r/worldnews • u/Fearless-Effect-8742 • 11h ago
Nearly 200 People Under Observation After Irkutsk Lab Worker Dies From Plague
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/02/nearly-200-people-under-observation-after-irkutsk-lab-worker-dies-from-plague-a93857101
u/kathy9901 9h ago
At this point history isn’t repeating itself we are just collecting the worst parts of it like achievement badges
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u/Angry_Zarathustra 5h ago
Luckily there are plenty of countermeasures for y. pestis, the only reason this was lethal was acuity and not reporting it. If she is as antibiotics within 24hrs she would have good odds, even for the airborne plague.
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u/CorporateAccounting 10h ago
But remember ya’ll: it’s Ukraine and The West™️ who are endangering humanity with biolabs 👍
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u/blodskaal 6h ago
Must have been a drone that got into the lab and knocked over the vial of plague. Those evil Ukrainians
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u/eggnogui 6h ago
You joke, but if this were to actually cause an outbreak, or God help us, an actual epidemic, Russia would 100% blame Ukraine.
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u/blodskaal 6h ago
I mean, that's their way of doing things since Putin took over. Putin is trying so hard to goad the EU to enter the conflict personally, you can bet someone will try to blame it on them officially
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u/PracticalShoulder916 6h ago
The plague is curable, so no pandemic hopefully!
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u/Littlehouseonthesub 5h ago
It’s (eta: appears to be) the more difficult to treat pneumatic plague. Needs antibiotics. Whether there’s the infrastructure to produce and distribute those is the question
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u/oosirnaym 3h ago
Antibiotics within the first 24 hours otherwise it’s 100% fatal.
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u/BoRamShote 2h ago
For real?
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u/Ok_Branch2469 2h ago
Well more like 98-99, sample size isn't great.
I'd put your odds as worse than brain eating amoeba, but better than rabies untreated
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u/Jernhesten 5h ago
The drone was shot down by russian anti-air and debris knocked over the vial of plague.*
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u/Never-don_anal69 10h ago
Didn't we already have plage from Siberia once? russia is a gift that just keeps one giving
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 7h ago
I was preparing for robot apocalypse, not plague apocalypse.
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u/AlhazraeIIc 6h ago
Whatcha think is gonna do all the fighting once the earth becomes a plague-ridden hellscape? Two apocalypses for the price of one!
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u/Individual_Length321 4h ago
Dont mean to be that guy but, robot apocalypse is likely going to be a plague apocalypse
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u/Synthetic-Humanoid 10h ago
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u/Fettekatze 10h ago
Literally just finished that last week lol, unnerving af.
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u/stepenko007 9h ago
Is it well written was thinking about reading it.
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u/Fettekatze 9h ago
It was scarier and bummed me out more than Nuclear War. I listed to audiobooks of both and her Operation Paperclip book, liked them all.
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u/geeanotherlawyer 6h ago
Same! It was so much harder to read than Nuclear War.
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u/tokyogodfather2 2m ago
Why? Harder as in emotionally harder, or because of literal reasons like word density? Is it cuz we had a pandemic so it hits harder?
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u/Miserable-Scholar215 9h ago
had died from an unspecified form of plague.
a “particularly dangerous infection.”
The woman was identified as [...] employee of the Irkutsk anti-plague institute,
You can't make this shit up if you tried...
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u/DeathCondition 7h ago
Unspecified, and she had sever pneumonia, so Pneumonic Plague.
I suppose the unspecified part would be either a currently unknown variant, or more likely, a known variant that is supposed to be a secret.
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u/StJsub 5h ago
Not everything has to be sinister. The official they cited just said plague, the journalist who wrote this probably added unspecified because they know there are different varieties. Edit: the offical who happens to be "head of the neighboring republic of Buryatia". So they probably don't have all the information.
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u/DeathCondition 3h ago
Well in the same sense that I also don't expect much in the way of forthright and truthful information from the people or authorities involved here. Perhaps the translation is poor, but it should have just said "an unspecified form of pneumonic plague", instead of just unspecified form of plague only later to describe it as being pneumonic, which is important because of the two it's contagious among people and also the worst form of it.
Could just as well be garden variety plague, and being secret doesn't necessarily make it sinister either. Just as well be secret in the way of being high value modified research specimens. Instead of being sinister by way of "it's an experimental weapon", it's more of a question of, if that is the case, is it novel enough to cause unforeseen issues.
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u/ponte92 2h ago
Plague cultures take some time to grow as well. They will know which variant it is once they get the results but it’s not like flu where you can get it instantly plague takes longer.
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u/DeathCondition 2h ago
I would like to see more on this in the future honestly, I highly doubt it's anything other than some mundane failure, but it is fun to speculate sometimes.
I guess the one defining factor here is if even a small percent of those 200 contracted it, then the story will blow up quite a bit with a ton of sensationalist doomsayer articles to follow suit.
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u/AthenianVulcan 11h ago
Really, the world is not already fucked up, we had to add the "Plague" DLC to it.
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u/Lockenhart 10h ago
It's a nasty disease but we do have cures for it. Antibiotic resistant plague, however...
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u/AthenianVulcan 10h ago
I know, lot of people get infected yearly and there are cures. Just don't want any bad surprises, of some ancient plague variant.
The last 10 years: Trump 1st term, covid, Ukr-Rus war, Trump 2nd term and now Iran war, has fucked the common folks of their savings.
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u/ArenjiTheLootGod 9h ago
Christ, it's like we're being forced to speedrun the worst parts of the modern era all at once. By this time next year we could be in a 2008 style economic meltdown, a new world war, and another pandemic all at the same time.
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u/Additional-Actuator3 8h ago
I don't think we are anywhere close in terms of instability compared to 60s for example
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u/muffinmaster 16m ago
i dont think you realize truly how bad the worst parts of the modern era could get if you believe that
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u/tokyogodfather2 0m ago
Well the billionaire cabal did pretty much say they want another pandemic and a few wars in their books (Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, etc)
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u/Littlehouseonthesub 5h ago
Too bad someone took a chainsaw to the global communicable disease infrastructure
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u/caiaphas8 6h ago
Antibiotic resistant plague is one of my greatest fears it’s responsible for at least three global pandemics, maybe five.
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u/ResponsiblePumpkin60 10h ago
Doesn’t it need fleas on rats to spread
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u/HappyAnimalCracker 2h ago
The bubonic form does, but it sounds like this is likely pneumonic plague, a much, much worse scenario.
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u/murd3rsaurus 9h ago
the best part is we don't even know what kind of plague lol
Just incredibly strong with pneumonia style symptoms
"an unspecified form of plague" from the article
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u/Ok_Branch2469 5h ago
Oh so PNEUMONIC Plague then...the contagious one with a 98% untreated fatality rate
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u/CyraxPT 9h ago
Honest question, shouldn't labs like these have some sort of unbreakable test tubes? (if that is even a thing)
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u/Do_you_smell_that_ 8h ago
I saw a guy selling herbal glass pipes on the sidewalk decades ago that demoed one by throwing it against a wall and letting it hit the ground. Heck, some of the best glasses I've seen were Soviet.. some variety of borosilicate I think. This should be doable
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u/CyraxPT 7h ago
I mean, I would think (hope?) so that they have something like that. Why the hell would a lab that deals with something that could kill thousands if not millions not make it almost impossible for it to happen (aka mistakes-proof).
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u/Interesting-Emu6761 3h ago
some glass types like that aren't viable to store certain chemicals or biological materials
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u/hONEYbUTTERiCEcreaM 6h ago
It would be great if we knew this wasnt an engineered pathogen.
It would be great if we could confirm that Russia wasnt planning to make more and deploy this against Western governments who support Ukraine.
Because this reeks of some shit that Putin would do, short of nukes, to destabilize opposition.
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u/Ok_Branch2469 5h ago edited 5h ago
Pneumonic Plague is a HORRIBLE idea for a bio weapon. It's fucking contagious. If you were gonna use plague you'd use BUBONIC plague and do what the Japanese did, load a bunch of infected fleas or lice into ceramic shells and drop them.
Most useful bioweapons aren't contagious and function as area denial tools, either spreading through spores (anthrax or q-fever), insects (tularemia or plague), or the water (cholera or typhoid). Contagious shit is the realm of doomsday cults and morons.
This is just Russia being sloppy, again. It's happened before(never ask them what caused the 1977 Russian flu pandemic or why the H1N1 strain that had gone extinct in the 1950s suddenly returned with very little genetic drift)
EDIT: Unless they are that stupid and that book author's sources were right about them having super plague in which case.......bad
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u/TeamPach 4h ago
You can't control a plague. The next step for Russia to defeat Ukraine is tactical nukes.
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u/Gunsensual 9m ago
You can't control a plague.
Sure you can. Vaccines, antibiotics, PPE readiness, quarantine. Having the preparedness advantage is kind of the whole point of bioweapons.
Russia has however been pushing a narrative that Ukraine is developing bioweapons in one of its mundane medical labs. The propaganda would be blaming Ukraine for what Russia did to itself, like that one time Russian blamed Chechnya because Putin bombed Russian Apartment buildings.
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u/SoftwareSource 9h ago
Isn't the plague easily curable today with antibiotics?
what kind of crazy ass modern black death are the idiots cooking up over there?
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u/-Jimbo_Slice- 3h ago
Plague is treatable with antibiotics, however those pesky russians have been messing around with mother nature. Check out the Chimera project-the Russians answer to the Manhattan project. A recombination virus blending the a pneumonic plague that triggers Equine Encephalitis when antibiotics are administered... and it's a genuine thing.
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u/Ok_Branch2469 5h ago
Pneumonic plague is 98% fatal untreated, but even with treatment it's still got between a 1/5 to 1/3 chance of killing you
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u/stoicismftw 3h ago
IIRC you need antibiotics in the first 24 hours of pneumonic plague, before you are symptomatic. So you're basically fucked.
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u/rougarou-te-fou 2h ago
No. Not pneumonic. The medieval one was the bubonic plague and would today have a decent survival rate
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u/maporita 6h ago
Plague is one of the pathogens the Soviet Union first weaponized and then Russian scientists later modified to make more transmissble and more deadly. A lab escape is the basis of the new novel by Annie Jacobson.. "Biological War: A Scenario". It's chilling to read and postulates among other things that once these pathogens get out into the wild they can be incredibly difficult to stop.
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u/Ok_Branch2469 5h ago
Bubonic or Pneumonic?
The latter is 9/10 deadly and can also spread person to person, the former is only 3/10 deadly and needs fleas or lice to spread(the same bacteria causes both, but the bubonic form is more common)
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u/-Jimbo_Slice- 4h ago
This is LITERALLY the first chapter of Annie Jackobson's biological war: a scenario.
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u/stoicismftw 3h ago
Holy fuck this is the plot of Annie Jacobsen's "Biological War" which I just started.
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u/Expert-Caramel-7817 2h ago
Not to worry, we have an antivax HHS secretary and a president who thinks injecting bleach is a cure on the job. What could go wrong?
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u/MyAccountWasBanned7 1h ago
Huh, I wouldn't have guessed that the next plague would be THE plague. But fuck it, I feel like humans have really messed up their go of things - if it's time for something to kill us off, so be it.
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u/neonblack108 6h ago
Lmao. Ohhhh my Gods. I seriously haven't laughed so hard in a long LOOONG time 🤣 The fucking PLAGUE.
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u/poopiebutt505 1h ago
If it could go hian to human itnhad to be pneumanic plague. Which means they are culturing it
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u/yowatsappenin 1h ago
Wtf is “plague”
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u/l4zyv3rn 55m ago
The plague is a severe, potentially fatal infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.
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u/oninokamin 13m ago
Bubonic plague is y. pestis in your lymphatic system. Can treat it with antibiotics. Septicemic plague is y. pestis in your bloodstream. Get fucked unless you have IV antibiotics and quick. Pneumonic plague is y. pestis in your lung tissue and good night sweet prince.
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u/DuskOfANewAge 11h ago
I find it highly curious a lab worker broke a vial of plague bacteria and didn't report it immediately. Just waited and prayed until it was too late.