interested, here's a link to the CDC page covering swine flu.