Claim: Bill Gates is quoted in the February 1997 issue of George magazine as saying an "over-populated planet" would be "choked to extinction by a lung-attacking virus.
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Munich Security Conference
text: in a few years, according to epidemiologists, terrorists might be capable of developing genetically modified species of deadly agents on the computer screen. Such highly infectious viruses could spread very quickly and kill more than 30 million people in less than a year, Gates warned, recalling the "Spanish flu", which had claimed up to 50 million victims worldwide in 1918. According to the Microsoft founder, the world is currently not prepared for such a threat in any way. In addition, the link between health issues and international security is ignored, even though constant biotechnological progress allows the development of new

title: Epidemic
text: both common source and propagated outbreaks (sometimes referred as mixed outbreak). For example, secondary person-to-person spread may occur after a common source exposure or an environmental vectors may spread a zoonotic diseases agent. Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates wrote an essay published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" in March 2015. In the essay, Gates states that an epidemic caused by a natural disaster or bioterrorism is the most likely event that could kill 10 million or more people all at the same time. Gates and other experts suggest that the best way to prepare for an epidemic

title: Phoenix Point
text: to the game. In 2022, Earth's scientists discovered an extraterrestrial virus in permafrost that had begun to melt. Only about one percent of the virus's genome matched anything recorded by scientists up to that time. Named the Pandoravirus, humans and animals who came into contact with it mutated into horrific abominations. By the late 2020s, a global apocalypse began when melting polar icecaps released the Pandoravirus into the world's oceans. The alien virus quickly dominated the oceans, mutating sea creatures of every size into hybrid alien monsters capable of crawling on to land. The oceans transformed in alien ways after

title: Munich Security Conference
text: This is the only way to gain experience on how diseases spread and how people react to such situations. According to Gates, research must be carried out on how to respond to the panic reactions of the general population and the over-congestion of transport or communication systems in order to ensure sufficient medical care at all times. The American philanthropist also highlighted what he regards as the three greatest global dangers: nuclear war, pandemics, and climate change. The world is the least prepared for pandemics, and Gates warned that this was a real problem. The President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame,

title: Eric Pianka
text: the Earth would not survive unless its population was reduced by 95% suggesting that the planet would be "better off" if the human population were reduced and that a mutant strain of Ebola would be the most efficient means. Mims' affiliate at the Discovery Institute, William Dembski, then informed the Department of Homeland Security that Pianka's speech may have been intended to foment bioterrorism. This resulted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewing Pianka in Austin. Pianka has stated that Mims took his statements out of context and that he was simply describing what would happen from biological principles alone

title: Ian McHarg
text: in Portland, Oregon, called "Man: Planetary Disease". In the speech he asserted that, due to the views of man and nature that have infiltrated all of western culture, we are not guaranteed survival. Of man, McHarg said, "He treats the world as a storehouse existing for his delectation; he plunders, rapes, poisons, and kills this living system, the biosphere, in ignorance of its workings and its fundamental value." To this end man is a "planetary disease", who has lived with no regard for nature. He discusses how in the Judeo-Christian traditions, the Bible says that man is to have dominion

title: Virus: It is Aware
text: but Sutter is killed. They eventually manage to blow up the ship and escape. The ending cinematic ominously zooms out to depict the infested space station. The back insert blurb of the game states ""The virus has arrived on earth to destroy the human race. This time bullets will be used to cure evil."" In the native French, it says that bullets will "have" to be used. In testing a beta version of the game on Jeuxvideo.com in July 1999, Kornifex gave it an overall score of 8 out of 20, mostly criticizing the very poor handling of the character,

title: Bioterrorism
text: York Times" report, the Gates Foundation predicted that a modern outbreak similar to the Spanish Influenza pandemic (which killed between 50 million and 100 million people) could end up killing more than 360 million people worldwide, even considering widespread availability of vaccines and other healthcare tools. The report cited increased globalization, rapid international air travel, and urbanization as increased reasons for concern. In a March 9, 2017 interview with CNBC, former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, who was co-chair of the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense, said a worldwide pandemic could end the lives of more people than a

title: Global catastrophic risk
text: lung cancer. The report warned that the pollution crisis was exceeding "the envelope on the amount of pollution the Earth can carry" and “threatens the continuing survival of human societies”. Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and the paradigm founder of ecological economics, has argued that the carrying capacity of Earth — that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels — is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is

title: Human overpopulation
text: home of humanity, suggesting this could happen within a few centuries. In "", John S. Lewis suggests that the resources of the solar system could support 10 quadrillion (10) people. In an interview, Stephen Hawking claimed that overpopulation is a threat to human existence and "our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space." K. Eric Drexler, famous inventor of the futuristic concept of molecular nanotechnology, has suggested in "Engines of Creation" that colonizing space will mean breaking the Malthusian limits to growth for the human species. It

title: Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
text: fire in a runaway reaction caused by the catalyst. Fatally injured in a crash landing, he crawls to the sea so that bacteria in his body can initiate new life on Earth. In John Christopher's novel "The Death of Grass" (1956), a mutated virus kills cereal crops and other grasses throughout Eurasia, causing famine. Kurt Vonnegut 's novel "Cat's Cradle" (1963) ends with all the bodies of water turning into "ice-nine", a fictional phase of ice that forms at room temperature. In J. G. Ballard's novel "The Burning World" (1964, expanded into "The Drought" in 1965), pollution in the oceans

title: Stephen Hawking
text: to be aware of the dangers we now face." Hawking expressed concern that life on Earth is at risk from a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, global warming, or other dangers humans have not yet thought of. Hawking has stated: “I regard it as almost inevitable that either a nuclear confrontation or environmental catastrophe will cripple the Earth at some point in the next 1,000 years”, and has considered an "asteroid collision" to be the biggest threat to the planet. Such a planet-wide disaster need not result in human extinction if the human race were to be able

title: Chandra Wickramasinghe
text: that cometary dust brought the virus to Earth simultaneously at multiple locations—a view almost universally dismissed by external experts on this pandemic. On 24 May 2003 "The Lancet" published a letter from Wickramasinghe, jointly signed by Milton Wainwright and Jayant Narlikar, in which they hypothesised that the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) could be extraterrestrial in origin instead of originating from chickens. "The Lancet" subsequently published three responses to this letter, showing that the hypothesis was not evidence-based, and casting doubts on the quality of the experiments referenced by Wickramasinghe in his letter. Claims connecting terrestrial disease

title: Pentti Linkola
text: if they are developed or underdeveloped, do not deserve to survive at the expense of the biosphere as a whole. In May 1994, Linkola was featured on the front page of "The Wall Street Journal Europe". He said he was for a radical reduction in the world population and was quoted as saying about a future world war, "If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die." Linkola's writings describe in emotional detail the environmental degradation he has witnessed. He dedicated his 1979 "Toisinajattelijan päiväkirjasta" ("From the

title: Helatrobus
text: ago to 52 trillion years ago". In a series of lectures, Hubbard gives further detail: Planets were surrounded suddenly by radioactive cloud masses. And very often a long time before the planet came under attack from these implant people, waves of radioactive clouds, Magellanic clouds, black and gray, would sweep over and engulf the planet, and it would be living in an atmosphere of radioactivity, which was highly antipathetic to the living beings, bodies, plants, anything else that was on this planet. And so planetary systems would become engulfed in radioactive masses, gray and black. And the earmarks of such

title: Nuclear holocaust
text: argue that "if the thought of 500 million people dying in a nuclear war is not enough to stimulate action, then the thought of extinction will. Indeed, Schell explicitly advocates use of the fear of extinction as the basis for inspiring the "complete rearrangement of world politics". The belief in "overkill" is also commonly encountered, with an example being the following statement made by nuclear disarmament activist Philip Noel-Baker in 1971 – "Both the US and the Soviet Union now possess nuclear stockpiles large enough to exterminate mankind three or four – some say ten – times over". Brian Martin

title: Paul R. Ehrlich
text: of what he had published had not occurred, but reaffirmed his basic opinion that overpopulation is a major problem. He noted that, "Fifty-eight academies of science said that same thing in 1994, as did the world scientists' warning to humanity in the same year. My view has become depressingly mainline!" Ehrlich also stated that 600 million people were very hungry, billions were under-nourished, and that his predictions about disease and climate change were essentially correct. Retrospectively, Ehrlich believes that "The Population Bomb" was "way too optimistic". In a 2008 discussion hosted by the website "Salon", Paul Ehrlich has become more

title: Bill Gates
text: years into the future, Gates stated: "... there'll be some really bad things that'll happen in the next 50 or 100 years, but hopefully none of them on the scale of, say, a million people that you didn't expect to die from a pandemic, or nuclear or bioterrorism." Gates also identified innovation as the "real driver of progress" and pronounced that "America's way better today than it's ever been." Gates has recently expressed concern about the existential threats of superintelligence; in a Reddit "ask me anything", he stated that First the machines will do a lot of jobs for us

title: Paul R. Ehrlich
text: any of his forecasts of imminent catastrophe." On the first Earth Day in 1970, he warned that "[i]n ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." In a 1971 speech, he predicted that: "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people." "If I were a gambler," Professor Ehrlich concluded before boarding an airplane, " I would take even money that England will not exist in

title: Crossed (comics)
text: (implied to be President George W Bush) is clearly infected, confirming Washington D.C. has been overrun. A single Tornado GR1 was launched to intercept the Russians and the crew sacrifice themselves to prevent nuclear war breaking out. After this, the government is evacuated to bunkers, civil authority is superseded by the Armed Forces and orders go out to shut down all nuclear facilities. However, Brown says in the long term they should "hopefully" regain control and that government scientist Dr. Chopra has a chance of finding an answer to the virus. Unfortunately, Brown's advisor – acting without clearing it with