Ask the Author: Bruce Fottler
Answered Questions (2)
Bruce Fottler
The idea behind “Paladin's Odyssey” has been bouncing around my head for a while, and usually got stirred up after seeing whatever big-budget global disaster movie. It always got me wondering what would really do us in. Out of all the scenarios I've seen or thought about, it's a global pandemic that seemed most plausible.
In particular, the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 fascinated me. They call it the forgotten pandemic and it killed over 50 million people worldwide. That's a staggering number of deaths for that time, and it amazed me that something that quick and devastating didn't unravel the civilized world. Keep in mind that many countries were already in the thick of World War One, so there was already death and destruction on a scale never seen before – and yet the world seemed to shrug off the pandemic like it was a speed-bump in history.
This got me wondering if today's world would be able to handle a similar outbreak. We live in a time when a well-timed bad earnings report could tank the New York Stock Market, or worse, a few terrorists could hijack an airplane and bring the world to a standstill. Recently, a couple of U.S. Ebola cases touched off a media frenzy that had our country in a tizzy. Can the world really handle something on a much larger scale when we all seem primed to panic over something relatively smaller?
In particular, the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 fascinated me. They call it the forgotten pandemic and it killed over 50 million people worldwide. That's a staggering number of deaths for that time, and it amazed me that something that quick and devastating didn't unravel the civilized world. Keep in mind that many countries were already in the thick of World War One, so there was already death and destruction on a scale never seen before – and yet the world seemed to shrug off the pandemic like it was a speed-bump in history.
This got me wondering if today's world would be able to handle a similar outbreak. We live in a time when a well-timed bad earnings report could tank the New York Stock Market, or worse, a few terrorists could hijack an airplane and bring the world to a standstill. Recently, a couple of U.S. Ebola cases touched off a media frenzy that had our country in a tizzy. Can the world really handle something on a much larger scale when we all seem primed to panic over something relatively smaller?
Bruce Fottler
I just released “Paladin's Odyssey” - a post-apocalyptic thriller. It's actually a (fictional) memoir written by someone who is considered a national hero in the future. Joseph Paladin is a former major in the United States Army, retired colonel in the Maine Republic Militia, and considered one of the key founders of the New American Confederation. His legendary odyssey to reunify a fractured nation in the aftermath of a global flu pandemic is a household story. However, he admits to keeping a shocking secret and shares his untold story set in the grim aftermath of the flu pandemic.
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