Fear of the Unknown What is going to happen tomorrow? The citizens of America will catch a deadly virus. Though this statement is blunt, this is a reoccurring thought in many people’s minds. According to a Washington Post poll, 43% of Americans are terrified that they or their family members will catch the Ebola virus, and 31% of the United States is scared of a possible Ebola epidemic in the United States. The subject of Ebola is covered on all forms of media ranging from the news on T.V to discussions on Twitter. Shockingly, rumors and stories about this deadly virus are spreading faster than the sickness itself. Similarly in The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston writes about true events where people have contracted Anthrax and smallpox, and how groups used fear of the illnesses as their ultimate weapon. Both during the past and the modern world today, fear is the true disease. …show more content…
If someone has complete manipulation of other people’s fear, then they can use it to their advantage. One month and two days before two planes crashed into the twin towers, John Ezzell found an envelope. Inside of it was a note reading “09-11-01 YOU CAN NOT STOP US. WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX. YOU DIE NOW. ARE YOU AFRAID? DEATH TO AMERICA. DEATH TO ISRAEL. ALLAH IS GREAT (Preston 17). Ezzell took a metal spatula and scraped the inside of the envelope revealing a “pale, uniform, light tan color[ed]” powder (18). From that moment on, the United States was in serious trouble. The note itself implemented terror by threatening America with Anthrax and asked a rhetorical question knowing the answer was yes. Later on, variola or smallpox was found out to be loose in America. It was not the fact that smallpox was a disease that could be spread easily that made people fearful. The piece of information that made people worry was “the fact [that] nobody knows where all of it is or what, exactly, people intend to do with
The Ebola Outbreak spread panic and suspicion throughout the world, similar to how the witch trials spreading hysteria around Salem. With news of Ebola spreading and mutating quickly, the world flung into panic (Ebola {2}). No one knew who all had come in contact with, or who was carrying the deadly disease. Similarly in Salem, people don’t know who is a witch, nor do they know if witchcraft has even been occurring (Salem). Regardless if the accusations were true, a mass panic spread over the people of Salem just like what happened with the Ebola outbreak.
What internally drives a terrorist’s motivation varies from subject to subject. While the average American citizen would likely be quick to point terrorists hate the western way of life and what it represents, the issue is far more complex. Simon Cottee’s article “What Motivates Terrorists?” (2015), looks at various levels of motivation. Prior definitions of terrorism looked at the defining cause as possibly psychological abnormalities within in the individual (Cottee, 2015). As studies have evolved, the focus has shifted to the environment in which the terrorist is surrounded. While certainly there is cases in which a person who is mentally unstable could be an ideal target for terrorist propaganda, the number of cases involving mental
Historically, fear has been used to control populations. For example, asearly as the 1700s, white men controlled black slaves through the fear of being killed. During slave days, in the South, the ratio was nine blacks to every white person (Nash and Graves 213). When Nat Turner, a black slave, finally revolted, the United States government responded by sending the army with tanks and guns to resist the black men. The reaction of the whites imbedded the fearof revolts within the slaves. The blacks could have successfully revolted, but were controlled by the fear of the powerful white man. The white man held the power and con...
...arted committing terrorist attacks on the U.S. and other countries. Fear shouldn’t make you do irrational things, like the mass genocides that occurred during World War Two.
...nd make people aware that it is more common than people realize and that a rather large part of America has the illness, whether they know it or not. This paper also discussed how the virus, could target certain individuals more easily than others based on the genetic makeup of an individual and families.
If it does become a pandemic our current political, demographical, and psychological state will surely be
In 1932 Franklin. D Roosevelt stated “ Only Thing we have to Fear Is Fear itself”. This was a quote from a great leader. However, they’re different types of people called demagogues who control a herd using fear as their tool. Control through fear is used by and students in schools including Trinity in Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War, and is even used by parents in real life.
Over the past fifteen years H5N1 influenza (also known as Avian Flu or Bird Flu) has become a common topic of speculation and debate worldwide, causing quite a bit of confusion about its possible impacts on our society. At this point in time it is generally recognized by the international medical community that Avian Flu is bound to become a pandemic, most likely within the next ten years. Research on Avian Flu and its effects have led many scholars to make grave predictions of major global turmoil while a small portion of medical scientists remain skeptical, believing we will have enough time to thoroughly prepare for the outbreak. The one thing that nearly all health professionals seem to agree upon is that the avian flu will surely have a large impact on the development of humankind. To truly understand the threat of this disease and what we must do to prepare for it, we need to look at the issue from multiple angles and consider what the spread of a disease so lethal and so prone to mutation would mean for our daily lives, health professionals, laws and government procedures, and of course the continuation of the human race.
In the 1950s, a majority of the people were concerned about the things circulating in their everyday lives that they could not see: germs. These fragments of bacteria were intimidating and seemed impossible to stop. “The two most feared germs are bacteria (one-celled microorganisms) and viruses (ultramicroscopic or submicroscopic agents). During the decade, researchers made great strides in the understanding and control of these tiny enemies. In 1947, sixty viruses were thought to contribute to human disease; by 1959, seventy-six new ones had been identified.” (encyclopedia 3). As time went on, no one knew how to describe the fear they had acquired from the virus, as well as the sickness they had experienced.
...d with fears and those fears rule us. They can make us confess to things that are not true or can make us accuse other to take blame off ourselves. The fear incited by others and our governments is a dangerous thing that we should be aware about.
Terrorism is used around the world to create fear and influence the public on political views (Siegel, 489). There are four views of terrorism including the psychological view, socialization view, ideological view, and the alienation view. A religious terrorist would most likely fit under the ideological view. In this view the terrorist feels the need to change a wrong opinion and believes that, because they are sacrificing themselves for something they believe so strongly in, it justifies the damage and harm done to innocent people (Siegel, 490). They use terror to create fear in anyone who opposes them and attract followers to their religion. In short, terrorism is widely used for political reasons but religion has been linked to the violence as well.
One of the current major concerns in the world is the outbreak of Ebola. Ebola is an infectious disease that comes from the Ebola virus and can cause death if the patient is left untreated. The disease can be managed with treatment of the patient, however. Ebola is a disease that is a major concern in the Subsaharan African Realm, and in the North American Realm, but it is beginning to be dealt with sufficiently in the Northern American Realm. Ebola started its first outbreak in West Africa.
The way fear impacts people's lives in the panic and hysteria in like in the movie Chicken Little. This Little Chicken cause tons and tons of panic and hysteria through the spill on one little phrase “The sky is falling”. Now yes in the real world people do do this type of thing like in our school we thought to have a bomb threat over a note saying that the principle was the bomb with a little miscommunication we shut
In the 1960s, doctors in the United States predicted that infectious diseases were in decline. US surgeon Dr. William H. Stewart told the nation that it had already seen most of the frontiers in the field of contagious disease. Epidemiology seemed destined to become a scientific backwater (Karlen 1995, 3). Although people thought that this particular field was gradually dying, it wasn’t. A lot more of it was destined to come. By the late 1980s, it became clear that people’s initial belief of infectious diseases declining needed to be qualified, as a host of new diseases emerged to infect human beings (Smallman & Brown, 2011).With the current trends, the epidemics and pandemics we have faced have created a very chaotic and unreliable future for mankind. As of today, it has really been difficult to prevent global epidemics and pandemics. Although the cases may be different from one state to another, the challenges we all face are all interconnected in this globalized world.
In March 2014, a viral disease transmitted through direct contact with infected bodily fluids of either humans or animals began to spread throughout West Africa. This was the Ebola Outbreak, the subject of continuous widespread highly politicized media coverage. Soon after the outbreak, due to the high fatality rate of the virus, it became a global threat creating a state of confusion and hysteria. Unable to understand the scientific and medical explanations behind the virus, many citizens all over the world sought out information about the virus through scientific and medical articles and media, that employed the use of metaphors to help the general public understand what the virus was, and the gravity of the situation. In this paper, the