Ebola, and plagues that threaten horrible death.

Stories have used disease as a plot element for centuries. But, science didn't necessarily understand such plagues very well, and so the authors aimed mainly to shock with their unknown elements. Today, however, science does understand quite a lot about disease; how they travel, what causes them, and more importantly the effects on human beings. They say knowledge is power, but in this case, knowledge creates more fear.

In our modern era there are some really nasty plagues out there: AIDS, malaria, cancer. With Ebola making the world news headlines, I thought I'd discuss it as a plot element. What makes Ebola so nasty is how people die of it--bleeding out internally, while organs liquefy. Yuck. It's a horrible image, and something people can imagine all too well. It also has no cure. No vaccine. Nothing to do, but drink water and pray. It has between a 50 - 90 % fatality rate. It's extreme. Characters within a story don't even need a villain, other than surviving this plague. In another sense, this is considered a "Man vs. Environment" story. In my mind, it's a "Survival" story, where the human element is magnified by the horrific things around them.

Everyone wants to live. People have an incredible desire to survive, no matter how. It's a defining characteristic of human beings. Stories using plague as plot devices sharpen those human desires, and how the people behave becomes the best parts of the stories. You could call them "Character Studies." Alfred Hitchcock made one kind of like this, called "Lifeboat" about people trapped on an inflatable raft, after their ship had been torpedoed by a Nazi U-Boat. Plague stories become claustrophobic in their atmosphere, and the trapped nature only accentuates the fear and helplessness of the people doing their utmost to survive.

- M