MyBrainHurts

As usual, the best jokes are in the comments. (Though goddamn I chuckled at the meme.)

A bit late to the party but I have a handful that might work.

For spooky and eerie vibes, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. (Turned into a movie that really doesn’t capture the feeling.) Just a great sense of creepy dread throughout. I read it alone in a large house in the dark and loved feeling the hair on the back of my neck rise.

Real life horror, The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston. About Ebola, freaking terrifying gross and real.

And if you’re looking for classics, he’s a bad person but a solid gothic writer, HP Lovecraft. Not all the stories work but a lot are pretty good at evoking dread. Almost any of his collections of short stories works!

Sure, just like literally everything comparing reality to the counter-factual this involves estimates. Not a particularly profound or useful observation.

I think you’re going to get yelled at and I apologize in advance.

It’s a fair question, there’s a lot of reckless claims made these days.

That being said, depending on how bad things get, yeah. Some incredibly populous places will be directly and heavily affected (1.21 billion currently in sub Saharan Africa alone.) Add in the conflicts over diminishing resources (think crop failures, droughts etc) as well as knock on effects (eg, increased range/spread of malaria.)

Heck, climate change has barely gotten started and I’d bet we’re into millions dead already (compared to a non warning world) consider how many thousands have been lost to extreme events like floods, fires and heat waves.

Ha, good clarification!

Sadly, I keep too busy with other stuff so I don’t have that much time for tv. I can usually sort of keep up with 1 - 2 shows at a time. I’ll have a bit more in the fall but my backlog is pretty big (the Bear, Fargo and Succession are the next 3 in my queue.)

Next pandemic, I’ll have to watch all of Voyager and then play this as it looks like a good time!