Global Consequences of Natural Disasters and Epidemics

POLSCI 375

By
Justin Wood
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The world that we live in is completely balanced with one another, each country

has its own space but yet lives along side other countries in relative peace, at least for the

majority. But what happens when Mother Nature throws the inhabitants of this planet a

curve ball? Something that the world hasn’t had to deal with, something where there are

no longer borders between countries only individuals trying to survive. Are there plans to

help prevent this? Are the world leaders worried about an event that seems so far fetched

that it couldn’t possibly happen? Since scientist know that catastrophic events have

happened before, it is not a question of if, but when. How can you predict something that

hasn’t happen in recorded history or an event like the black plague where millions of

people perished? This paper will discuss scenarios, protocols and plans to see what the

experts are saying about these difficult situations.

The United Nations has seen what can happen when natural disasters strike. This

is why they have created a department within the U.N. to combat, understand and prepare

for these types of situations.

The IDNDR or the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction

which was established in the 1990’s, this group specified what actually

were natural disasters, earthquakes, windstorms, tsunamis, floods,

landslides, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, grasshoppers and locust

infestations and drought and desertification (pg. 2 Mitigation Emerges as

Major Strategy for Reducing Losses Caused by Natural Disasters).

Though some natural disasters are of course a greater risk to others than different

types of natural disasters, we still feel the effects of them. When there is an earthquake in

one part of the world that will therefore trigger a tsunami that will devastate a country
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across the other side of the world. A volcano erupts, spewing tons of ash into the air,

which will then fall onto another countries causing wildlife and wide spread crop failure.

These scenarios happen to countries all over the world, some countries are able to handle

the disasters better than others.

Take the example of Japan. This country is constantly under threats of

earthquakes and tsunamis. These disasters have struck this country multiple times in the

past and will strike the country again. Japan though is able to combat these natural

disasters by educating their people and by building their infrastructure strong enough and

in the right way to be able to hold up under extreme conditions. They have a tsunami

education program that is one of the best in the world; their citizens know how to

interpret the signs that will lead up to a tsunami, therefore saving their lives. Unlike the

people of Sumatra where thousands of unsuspecting people perished because they didn’t

know the signs that a massive tsunami was barreling towards them at hundreds of miles

an hour. When people of areas that are prone to natural disasters are given the right

information to help save their lives during times of disaster it will greatly increase there

chance of survival.

Look at New York City, this city is one of the biggest in the world with thousands

of buildings that are just simple brick and mortar. This city even though some may not

believe or realize is at risk to earthquakes. An earthquake of relatively small size could

easily destroy thousands of buildings within the city because they were not meant to

withstand them. On the other side of the country you have a city like San Francisco, this

city has been through multiple disasters and has learned how to deal with them and built

the city’s infrastructure accordingly. This city will be able to handle a much larger
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earthquake with less damage than an unprepared city like New York. There is no way to

feasibly change a city like New York, but you can prepare and educate the citizens as the

citizens of San Francisco have been educated.

When looking at natural disasters from a third world perspective the outcome is

almost always bleak. These third world countries do not have the luxuries like insurance

or aid from local and federal governments. When disaster strikes they are usually left

with nothing and destitute, unable to regain their footing. It’s disheartening when these

individuals have worked so hard for so little and something can take all of their hard

work and lively hood away, leaving them with nothing. Who is responsible? Should the

American government supply humanitarian aid and protection for the whole stricken

region? There is an actual office of the American government that is charged by law to

help foreign nations when they are stricken with disasters; this office is Foreign Disaster

Assistance or OFDA. Luckily the U.S. is not alone. The United Nations has its own

form of humanitarian aid.

“ United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs agency of the

United Nations (UN) Secretariat originally established in 1972 to

coordinate international relief activities to countries struck by natural or

other disasters. It is headed by a disaster relief coordinator who reports

directly to the UN secretary-general and works closely with the United

Nations Development Program. (Encyclopedia Britannica, UN)”

This agency helps the needs of millions across the world. But it took disaster

after disaster in the 60’s to force an international response. Before then no government
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agency had the power or authority to help nations that were under the affect of a natural

disaster.

What kind of aid is needed when dealing with countries that are being affected?

The most important kind of aid that will help save lives in those situations would be

humanitarian aid. This aid would include basic living standards that would help

individuals stay clean and keep nourished during harder times. The UN would have the

authority to distribute to the countries that are on as needs basis. But be sure to know that

all that could be helped will be helped during these times. But like all organizations

operating in foreign lands there will always be problems within the system and things

will never run as smoothly as they would want. The UN doesn’t just supply aid to

nations that are in need but like with all problems the best technique in getting over it is

knowledge. The UN has multiple programs in which they will go into third world

countries and provide valuable lessons in ways to prepare and recover from natural

disasters.

“It is essential that capabilities for disaster management be strengthened in

developing countries, not only so the necessary expertise is available to

implement programs, but also so knowledgeable people participate in

policy discussions that lead to formulation of those programs. Unless

someone is able to articulate in high-level discussions the opportunities for

reducing disaster losses that modern disaster management methods offer,

there is little chance that the issues will be appropriately framed. It must

also be recognized that the inhabitants of hazardous areas in many

developing countries are poor, and that their settlements often are illegal
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or self built with materials at hand. Building codes and warning systems

are largely irrelevant, and thus special efforts must be made to reduce their

vulnerability.” (Mitigation Emerges as Major Strategy for Reducing losses

caused by Natural Disasters)

As this last quote said, programs need to be put into place for the struggling

nation’s citizens to help them understand how to help them with things like their

infrastructure. When they are able to have buildings and houses that will be able to

survive disasters, the rate of survival will much higher. If their basic form of shelter is

able to be there when hard times comes this will greatly affect their moral and in turn

help them get passed these situations. Not to mention the ability to be out of the weather

will greatly enhance their chances of not getting diseases and other debilitating illnesses.

This next scenario might be a little more far fetched but none the less still a very

deadly example, and one that needs to be addressed on a global scale. This scenario is

NEA’s or near Earth asteroids. According to a study done by NASA they have already

found 700 to 1200 NEA’s that are 1 kilometer or larger. That' big of an asteroid would

cause catastrophic damage on a global scale. Every country would feel the effects of an

impact of that size. A program that was started back in 1998 was charged by congress

along with NASA to gaze into the stars with the sole purpose of finding these NEA’s.

This program though is still in the early stages of its development is lacking in the area of

funding and technology to be able to reach it goal of discovering 90 percent of NEA’s.

Many researchers, however, think more needs to be done. Monster

1-kilometer asteroids jolt Earth on average only every few I hundred

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thousand years, but a still- formidable 300-meter body strikes every

60,000 years or so, they point out. As telescopic imaging technology has

improved, 2 surveying such 200- or 300-meter "sub- 7 kilometer" objects

might soon be practicable. If such an impactor hit within hundreds of

kilometers of the U.S. Atlantic coast, it could send a 100-meter tsunami

into Boston, New I York City, and Charleston, planetary scientist Erik

Asphaug of the University of California, f Santa Cruz, reminded the

meeting attendees. (A Little Respect for the Asteroid Threat p. 1786)

The damage caused by even one of the smaller sized asteroids is still a very

serious problem and would destroy a major city if it struck close enough. But by the

research done on this subject of NEA’s, there isn’t a set plan that has been approved by

nations of the world to help plan for this type of situation. The problem though with

setting a plan in stone is the grand scale of a situation like this. Plus, the technology to

prevent this crisis from happening is only in the idea stages and of course has never been

put to the test. When dealing with a situation of this magnitude it is hard to imagine what

would really happen. It is almost understandable that ideas dealing with this aren’t fully

known and understood. The shear cost and scale of a program that would be able to

capture all objects and calculate their course to be able to find out if they are indeed a

hazard to the planet is next to impossible. It might be easier but the technology for it is

simply not here yet. This scenario is so devastating that if by chance an asteroid slips

through our early warning screens and impacts with the earth be it on land or on in the

ocean, millions of people will die. Borders would not exist any longer; governments

would be unable to control the chaos and destruction that would inevitably occur. This
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really would be a doomsday scenario. The UN would struggle to even comprehend the

scale and would simply not have the resources to help all that were affected by this. This

is something that we all wish would never come to pass or we would never need to worry

about. But the simple truth like all natural disasters would be education and timing.

When the governments of the world could have noticed an inevitable situation like this,

proper programs and implementations could go into affect to be able to save at least a

selected few. This does seem like a far fetched possibility but the truth of the matter is

that huge objects have struck the earth before and have caused major extinctions, so like

all natural disasters it is not a question of if, but when.

This last scenario that will be discussed in this paper is something that has

happened to people throughout history. Epidemics have been a cause of death and

suffering for thousands of years. The Egyptians first encountered the smallpox back in

10,000 BC in northern Africa and then was spread to India through merchants. This

disease alone killed millions of people until finally in as late as 1977 the last case of

smallpox was documented in Somalia. It took over 465 million vaccines in 27 countries

to be able to complete this monumental task (Geographical Spread of Influenza p. 4).

Another example is of the Black Death that ravaged Europe over and over again for many

years in the early fourteen hundreds until the late sixteen hundreds. The plague was

spread through rats and especially fleas. The unfortunate individuals who contracted the

plague had only about eight days to live with a mortality rate of about 75 percent. This

scenario though was hundreds of years ago, because of science and technology the world

has become much safer place, right? Yes and no. The fact is that the advances in
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technology have given scientists the ability to save millions of lives through the use of

vaccines like with the case of small pox. The other fact is that it has also given us a

pathway for terrorists or rogue countries to have access to such deadly forms of death.

Like the Black Death it wasn’t man made, a terrorist didn’t think of a strategy and

set off a dirty bomb in a major city. Unfortunately these things still happen to this day

but happen in very poverty stricken areas that don’t have the ability to help themselves.

Luckily there is an organization already in place that has the ability to go into stricken

countries and provide medical attention to those in need. That organization is WHO or

the World Health Organization. WHO has six core functions:

• Support Member States for the implementation of national capacities for

epidemic preparedness and response in the context of the IHR(2005),

including laboratory capacities and early warning alert and response systems;

• Support national and international training programs for epidemic

preparedness and response;

• Coordinate and support Member States for pandemic and seasonal influenza

preparedness and response;

• Develop standardized approaches for readiness and response to major

epidemic-prone diseases (e.g. meningitis, yellow fever, plague);

• Strengthen bio safety, bio security and readiness for outbreaks of dangerous

and emerging pathogens outbreaks (e.g. SARS, viral hemorrhagic fevers);

• Maintain and further develop a global operational platform to support

outbreak response and support regional offices in implementation at regional

level. (Courtesy of http://www.who.int/csr/en/)

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This is an example of how an organization that is not attached to any single

government can be of great service to those who are in need. WHO feels like they

greatest determent to large scale epidemics are teaching individuals correct hygiene and

making sure they have a clean water supply. Most of these incidents come from bad

water supplies where tiny microbes are attracted to. Third world countries seem to have

most of the problems with this since they of course don’t have the necessary means to

prevent this.

Through the advancement of modern science, we have been granted great gifts

and benefits of our time that save lives all over the world. We have the ability to travel to

far distant places and see things that we would never be able to see if it wasn’t for the

invention of the jet plane. Things seem to have fallen into place perfectly to allow us to

live our lives they way that we want it. But recently there have been major debates that

these luxuries that we have could be our down fall. An epidemic in a one small village in

Africa will not have any risk of infecting countries from around the world. That was true

a hundred years ago, now since the ability to travel any where in the world in a matter of

hours, not months this scenario has become a lot more serious. That one single outbreak

in Africa can have huge consequences around the world. All it takes is one simple carrier

to come in contact and then not knowingly sneeze on someone or become to close and the

epidemic begins.

There was research that was done for this exact instance by Rebecca F. Grais, J.

Hugh Ellis and Gregory E. Ellis. These researchers followed the example of previous

research done on a 1968-69 influenza outbreak and made up a model that would predict
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which cities would report the first cases of influenza if it happened again. This is all

because of the huge airline traffic matrix. Because it is relatively easy for an

international traveler to get around the spread of influenza would infect everyone on

board and then in turn they would infect everyone else that they come in contact with.

This as you can imagine can become wide spread very rapidly. This is why such

organizations like the World Health Organization have taken this topic so seriously.

WHO directly reports to the UN Security Council and therefore is able to keep them up to

date directly on situation that can become critical. The problem with these types of

diseases is that they continually evolve and find new and deadly ways to hide. That is

why Dr. Jong-Wook Lee the former director of WHO had requested even more funding

from the Security Council to help fund programs to train new epidemiologists, create

remote labs in poor countries and look into new diseases like SARS. He had requested

an estimated $200 million dollars from the 190 countries that make up WHO. The

director felt like there were many holes in the previous program and with this money he

dedicated himself and WHO to do all that they can to prevent epidemics to become

global.

A scenario like this will take the cooperation of all nations of the world to help to

prevent. It only takes one to become the catalyst for a massive disaster like this to

become a real killer. Because of organizations like WHO, that are continually looking

and studying new techniques to combat diseases, individuals and countries stand a greater

chance of surviving an epidemic.

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In conclusion to this paper I have gained a greater knowledge of all the elements

that it would take to help prevent natural disasters in one area of the world from spilling

over into the global community. Steps and balances must be put into place no matter

what the situation might be. It doesn’t matter if the event can seem small and

insignificant and not a big deal to the whole population, but like history has shown us,

these events can escalate quickly to become a global problem. Also, organizations after

organization and committee after committee have all agreed on the one thing that can

save more lives than anything else. That one simple thing is educating the citizens of the

countries that have even the slightest risk of being affected. Education and the

knowledge that comes with it will be able to do more than anything else. If those poor

people in Somalia just knew the simple signs of what a tsunami looks like before it

strikes, thousands of people could have been saved. It is because of examples like this

that really get to me. It is one of the cheapest things you can do, it doesn’t take expensive

technology just people on the ground explaining what to look for, how to react and what

they need to do to survive. That information will be priceless, and should never be held

back because of money. The global community needs to unite in this cause of educating

its members so that when a disaster does strike, they will know what to do.
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