The White Plague

I watched W.'s news conference this morning and was reminded of a book I read long ago. Bush had mentioned that quarantines might be needed in the event of a serious pandemic. Quarantines should not surprise anyone but well one can't underestimate people's lack of imagination at times. Who'd a thunk planes could be flown into skyscrapers *rolls eyes*.



The book I was reminded of, is Frank Herbert's The White Plague. Frank Herbert is the author of the classic sci-fi series of Dune books. The Dune books are outstanding and should be standard canon for literature. The movies however were awful. Mr. Herbert wrote The White Plague in 1982, which made it science fiction then but hardly so today. The premise of the book is that some terrorist incident kills the family of a not so prominent geneticist. The geneticist snaps and decides to engineer the deadliest of plagues. This plague is unique in that it selectively targets its victims of a specific genetic profile. In this case, the XX chromosome, e.g. women. The means of initial transport, touch, via money and airborne. In an act of revenge he unleashes a plague to take away the women of the world for the woman (and children) that the world took away from him. What unfolds is a catastrophy of apocolyptic proportions. Quarantines are set up worldwide followed up with nuclear sterilization. Whole cities are incinerated with nuclear weapons. Fighting breaks out. Scientists struggle to combat it but the plague is too fast and effective. Civilization as we know it collapses. Women who are not infected are hidden away in the most draconian of measures. It is a depressing book but one that increasingly seems more plausible. Certainly the technology is no longer science fiction.

If the library has it... read it. The book is currently out of print.