Terrifying video reveals how London Heathrow can spread a pandemic in DAYS



German researchers have developed a breakthrough system for predicting how rapidly an outbreak might spread and where

Theoretical physicists from Humboldt University, Berlin used data from the 2003 SARS outbreak and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic

They believe contagion travels more quickly between busy airports in different countries than between cities in the same country

A global pandemic is one of the most serious threats to the future of the human race and now scientists have made a video showing how a deadly virus could spread from London’s busy Heathrow airport.



German researchers have developed a breakthrough system for predicting how rapidly an outbreak might spread and where.



While in times past diseases typically spread within local areas, modern pandemics cross borders rapidly via the complex network of global flight patterns and busy aviation hubs and can spread across the world in a matter of weeks.

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This map and diagram - a still from the beginning of the video - shows a simulated global epidemic that spreads on the worldwide air-transportation network with an initial outbreak location in London. It establishes outbreaks in cities in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Greenland in the first instance

WHAT DO THE MAPS REPRESENT?

They are part of a new model for predicting the arrival times of the next global pandemic in different parts of the world. The models rely on the concept of ‘effective distance,’ and the belief that contagion now travels much more quickly and effectively between busy airports in different countries than between cities and more rural areas in the same country. The maps show various routes travelling from a given airport which is the source of the contagion (in this case London Heathrow). Circular diagrams show the radial distance from the disease source and the expected spreading path a contagion phenomenon will take - including other airports that might become gateways for the disease.

By using data from the 2003 SARS outbreak and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, theoretical physicist Dirk Brockmann and his colleagues from Humboldt University, Berlin, have devised a new model for predicting the arrival times of the next global pandemic in different parts of the world.



The model relies on the concept of ‘effective distance,’ and the belief that contagion now travels much more quickly and effectively between busy airports in different countries than between cities and more rural areas in the same country.

Here, the disease has spread to cities in Europe, Africa, the East Coast of the U.S. and even Asia. The diagram below the map shows the radial distance from London Heathrow and the expected spreading path a contagion phenomenon will take

Members of Hong Kong's Health Department wear protective suits during an exercise held at the airport to simulate a scenario in which a highly contagious disease such as SARS is suspected to have infected a passenger on board a flight

He wrote: ‘For example more people travel each day between London and New York than for example, London and some small town in the UK.



‘So would it not make sense to think of London and New York as being close neighbours and London and a small town in the UK be far apart?’

The model itself does not predict how long a virus would take to spread from A to B.

Professor Brockman told MailOnlne: 'Only relative time is important and the message of the video is that the pattern has a circular shape when we look at the disease spread with our new method.

He said scientists need specific information about a given disease to work out how long it would take to spread to certain places and populations.

The video shows how the virus swiftly spreads from Heathrow to European cities, Greenland and the north coast of Africa, before reaching the east coast of the U.S. and India.

As Europe is engulfed by the fictional contagion, it continues to spread to the west coast of the U.S. Thailand and Russia and then to South Africa, India and Asia before it hits Australia and New Zealand.

'The air transportation network is used as a proxy for the probability that infections get carried from one place to the next,' Professor Brockmann said.



While it is impossible to accurately calculate the spread of a contagion, figures from the Department of Health suggest it takes as little as two to four weeks for a virus to reach different countries from its origins.



However, as 1,288 flights depart from London Heathrow to 80 countries every day and an average of 191,200 people arrive and depart from the airport every day, it is easy to imagine that the spread could be more rapid.



The pattern of the outbreak quickly becomes very complex, according to the scientists, but here it is easy to see how the fictional outbreak has taken hold of Europe and parts of South Africa and the East Coast of the U.S.

Once in a country such as the UK, a virus is likely to spread to all densely populated areas within one to two weeks and peak 50 days after its initial entry, experts said.



‘In the modern world that’s so connected, old school, conventional geographic distance is not so meaningful anymore,’ Professor Brockmann told Fast Company.



He and his colleagues have spent the past decade testing how ‘effective distance’ might work by building theoretical pandemics and models that predict their theoretical spread.



Three-years-worth of airline data was analysed to see how these distances interact with the aim of developing a universal equation that would account for the arrival times of any disease across the globe.



The simulations show how difficult it would be to contain or quarantine an outbreak in a global city. Although now that researchers understand how the underlying process works, it could be used to help cut off critical links in transmission. Masks and hand sanitiser were recommended during the bird flu outbreak

As the outbreak begins to subside in Europe, it continues to spread rapidly across the U.S. and in more cities in Asia

Professor Brockmann and his co-author Dirk Hebling published a paper in Science today, which shows that the jumbled, erratic spread of disease can be reduced to simple, constant wave patterns, riding on effective distances, rather than geographic ones, through a ‘global mobility network.’



When Professor Brockmann plotted the SARS and H1N1 epidemics’ actual arrival times in different cities against their effective distances, he found strong positive correlations.



‘So we don’t need to know anything about the disease,’ Professor Brockmann explained.



‘If you throw a rock into the water, you’ll see a concentric wave. If you throw a big rock into the water, you will also see a concentric wave.



'If you throw a rock into honey, or some different liquid, you will see a wave that is propagating slower, but it will still be a concentric wave,’ he said.



Regardless of the transmission method, Professor Brockmann argues that his global mobility network represents the wave pattern, while the rock and the liquid show the launch and spread of the disease.



Now the outbreak appears to have completely disappeared from Europe but it has spread to Australia and New Zealand as well as throughout Asia and down the west coast of South America

Using the global mobility network, we can see how a disease launched in one city might spread to the rest of the world.



Professor Brockmann developed visualisations of this phenomenon in Mexico City, Chicago and London.



Unfortunately, they also show how difficult it would be to contain or quarantine an outbreak in a global city.



Although now that researchers understand how the underlying process works, it could be used to help cut off critical links in transmission.



The Department of Health said that when flu epidemics occur, many millions of people around the world can become ill,and a proportion will die from the disease itself or from complications such as pneumonia.



It believes half the UK could develop an illness from a pandemic and there could be 50,000 and 750,000 additional deaths that would not have occurred over the same period.

Professor Bockman told MailOnline: 'I think that emergent infectious diseases are something that we should take very seriously, as researchers and public health authorities do.'

