S.N.A.D.

Corntender Central 14167 upgraded itself. A new Cornlace virus had been detected, and 14167, judging itself to have sufficient resources available to it, created the microscopic analytic units and began distributing them among the individual corntenders, weeders, feeders and matrix engineers.that would be most likely to encounter the cornlace virus. Within hours, data was flowing from the detectors. There was no cure for the new cornlace, so Central began to make a small number of cutters, and burners, to eradicate any cornlace that was found.
At that exact moment, the last 350 micrograms of the easily available deuterium were extracted from the arctic ocean, and a signal was sent to the Europa barges, which began to thrust toward Earth's moon, as the focus of terrestrial deuterium extraction turned to the indian ocean, which would be exhausted some 45 years after the Europa barges arrived on the Earth's moon, and sufficient reserves were available that even if none of the first wave of barges arrived, no significant disruption of energy would occur. It was the first such radical transformation of energy supply for more than 250 years, and it passed almost unnoticed.
It was the year 2931, and the moment of the transition, the population of Earth was 1,261,111,391. The lunar population was 315,212. The population in Earth orbit was 6,334. The population in orbit around all other bodies the solar system was 236,791, the population in free transition was 291, and the number of people who might be alive but could not be verified was 1134, all classified as Suspected Dead. They included two men who might have been climbing mountains in the Rockies, two who had crashed on the surface of mars but might possibly have lived, and more than 400 operators of spacecraft that may or may not still be alive.


At the turn of the 21st century, there had been about 6 billion people on the Earth, and a varying population of between zero and three living in orbit. At the turn of the 22nd century, there were less than 2 billion, and the population had been slowly declining ever since.
The reasons for the population fluctuations and trends were straightforward, sequential and, with the benefit of hindsight, unavoidable. They were Sudden Necrotizing Alviolitic Disease (SNAD), Deuterium fusion and wealth.
SNAD was sudden, severe and devestating, deuterium fusion was gradual, and wealth was the unavoidable result of the previous two.

SNAD was a mutation of a common respiratory bacteria, usually benign. The mutation probably occurred five or six years before SNAD was recognised for what it was. The bacteria lived in the lungs, making small colonies that were nourished by the secretions of the lungs. It's survivability was a product of it's mediocrity. It did not reproduce aggressively, and it caused no noticable symptoms except a slight lung irritation resulting in a chronic, mild cough. The mutation was simple. When lack of nourishment became severe, the bacteria secreted a toxin which killed the tissue on which they were living. That tissue began to decompose, and SNAD fed on the products of the decomposition.
A person infected with SNAD could live for years with a mild cough or no symptoms at all. And then they could aquire a chest cold, or even simply become very dehydrated, and within a few minutes of the bacteria beginning to react to the change in it's environment, they would experience wracking coughs, bronchitis or pnumonia-like symptoms, leading to complete respiratory failure within an hour, coughing up blood, gasping for breath, and finally suffocating as the lungs became unable to absorb oxygen. It was an incredibly fast, painful killer.
The first wave of SNAD hit and devastated India and Pakistan, killing over sixteen million people in less than 10 months.IN the places very hard hit within those two countries, medical delivery systems broke down, and then social structures, and finally governmental functions. epidemics of cholera and diseases associated with vast numbers of unburied dead. Diahrea struck, caused dehydration, and fresh waves of SNAD were touched off. In five years, the dead in India, Pakistan, the middle east and the Stans reached 40 million. Seven years after, it hit Asia beginning in southern China. In asia, it was much worse. After the first decade of living with SNAD, the death toll was more than a billion.
There was a cure, even when it first began. Pennecillin, amoxicillin, almost any good antibiotic, and many were used in India and Pakistan, but never soon enough, and never thoroughly enough. Fear caused indiscriminate use, and indiscriminate use caused resistance, and by the time it hit china, none of the standard antibiotics would work.