New Disease: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Superbugs

By Mr. VI

Not to worry you, but you're going to die. If it's not old age that gets you, it's probably going to be some mutated form of the primordial killer – as much an apparent monster as Godzilla, rising up from the depths to cause chaos and destruction in your life.

Unless you're extraordinarily unusual, or a little bit morbid, you don't like to think about it much. After all, there is so much to see and do in life that thinking about it and can be a little distracting, can't it?

But vast amounts of future tech notwithstanding, you're not going to be rejuvenated, or immortal any time soon. Of course, even if the future tech arrives, initially it'll probably belong to this sinister lizardy Methuselah-types like Rupert Murdoch due to the billions of dollars they have in their bank accounts.

The fact is, the majority of the world still doesn't have access to decent healthcare – and those that do tend to live in the richer nations. In the UK there is state healthcare, but in America? Staying healthy is the province of those who can afford it. Now, imagine all those folks in countries which we laughably call the Third World or the developing world.

Imagine what happens when they get ill, and what they do when it comes time to die. Technology and medical care and such may have advanced way beyond the four humours – rationalism may be slowly doing away with snake oil sales but what good is that if you can't get your hands on what you need?

What stories do they tell themselves to make sense out of death and dying? Are they that different to the ones we tell ourselves when disease strikes, seemingly out of the blue?

Godzilla's Rage: Japan's Doom, Myth, Magic and Black Swans

By Mr. VI

Godzilla is distinctly annoyed. So is Mothra, and it’s not good to annoy giant monsters, whether they be saurian or of the genus Lepidoptera. Earthquake, tsunami and radiation? Japan knows what’s happening - it’s known for years.

Don’t tell me otherwise. This is the realm of strange beasts, the kaiju; the giant monsters, the daikajiu. Plumes of atomic fire, thousands dead, cities crushed while valiant nuclear workers struggle to stop their power stations from meltdown.

Across the world, the panicked peoples twitch and bulk-buy radiation pills, echoes of Chernobyl reverberating up from the memory of the past. Whole cities emptied, half-ruined in irradiated moments - petrified by absence as man fled.

Go back a quarter of a century. Wormwood blazed out then; bitter blasted grass marking the passage of star-fire - and yet people have the gall to ask ‘what’s in a name?’

And the inexorable biological movements continue. The biosphere creaks and groans, an alien speech which is way beyond hominid primates. It adapts and shifts, moving with epochal speed; tellurian movements ripple and shudder like the scales of some great monstrosity beneath the waves.

The gloaming is Cherenkov blue; between today and tomorrow the chaos is raising its head, birthing monsters like Tiamat from the salty seas.

The Tower’s been blasted, and everything is in free-fall.

Listen to the narratives, the white noise - the babble of confusion. Myriad voices, all striving to be heard. Experts rise and fall like the wave of a tsunami. The fact that Japan wasn’t totally destroyed by 9.0 earthquake is conveniently forgotten.

Yes, Godzilla is pissed off. The kami stretch and yawn; mountains shiver in their beds. In time, the risk assessors will sagely nod. Oh yes.

And yet:

'The Japanese Nuclear Commission had the following goals set in 2003: " The mean value of acute fatality risk by radiation exposure resultant from an accident of a nuclear installation to individuals of the public, who live in the vicinity of the site boundary of the nuclear installation, should not exceed the probability of about 1x10^6 per year (that is , at least 1 per million years)".

That policy was designed only 8 years ago. Their one in a million-year accident occurred about 8 year later.'