I guess this is another path climate catastrophe can take. Before the "natural" disasters arising from increased temperatures, some weird pathogen obliterate us instead.
If smallpox, the black death, the white death, or any other plague couldn’t make us extinct then I don't see how a new plague would make us extinct either.
Society is much more integrated then it was in those times. If 30% of the worlds population died today in a similar way to what happened during the Black Death there would be a massive chance that most countries would simply collapse, or see mass famine, essential goods shortages, medicine shortages, and so on.
It wouldn’t drive us extinct, but civil collapse would be a bleak and miserable existence.
I saw this on the "collapse" subreddit or something similar. In general, the area I live in has always had issues with molds and it's getting worse every year. Things go bad super fast. Food from the grocery store and such. If you make anything homemade, with no crazy preservatives, it's growing mold in a few days. I blast UV-C light in my shower every night to keep it from growing mildew in-between cleans. I honestly don't even want to think about what it's doing to my body and lungs.
It's not the humidity inside. It's the humidity outside. Every air quality report in this area has mold at the highest levels 8 months out of the year. It's unavoidable. Our air quality is so bad that when you travel to other parts of the country you can feel a difference in your breathing. People I this area have a statistically higher rate of lung diseases.
Yes, UV-C bulbs fuck mold. I have one that creates ozone and one that doesn't. The ozone bulb scares me but holy hell does it work well. I grew psychedelic mushrooms for about 18 months once and turned one of the rooms in my house I to a clean room. Never had any kind of mold contamination. The downside to the ozone is, other than being bad to breath, it corrodes stuff and will kill electronics. I had a router in the clean room and it died in like 4 months of running the bulb for 15 minutes a day. I eventually just started only using the non-ozone generating bulb. I don't grow anything like that anymore so I just run it in the bathroom for like 30 minutes a night.
I attach them to an old swing arm lamp so I can direct them if need be or just point it straight up to hit the whole room. I used it a lot during COVID and ran it over all our groceries and stuff. For a few minutes. I have UV glasses and would cover my skin. I would not even go in a room with the ozone bulb. Shits dangerous. I use them with extreme caution.
Wow! There's useful to know. I don't think I'll risk using one in general because a simple dehumidifier is enough to keep the mold away in my place. But I'll look into it further if I have to live somewhere that's riddled with the stuff.
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