What would it take for a government to kill a town.

[mrsquirrel]

I had the misfortune to watch Outbreak ( I think it was Outbreak) the other day whilst running at the gym.

Part of the movie is about how the President of the United States of America has given the order for the army to bomb the town due to the viral outbreak in it.

Got me thinking - What would it take for a government/leader to do that?

NOTE - We aren't talking about third world nutters or the Arab states.

A democratically elected government. Like one would find in the US (second time around for Bush anyway first time he cheated) or UK.

Would a viral outbreak in a town that threatened the whole country be enough for them to kill everybody? Is this plausible or just pure Hollywood fiction?

[ItsRobsLife]

Cloverfield is a great film, have you seen it? A creature attacks New York spreading it's demon seed, in the end the only way to deal with it is to go nuclear which means wiping out NY too. Probably just ruined the film for ya there, but it sounds like you got too much time on your hands so you might still watch it anyway.

[Indoexile]

or just pure Hollywood fiction?

hollywood fiction. they might lock a town down, but i cannot see them deliberately bombing a town.

and very unlikely that such a deadly contagious disease could be so easily contained anyway.

[good2bhappy]

Ebola quarantine!
Ring the town with steel!
Wait for the occupants to die and then burn it to the ground!

[barbaro]

Ebola quarantine!
Ring the town with steel!
Wait for the occupants to die and then burn it to the ground!

I read "The Hot Zone." Very chilling. Real story, apparently. Took place in the DC area.

[mrsquirrel]

The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims so quickly and gruesomely that even biohazard experts are terrified. It is airborne, it is extremely contagious, and in the winter of 1989, it seemed about to burn through the suburbs of Washington D.C. At Fort Detrick's USAMRIID, an Army research facility outside the nation's capital, a SWAT team of soldiers and scientists wearing biohazard space suits was organized to stop the outbreak of the exotic "hot" virus. The grim operation went on in secret for eighteen days, under unprecedented, dangerous conditions.
The Hot Zone tells this dramatic story in depth, giving a hair-raising account of the appearance of rare and lethal viruses and their outbreaks in the human race. From a remote African cave hot with Ebola virus, to an airplane over Africa that is carrying a sick passenger who dissolves into a human virus bomb, to the confines of a Biosafety Level 4 military lab where scientists risk their lives studying lethal substances that could kill them quickly and horribly, The Hot Zone describes situations that a few years ago would have been taken for science fiction. As the tropical wildernesses of the world are destroyed, previously unknown viruses that have lived undetected in the rain forest for eons are entering human populations. The appearance of AIDS is part of a larger pattern, and the implications for the future of the human species are terrifying.
The Hot Zone, a New York Times #1 nonfiction bestseller, has been published in more than 30 languages and has sold more then 2.5 million copies.


"The first chapter of The Hot Zone is one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life--and then it gets worse. That's what I keep marveling over: it keeps getting worse. What a remarkable piece of work."
--Stephen King
"A tour de force ... Preston uses the power of simple narrative to drive deep his story's urgent truths."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Riveting. . . . Swashbuckling reading."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Popular science writing at its best and the year's most infectious page-turner."
--People

[barbaro]

^ It's real story right? Perhaps it's a novel. I'll have to go check. I read it about 10 years ago.

Edit in: OK, it says it's a real story, so I assum it is:

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story (Paperback)

Amazon.com
The dramatic and chilling story of an Ebola virus outbreak in a surburban Washington, D.C. laboratory, with descriptions of frightening historical epidemics of rare and lethal viruses. More hair-raising than anything Hollywood could think of, because it's all true. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

[lysander]

Emulate Eyam:

::Eyam and the Great Plague of 1665::

[ItsRobsLife]

Anyone ever been to Bradford?