So how would you go about killing 6 billion people? And who would be the "chosen ones" who won't die?
Eric R. Pianka (born 23 January 1939) is an American biologist, best known for his contributions to herpetology and evolutionary ecology. He is nicknamed "The Lizard Man".
Saving the Earth with Ebola Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number,
he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.
He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.
AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow.
His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola ( Ebola Reston ), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.
After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, “We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that.”
With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.
After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.
“And the fossil fuels are running out,” he said, “so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people.” So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of the world's population.
How soon must the mass dying begin if Earth is to be saved? Apparently fairly soon, for Pianka suggested he might be around when the killer disease goes to work. He was born in 1939, and his lengthy obituary appears on his web site.
When Pianka finished his remarks, the audience applauded. It wasn't merely a smattering of polite clapping that audiences diplomatically reserve for poor or boring speakers. It was a loud, vigorous and enthusiastic applause.
http://www.sas.org/tcs/weeklyIssues_2006/2006-04-07/feature1p/index.htmlThis resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewing Pianka in Austin.Pianka has stated that Mims took his statements out of context and that Pianka was stating what would happen from biological principles alone if present human population trends continue, and that he was not in any way advocating for it to happen. The host of the speech, the Texas Academy of Sciences, has released a statement stating that:
"Many of Dr. Pianka's statements have been severely misconstrued and sensationalized."
