‘This is the next big disaster,’ says Bill Gates; even as he lists down possible disasters that humanity may face in the coming years

Bill Gates, the American business magnate, and philanthropist has got our attention indeed.
In a recent interview with science YouTuber Derek Muller, Bill Gates revealed that he thinks that the next big thing to hit the world and humanity is Bioterrorism; he expressed his concern and stated that he had also predicted the pandemic way back in 2015.

In his interview, he said, “Bioterrorism, which is when someone who wants to cause damage engineers a virus, is likely the next disaster that humans aren’t prepared for.”
Hence, the chance of running into this [Virus] is more than just the naturally caused epidemics like the current one, said Gate.

This indeed is a horrifying possibility if it were to hit humanity at any point – the loss of lives and the financial implications of such an event is likely to bring even the wealthiest of nations to its knees.
However, this is not the first time that Bill Gates has pointed towards such a possibility; he has, in fact, flagged Bioterririosm as a huge threat – one that he thinks is even bigger than the nuclear threat.

Gates had expressed his thoughts on the subject back in 2017 when he was doing a question-answer session with his fans, he had then said: “I am concerned about biological tools that could be used by a bioterrorist.”

His concern is not unfounded; the truth today is that no country in the world in the current context can afford an out and out war; the implications of the same would be huge for the countries involved and going by the trend that has emerged in the last few years, nations now fight proxy wars; wars that are fought through and via the diplomatic channel.

Simultaneously, terrorism and militia have also raised their ugly head, and many countries in the world are battling this menace either outright or through backchannels.
This is indeed one of the significant concerns that almost all countries in the world face and have fallen into the grips of terrorism.

The irony in what Bill Gates has said is also evident and a possibility when in 2017 he had reportedly told The Telegraph that it would be relatively easy for anyone to engineer a new flu strain. Unlike nuclear war, though, the disease wouldn’t stop killing once it was released.

The thought is highly possible to turn into an actual occurrence, for what would be stopping an entity to experiment in the same and use it or lease it a particular country to try it, almost nothing except for the code of ‘humanity’ itself.

The next Disaster

The next disaster that he predicts and says that humans are not prepared for is Climate Change.
We are not innocent when it comes to climate change; we as humans know that we have been taking the planet earth for granted for decades now.

There have been by the thousands who have spoken on the topic of climate change and the adversities that humanity will have to face eventually because of this astonishing callousness on our part, but unfortunately, it has fallen on deaf ears.

The truth is we as humans have passed the buck on; we know the implications of the same but have behaved like the ostrich with its head in the sand.
The thing is that climate change is thought of as a far of event, or perhaps the attitude that we will deal with it when it happens.

But the reality has knocked on the door earlier than we thought. It is evident with the rapid decrease in the ice in both the north pole and the south pole. The increase in wildfires, tsunamis, and cyclones. Each year the natural calamities get more powerful and havoc destruction at a scale that is increasing with every year.

Substantiating this, Bill Gates had written in one of his blogs – the climatic change could be just as deadly as the pandemic, and by 2100, it could be five times as deadly. In the next decade or two, the economic damage caused by climate change will likely be as bad as having a Covid -19 sized pandemic every ten years.”

The increasing possibility of pandemics

Gates also cautioned that much like the Covid pandemic, another pandemic could still wreak havoc on the world, despite any lessons learned in this one.
The possibility of the world facing another pandemic is not farfetched, even as we are still facing the current Covid pandemics.

As the balance in nature deteriorates, as the forest cover shrinks along with the population of mammals and the sea creatures because of the ever-increasing human population, intervention, callousness, and cruelty, the possibility of new viruses entering the food chain and the environment increases multifold.

This time around, the Covid -19 pandemic fatality, thankfully, is not super high though it had brought the world on its feet momentarily, with huge economic losses.

But for now, it seems that humanity has somehow bounced back, but imagine if were to be continuously bombarded with “new viruses”; the thought is both frightening and enough to break the delicate thread that binds all countries and economies of the world.

Are we prepared to handle the consequences of the world that we have created around us?