At a Glance
- A new study ranks 20 island nations where humanity would most likely survive a global disease outbreak.
- Scientists say the threat of such an outbreak is real.
- Things like genetic engineering, international travel and climate change are making an outbreak more likely.
It's a doomsday scenario: Millions of people on Earth become infected by a deadly disease that races across the globe with unprecedented speed.
Scientists say what's become a popular theme of movies and TV shows could become reality, thanks to the threat of genetically engineered disease, international air travel, climate change and a number of other factors.
No one place is guaranteed safe in the event of a global infectious disease outbreak, but a new study has ranked the 20 places on Earth where people would be most likely to survive a catastrophic pandemic and be in the best position to repopulate the planet after the crisis passes.
Australia, New Zealand and Iceland top the list.
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The study authors said it's more and more likely that an infectious disease could be released on purpose or by accident, wreaking havoc on humankind and the global economy.
“The worst case scenario could see multiple genetically engineered pandemic organisms being released at once," Matt Boyd, the study's lead author and research director at Adapt Research, said in a press release. "We need to be ready for these situations. Our study shows that certain island nations have the characteristics needed to preserve technological culture through a catastrophic event.”
For the list, Boyd and his study co-authors considered island nations with populations of greater than 250,000 and those with the farthest distance from another land mass. They also looked at resources such as food and energy production, as well as factors such as GDP and the ability to close to the country to outside visitors.
The results were published this week in the journal Risk Analysis.
The rest of the places on the list, ranked in order after the top three, are: Malta, Japan, Cape Verde, Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Madagascar, Cuba, Mauritius, Fiji, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Comoros, Solomon Islands, Jamaica, Philippines and Vanuatu
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International organizations and researchers agree that the threat of a global pandemic is becoming more real. In an annual report released earlier this month, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board warned of the danger.
"While disease has always been part of the human experience, a combination of global trends, including insecurity and extreme weather, has heightened the risk," the GPMB report said. "Disease thrives in disorder and has taken advantage –outbreaks have been on the rise for the past several decades and the spectre of a global health emergency looms large. If it is true to say 'what's past is prologue', then there is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5 percent of the world's economy.
Researchers who compiled the new list said the threat illustrates the need to prepare for even the most extreme pandemic crisis.
“It’s like an insurance policy," co-author Rick Wilson, a professor of public health at New Zealand's University of Otago, said. "You hope that you never need to use it, but if disaster strikes, then the strategy needs to have been in place ahead of time.”
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