Thread: How will the human species and the world end

I've been thinking about it and I think I have a good theory on he end of the human species and the world will play out terrorists will want to kill the civilized countries without killing themselves so they'll probably go with biological warfare and send. It over most of earths population will be wiped out due to the mutating of the pathogen . This includes the terrorists. Once the the human species is extinct other animals will flourish and evolve but after some time the human killing pathogen possibly others as well will mutate and kill most land life leaving only a water world where the land is hostile and full of bacteria , viruses fungi and bugs ( possibly some small land vertebrates but not many ) and the earth will end as it it began . But what do you think ? Tell me your ideas!

Yes, sounds about right. I think I read a book about it once.

Logistic map - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

" terrorists will want to kill the civilized countries"
Often, but not always, 'Terrorist' is the name given by an Empire/Tyrannical Military Invader(like the US) to mostly civilians that are fighting without military. For example if Nazi Germany or the US invades a country and the local population without a standing army fights back they are terrorists. But if the Empire trains assassins and sends them to overthrow a democratically elected government to put in place a corrupt corporate rubber stamping dictator, then the terrorists working for a given state's interest will be called "freedom fighters" because they're on the side of the interests of the propaganda that calls them that.

In addition, terrorist are used by empires as an excuse to support their tyrannical agenda, in this case the terrorists are used to scare their own population, to help pass legislation/policies the public would otherwise oppose or to undermine the cause/political ideas/region associated with the side the propped-up/controlled/facilitated terrorist allegedly support or to give a reason to murder many people in other regions with military murderers (that are know by another title) and overt military means. Sometimes a false flag agents of the state are used and made out to be the terrorist/evil-doers/trouble-makers instead of relying on patsies. Of course the media propaganda does not explain this to American Idol audiences.

Sometimes the terrorists are used as proxy cannon fodder to attack other regions, which is why the US supported radical Islam including Osama Ben Laden.

So its not plausible that "terrorist" decide to "kill civilized countries", its just a bad interpretation of the propaganda you may have been exposed to.

Btw, there is no "War on Terror", the few nitwits that were caught in the past decades were mostly imbeciles lured into framing themselves by FBI/NATO agents/informers to prevent the public from realizing that the war on terror is a scam. If there was a non-infiltrated/controlled organized group intent on using terror, you would have had shootings not by kids in schools sad they were rejected but shootings and sniper attacks, month after month year after year for ten years, theres been more shootings by kids than by actual terrorist, just thinking about it for a minute debunks the whole War on Terror lie.

Oh and in case you did not know, the Anthrax Attack on the US politicians and Media (they got the message alright), was portrayed as being from Islamic terrorist but was in fact done with US military anthrax and not by any fake foreign terrorist.

Ok but you see the pint if humans were to extinct it would be from bio warfare correct

Im not familiar with the pint. Biowarfare would be horrible, and it should be a crime against humanity to develop bioweapons. Biowarfare has the potential to wipe out human civilization but (depending on the type and level of biotechnology) theres a chance some humans would survive. Some people have six fingers and some people have different T-cell molecules, if a bioweapon is not effective on 1% of the 7 billion population, you have millions of humans many of whom will be less vulnerable and within a few hundred years they could gradually repopulate.

An asteroid impact, though probably less likely than a biological pandemic, could be much more devastating (depending on its size) and potentially cause human extinction, (unless we have a significant self-sustaining growing mars colonies before such an event would occurr).

Even if some did survive the planet would be to hostile to regrow our version of civilization.

Also it's funny you mentioned the asteroid. Astrologists have been tracking a large asteroid called apothis that could do just that my theory is the humans that survived the pandemic would be destroyed ny the asteroid .

Originally Posted by icewendigo

Im not familiar with the pint. Biowarfare would be horrible, and it should be a crime against humanity to develop bioweapons. Biowarfare has the potential to wipe out human civilization but (depending on the type and level of biotechnology) theres a chance some humans would survive. Some people have six fingers and some people have different T-cell molecules, if a bioweapon is not effective on 1% of the 7 billion population, you have millions of humans many of whom will be less vulnerable and within a few hundred years they could gradually repopulate.

An asteroid impact, though probably less likely than a biological pandemic, could be much more devastating (depending on its size) and potentially cause human extinction, (unless we have a significant self-sustaining growing mars colonies before such an event would occurr).

There are a few researchers who think humans went through a population bottleneck somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago. It is called the Toba Catastrophe Theory.
They think the population dropped to fewer than 10,000 people world wide and it has been suggested this put us on a different evolutionary path than we were on.

I suspect that out of a world population of about 6,000,000,000 people there would be significantly more than 10,000 survivors. What evolutionary path they would be on is totally speculative.

"Even if some did survive the planet would be to hostile to regrow our version of civilization."
Unless its an alien bioweapon that affects key ecosystems I dont see why the "planet" would be "hostile" (by which I assume you mean the ecosystems/environment would not support mammal/human life, which is not something a modified strain of Ebola would be likely achieve afaik).

Originally Posted by burning virus

i've been thinking about it and i think i have a wild guess on he end of the human species

fify.

@ Burning Virus.
If you are looking for ideas on how to write an apocalyptic novel where the human race dies out I suggest reading On The Beach by Neville Shute.
You can find a synopsis of it on Wikipedia
On the Beach (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It was published in 1957 and by changing a few details you should be able to plagiarize it, sell it as a new movie to Hollywood, and take us all out for a party on your earnings.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Also it's funny you mentioned the asteroid. Astrologists have been tracking a large asteroid called apothis that could do just that my theory is the humans that survived the pandemic would be destroyed ny the asteroid .

Astrologists do not track asteroids. Astronomers do. Astrologers are charlatans who claim or delude themselves into believing our fate is determined by the position of the planets and stars. Astronomers are dedicated scientists. The name of the asteroid is Apophis. The probability of it hitting the Earth is very low. By the time it might be in a position to do so we will have the technology to deflect it.
Moderator Comment: It would be nice if you would use a spellchecker and check your punctuation. Three mistakes in three sentences is too much.

Why the need to destroy what we have all of the time? Couldn't writers find ways to IMPROVE civilization Instead of destroying It?

Dywydder you do not this is the pseudoscience part of the site right ? So what wrong with a theory on here? Also if you have Better Idea tell us . Ps sorry about the spelling mistakes .

Actually cosmictraveler our civilization might have invented great things but it it kinda sucks. This is because we are the one species that kills for either fun or for unnecessary things

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Why the need to destroy what we have all of the time? Couldn't writers find ways to IMPROVE civilization Instead of destroying It?

Distopia sells better than Utopia does. If it was the other way around the writers would just write happy Hollywood endings all the time.

note the expression "all the time" suggests a degree of hyperbole.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

So what wrong with a theory on here?

You DO know what "theory" means, don't you?
What has been presented is not of those...

Originally Posted by dan hunter

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Why the need to destroy what we have all of the time? Couldn't writers find ways to IMPROVE civilization Instead of destroying It?

Distopia sells better than Utopia does. If it was the other way around the writers would just write happy Hollywood endings all the time.

note the expression "all the time" suggests a degree of hyperbole.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. There was a movie about the use of hydrogen and to manufacture it a new and economical way. The movie was trying to show how hydrogen could improve society but those in charge didn't want it to happen and sabotaged the experiment blowing everything up at the end. that was interesting, positive and rather a mystery. This is the kind of movie I'm talking about , one that gives suspense, mystery yet is positive in its meaning.

It is a theory and here's why like John Galt said the asteroids would either be deflected or miss us and nuking the world is just stupid so he is this not a theory?

Originally Posted by Burning virus

It is a theory and here's why like John Galt said the asteroids would either be deflected or miss us and nuking the world is just stupid so he is this not a theory?

One is factual and the other is speculation.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Actually cosmictraveler our civilization might have invented great things but it it kinda sucks. This is because we are the one species that kills for either fun or for unnecessary things

You know, this kind of statement always sort of bothers me because it's not necessarily all that true. There are several species in nature that, if given the opportunity, will happily engage in wholesale slaughter of any easily available prey nearby or will hunt prey for the sole purpose of playing with it. It actually seems to be a not too unusual reaction for predatory animals that end up in a situation of great excess - they will still hunt because they on some level want to, regardless of whether or not they need to.

I think it would be more appropriate to say that we're the one species able to ignore impulses and urges like that - this doesn't necessarily mean we are always successful or even always try, but the idea that our species is somehow have a far greater and even more insidious and malevolent urge for murder than the rest of the natural world is simply not true. We may be far more likely to be surrounded by a great excess than any other species of animal out there, and we may have the power to cause much more far-reaching harm, but that doesn't make us somehow especially bloodthirsty.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

It is a theory

So you don't know what a theory is.
A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.

What you have is unsupported speculation.

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Originally Posted by dan hunter

Originally Posted by cosmictraveler

Why the need to destroy what we have all of the time? Couldn't writers find ways to IMPROVE civilization Instead of destroying It?

Distopia sells better than Utopia does. If it was the other way around the writers would just write happy Hollywood endings all the time.

note the expression "all the time" suggests a degree of hyperbole.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. There was a movie about the use of hydrogen and to manufacture it a new and economical way. The movie was trying to show how hydrogen could improve society but those in charge didn't want it to happen and sabotaged the experiment blowing everything up at the end. that was interesting, positive and rather a mystery. This is the kind of movie I'm talking about , one that gives suspense, mystery yet is positive in its meaning.

Lolwhut. "...but those in charge didn't want it to happen and sabotaged the experiment blowing everything up at the end. that was interesting, positive and rather a mystery. ..."
It sounds like of a dose of depressing and paranoid conspiracy thinking to me.

I might have been wrong about saying Distopia sells better.
I imagine in your example the heros of the story bravely looked into the future (with upturned faces and resolutely square jawlines) and swore to never give up the good fight, just before the credits started rolling up the screen.
That would be a typical Happy Hollywood ending.

They did the same thing to Bladerunner.

Originally Posted by Kompi

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Actually cosmictraveler our civilization might have invented great things but it it kinda sucks. This is because we are the one species that kills for either fun or for unnecessary things

You know, this kind of statement always sort of bothers me because it's not necessarily all that true. There are several species in nature that, if given the opportunity, will happily engage in wholesale slaughter of any easily available prey nearby or will hunt prey for the sole purpose of playing with it. It actually seems to be a not too unusual reaction for predatory animals that end up in a situation of great excess - they will still hunt because they on some level want to, regardless of whether or not they need to.

I think it would be more appropriate to say that we're the one species able to ignore impulses and urges like that - this doesn't necessarily mean we are always successful or even always try, but the idea that our species is somehow have a far greater and even more insidious and malevolent urge for murder than the rest of the natural world is simply not true. We may be far more likely to be surrounded by a great excess than any other species of animal out there, and we may have the power to cause much more far-reaching harm, but that doesn't make us somehow especially bloodthirsty.

The way cats play with mice would be a good example.

The way cats play with mice would be a good example.

But wild cats eat mice they catch. Only domesticated cats "play" with mice because they already know they can have food fed to them from their owners.

Fine you want support !? Here it is microbiologists brought back the spanish flu in a lab through cell cultures and thorough chimpanzees in 2005 if if it escaped we would have no vaccine for it thus decimating the human population. Also if humans were going to try to get rid of enemies in other countries they would try to make it so they didn't die with them and would use a bio weapon to affect a certain population killing their enemies but soon the disease would most likely get back to the senders though the air or ship travel then infect them once the humans were gone it could adapt to similar species of host . (See microbe world site) and about the hostile earth part since our climate goes through cycles the land would become a much more more unfriendly place to live foiled with pathogens and bad climate like it began. I rest my case now if you would like to discuss what your thoughts on human extinction please do. Ps isn't any human extinction theory unsupported at preset time?

It actually seems to be a not too unusual reaction for predatory animals that end up in a situation of great excess - they will still hunt because they on some level want to, regardless of whether or not they need to.

I think it would be more appropriate to say that we're the one species able to ignore impulses and urges like that - this doesn't necessarily mean we are always successful or even always try, but the idea that our species is somehow have a far greater and even more insidious and malevolent urge for murder than the rest of the natural world is simply not true.

That's why it's so hard to persuade suburban or town people that their sleek, well-fed, precious Kitty or Fido is a real danger to native animals or to livestock.

For most predatory animals, hunting is the prime instinct, they eat later - sometimes much later. Which is why many hunting animals like lions and dogs and polar bears will happily eat scavenged carcases - they don't care which animal/s killed it in the first place or even if it died from some other cause. Sometimes they have to leave part or all of a large animal they've managed to kill themselves and come back to it later, or drag it off and hide it as best they can from others.

They'll hunt and kill regardless of whether they're hungry. Even if they kill something and leave it entirely alone afterwards they've still had practice keeping their hunting skills sharp. They abstain from hunting only when they're in a food coma from gorging on a previous kill or because it's not their normal hunting time - day/night or some other seasonal or biological influence on their hunting.

Yes they are a danger to they environment along with rats ,ferrets and mice but that dosn't mean that we can't love our pets right?

Yes, but how did this become a discussion about the eating habits of pets?
Very interesting.

Originally Posted by dan hunter

The way cats play with mice would be a good example.

No it wouldn't.
Cats, rather, wear down prey to avoid sustaining injuries.

Ok everyone can we stay on the original topic here please?

Originally Posted by Dywyddyr

Originally Posted by dan hunter

The way cats play with mice would be a good example.

No it wouldn't.
Cats, rather, wear down prey to avoid sustaining injuries.

Nice link, but Dennis C. Turner never saw my cats or how they played with small animals. They would bat the poor things around even when they had no intention of killing or eating them.

Once again on topic please !

Here it is microbiologists brought back the spanish flu in a lab through cell cultures and thorough chimpanzees in 2005 if if it escaped we would have no vaccine for it thus decimating the human population.

They did this to see how much or how little it was related to modern versions of the virus. It turns out to be a variant of H1N1 that's been circulating in various forms for decades. The research has also looked at the similarities to H5N1 as well as other possibilities. Spanish flu research - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The biggest issue with dangerous flu viruses is when one with a high death rate also has a high transmission rate. The 2009 H1N1 variant was also highly transmissible but the death rate was nowhere nearly as bad as the 1918 flu.

I don't know why you would be particularly worried about Spanish flu. Influenza is constantly mutating and some versions are highly or not very transmissible, some versions are highly or not very lethal, some are weak in both, the ones to worry about are those that are high in both. And there's a complication in the population as well. Ignoring the issue of vaccination, there is occasionally a highly transmissible, high morbidity/ high mortality mutation in a year which doesn't affect the usually susceptible older population. This happens when it's very like an influenza of 40+ years ago so the older population has a much higher immunity to it and high hospitalisation and high death rates disproportionately affect the prime-of-life population.

The biggest issue with influenza is to always get the annual vaccination. Always.

I'd be more afraid, if that's right word, about all those illnesses and infections that we can now treat effectively with antibiotics. Increasing antibiotic resistance means that we could finish up in the middle of this century being as helpless in the face of TB as we were in the middle of the 19th century. Or we'll be having to avoid surgeries of all kinds because we can't guarantee antiseptic conditions in the operating room or in the hospital ward. Childbirth and broken legs and workplace injuries, as well as all kinds of now-routine procedures like dentistry, will once again be dangerous or lethal.

Originally Posted by dan hunter

The way cats play with mice would be a good example.

I think my stand out example would be of when a wild fox gets into a chicken coop - it's not uncommon that they'll keep slaughtering the chickens in there until nothing remains alive, quite possibly due to being flooded by prey stimulus.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Also if humans were going to try to get rid of enemies in other countries they would try to make it so they didn't die with them and would use a bio weapon to affect a certain population killing their enemies but soon the disease would most likely get back to the senders though the air or ship travel then infect them once the humans were gone it could adapt to similar species of host . (See microbe world site) and about the hostile earth part since our climate goes through cycles the land would become a much more more unfriendly place to live foiled with pathogens and bad climate like it began. I rest my case now if you would like to discuss what your thoughts on human extinction please do. Ps isn't any human extinction theory unsupported at preset time?

To be honest, I'm not really seeing the causal chain you're attempting to present here. I mean, if I'm reading you right it's basically one nation releases a lethal pathogen which then spreads globally and kills everyone and then moves on to kill other species and then the climate becomes unlivable and then the world ends?

And you know, the thing that is going through my mind at this point is that the world has gone through many extinction events and climate changes in the past, all during the period that there has been life on this planet. I mean, the best numbers I can find for the Spanish Flu is that it killed about 3-5% of the world's population, or about 10-20% of the people infected; it's nowhere near the Black Death which is believed to have eradicated some 30-60% of the total population of Europe.

Now certainly, it's mentally conceivable that there could appear a pathogen that has the potential to exterminate the human species, but mentally conceivable does not mean probable, and eradicating an entire global population is quite hard work - especially if it is as scattered as ours is. The death of our civilisation is far more likely than the death of our entire species, and even then it strikes me that all the people trying to monitor pathogens throughout the world would have to be sleeping at their jobs for it to just trivially happen.

The world has survived climate change too, as has our own species. It may lead to yet another impressive extinction event, but I don't see it as being some likely end of everything scenario. As I suspect many that have ever tried to forcibly eradicate any kind of infestation might be able to tell you, killing 90% of something is much easier than killing 99% of that something - which in turn is much easier than killing 100% of it.

Now of course, we do have likely end of the world scenarios - the sun is basically going to consume the earth in some five billion or so years unless we somehow manage to move it. Likewise, there are other stellar events that have the potential to cause widespread doom if we are very unlucky - like I've already mentioned though, the death of civilisation is far more likely than the extinction of our entire species. This all said, there is value in keeping possible risks in mind - mainly because then can attempt ways to prevent them from happening. By being aware of the dangers of potential pathogens, we have cause to monitor outbreaks of disease throughout the world. By being aware of potential stellar impactors, we have cause to keep an eye on the sky and develop ways of deflecting any such objects. This does not mean that any such events must exterminate our species entirely and absolutely simply by happening - it simply means we have to dislike the potential outcome enough to have want to avoid them.

Well that's a good point and I like it but what I think we should make our bodies stronger so both us and them can coexist so neither has to die . This is because we both play a vital role in the ecosystemOh and Adelady I don't really care about the Spanish flu it was just an example

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Well that's a good point and I like it but what I think we should make our bodies stronger so both us and them can coexist so neither has to die . This is because we both play a vital role in the ecosystemOh and Adelady I don't really care about the Spanish flu it was just an example

Well aside from that we're kind of technically doing that already in terms of vaccines (which is basically just teaching our immune system how to identify and combat certain types of viruses), I'm not entirely sure how you intend for this coexistence to actually work. I mean, in grossly simplified terms, what pathogens generally do is damage or destroy cells that we need to function properly and/or survive, and the way to survive is to prevent them from damaging or destroying those cells past a threshold where it harms us. Surviving lethal pathogens is about your body pretty much killing off the invader responsible.

At the end of the day, the thing with absolutely lethal pathogens is that they generally don't fit nicely into any kind of ecosystem - they're more of an evolutionary dead end because any pathogen that kills all of hosts will generally die out pretty quickly once they've exhausted their supply of hosts. It's a thing that occasionally happens and that might free up niches for new species to fill, but it's not really something anyone coexists with. Any organism that uses up all of a resource that is absolutely vital to its continued survival is doomed to extinction.

Ok you've got me on the leathal ones but I think we can learn to live with most of them.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Ok you've got me on the leathal ones but I think we can learn to live with most of them.

But aren't we already? I mean there are the yearly flu waves, the common cold... as far as I'm aware, the ones we try to actively eradicate are typically those that may be (or become) severely debilitating or life-threatening. With the rest, we mainly just deal with the symptoms and then move on.

I mean, you make it sound like we have this concerted effort to utterly eradicate every single bacteria and virus in existence just because, and that's not really the case - we're well aware that our digestive system for one is highly dependent on the presence of certain types of bacteria for one! The ones we try to be rid of is really only the ones that present an actual problem, so I'm not really seeing where you're trying to go with all this - other than the suggestion that it would be Really Cool to be Immune to all Disease (but likely also impossible).

Let me explain we can try to battle them but we have accept the fact that they are going to infect / kill us sometimes and we shouldn't try to kill them off completely there should take on a role in normal nature we can be powerful but every organism has predators and parasites and that we are just a part of nature.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Let me explain we can try to battle them but we have accept the fact that they are going to infect / kill us sometimes and we shouldn't try to kill them off completely there should take on a role in normal nature we can be powerful but every organism has predators and parasites and that we are just a part of nature.

But how is this any different from what we're currently doing, unless you're advocating that we should just suspend all attempts at medical care because bad things happen and we should just let people suffer because it's natural? I'm really trying not to read any kind of "Survival of the Fittest Means Culling the Weak" naturalistic fallacy out of what you're saying, but I'm not really seeing what else you're arguing for since otherwise we seem to be doing all the things you claim we should be doing...?

Because it seems like most of mankind sees themselves as gods and are different than the rest of nature when really we are a small part of it we should try to battle them yes but not get rid of them completely or else we would not be a part of nature we should just accept that we are just a species on earth and are. Not better than anyone else.

But we're not actually trying to get rid of them completely...?

Maybe the infectious disease and host relationship can be modeled like any other prey predator relationship.

It is really hard for a predator to eradicate a species it is totaly dependent on. Once the prey's population density drops below the level where the predator can eat enough of them to balance the energy expended hunting them the predators die off. At least they die off to the point where the prey can repopulate enough for the predators to survive. It usually ends up in a balanced relationship between predator and prey.

On the other hand a predator with a wide range of prey can easily hunt one specific type of prey into extinction.

to be honest i don't give a shit if 7 Billion people dies and civilisation crashes, as long as 1 Million or below is left, they should all meet at a location and start rebuilding, not the entire world but a small civilisation where money and Greed is no more, and with controlled population, once at the age of 20, they'll be suited with a partner that would produce the best genetically superior human to the rest and create a pardise.

Would these "superior humans" be able to spell and punctuate?

once at the age of 20, they'll be suited with a partner that would produce the best genetically superior human to the rest and create a pardise.

Bzzzzzt. Wrong! If you want an educated, industrious society that's focused on making the best of what it has available, early marriage and early child-bearing is exactly the wrong way to go.

That's what you do if you're a species or a group fearful of illness, violence, death and destruction.

Even NASA likes to predict the end of the world or Western civilization at least.... NASA predicts the end of Western civilization | New York Post

The human species will end when we engineer ourselves into new species.

Don't you guys get it !? That's not going to. Happen we are not going turn ourselves into a new species our end will be the same as any other great extinction our time will be over and something new will be here that's how it works

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Don't you guys get it !? That's not going to. Happen we are not going turn ourselves into a new species our end will be the same as any other great extinction our time will be over and something new will be here that's how it works

No other species has had the capabilities of deliberate genetic engineering--it's an entirely new potential.

That may be true and that may help for a while but in the end who wins man or nature? Nature because all things we create sooner or later that fade away and nature reclaims what it had.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

That may be true and that may help for a while but in the end who wins man or nature? Nature because all things we create sooner or later that fade away and nature reclaims what it had.

Everything is time limited, even so called Nature.

Um but if the human species destroys the ecosystem they'll be nothing left on earth because every living thing needs everything else.

Originally Posted by Burning virus

Um but if the human species destroys the ecosystem they'll be nothing left on earth because every living thing needs everything else.

What about "that's OK for it was all doomed any way"!

One possibility is that in the future a time will come when our descendants no longer see themselves as humans, a label they might associate with crude understanding, superstition, animal-like violence, war, obsession with feudal exchange mechanisms we call money, needless famine, etc and prefer to refer to themselves with an alternate label than human, like homo geneticus/ homo cybernicus / homo astronomicus, then humans will no longer exist the same way homo erectus-something or cave men no longer exist today, hum, well, not in the literal sense anyway.


ecosystems: exterminating all life including extremophile micro-organisms on the surface of the planet, deep beneath/inside rock etc would not be an easy task. But just not having life forms with the near term potential of becoming a multi-planetary species (humans) would be catastrophic enough.

Science can give a lot of versions but religion gives only one.

...which has absolutely no evidence to support it and so can be ignored...

my view is that the anti-vaxxers, homeopaths and their ilk will take over the world and we will all die from preventable diseases.