Notes from the End of the World

Claude Charbonneau, scientist, interviewed by the French Television

REPORTER - What do you believe is the cause of this pandemic?

CHARBONNEAU - We don't know yet. We have been receiving conflicting information from many different sources.

R - But what do you personally think?

C - I think we should not believe in everything that we've heard so far. It is the job of the governments to lie to the public, so they will never recognize that they committed many mistakes.

R - Gives us some examples ...

C - They were too slow to respond to the spread of the infection. The borders were closed too late. When the countries really started to take measures to counter the epidemics, there were not much left to be done. And, for many decades, the developed countries have been working on biological weapons ... This could be one of them.

R - What does make you believe in this hypothesis?

C - We hear things ... In the congresses, in the conferences, occasionally people mention these classified, sensible subjects. One of my colleagues told me that the USSR had developed a horrible, deadly virus during the Cold War, but it didn't work out as expected; so they abandoned the researches and tried to bury it.

R - Can you give us the name of this colleague of yours?

C - I don't think I should, but let's call him Dmitri. He is dead anyways, killed by this disease, but he worked for the Soviets until the project was shut down.

R - Could it be the same virus?

C - Maybe. He also told me that 300 ampoules were stolen and taken away from the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

R - And how dangerous that could be?

C (Nervous laughter) - Ten or twenty of them could exterminate the life on Earth ... It is this dangerous. Imagine if a terrorist group gets hold of this biological weapon.

R - Are you suggesting that the pandemic was deliberate?

C - Could had been, as far as I know. The news showed some initial cases in West Africa, but, after that, the virus spread too quickly. We had simultaneous infections in Europe, Japan and Middle East. It was a concerted contagion; it did not respect the known epidemics patterns. You just have to throw the content of one of those ampoules in a water reservoir to infect millions of people in a matter of days. To me, how everything happened just doesn't sound natural.

R - What people should do from now on?

C - Try to survive as long as possible.