Saturday, May 3. 2008
There is something horribly wrong with me.
This by itself is fine.
Applies to most of you as well.
Just thought that I'd get that out of the way before talking about something that didn't worry me before friday but now terrifies the shit out of me.
Anthrax.
I'm not talking about the garden variety terrorist-bred killing machine that's spread by the wind either. I'm talking about the stuff that coats your shoes every single time you take a step outside. I'm talking about something that infects and kills hundreds of pigs, sheep and cows every year remaining completly undetected until the actual moment of death.
I'm not talking about the thing that heralds your impending doom with a bloody cough, can be treated with a concentrated dose of antibiotics and is such a virulent killer that it limits its own spread by finishing off its hosts too quickly.
Anthrax, simple normal anthrax, is a bacterium, an endosporal one. This means it can form endospores. Endospores are literally dried up versions of the bacteria, it's cell wall dries up and becomes nigh on indestructible. From here out it is essentially a speck of dust, unable to move, feed or reproduce...but also able to stay alive for millenia encased in a shell that can withstand boiling water.
And our soil is riddled with them.
I do mean riddled, take a soil sample from anywhere except antartica or new zealand and you will be virtually guaranteed to pick up anthrax spores.
Now the spores can't do squat to you as they are, and if they revert back to bacteria whilst still in the soil there are about 50 varieties of other bacteria that will happily devour them. It's when the spores get inside us that we have a problem. You can breath them in through dust clouds, get them in exposed cuts, eat or drink them from contaminated food or water and other - less common ways.
Once they're inside the body they basically get free protection from all the nasty predators outside as well as recieving all the right signals to regerminate into spores.
Then the party really gets going.
The immune system will try to destroy both spores and bacteria as soon as possible, generally speaking it stands a decent chance, this is why so few human cases ever tend to pop up, because the recieved dose is so small and the immune response so fast the threat is destroyed before it could start. But if for example you take a nice breath of air near a pile of fresh pig crap you stand a good chance of riddling your lungs with the bacteria.
The anthrax's antigens (the bits of it the body recognises as enemies and targets to destroy) are long oglioproteins on it's outer edge, the bacteria can drop these to distract the immune system while they spread throughout the bloodstream and the lymph nodes.
When they hit the lymph nodes they stop, and they multiply like crazy, and every single time that one of these bacteria multiplies or loses an oglioprotein it also releases a small amount of lethal exo-toxin. Now lymph nodes are essentially filters for the blood, they trap the micro-organisms that get in along with tonnes of white blood cells which kill the intruders and let their remains wash out through the blood to be excreted. The anthrax kills all the white blood cells and uses the nutrients in the blood to multiply, it grows so much that the filter is basically plugged up. Blood flow continues but the lymph nodes throughout the body are essentially turning into sacks of poison. And there are pretty much no outside symptons.
Then, about 2-3 weeks after first contracting the disease...they burst.
All at once.
It's just about as bad as it sounds.
First of all there's a hell of alot of pain, it'd be like every blood vessel in your body was on fire, that's the nodes bursting. What they release is either incredibly thick pus capable of clogging an artery or a thinner variety which travels through the bloodstream. The exotoxin basically kills living tissue, arteries, veins and capilleries fall apart as it touches them, the internal organs start suffocating and disintergrating, if you're lucky the heart and lungs will stop first.
So, out of the blue, with no prior warning, you get about an hours worth of torture followed by death...with blood, shit and pus leaking out of every orifice.
And this shit is IN OUR SOIL PEOPLE.
Well...that's my paranoia for the day sated. Night all.
Mataspore
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