Some power centers survive by adapting to new circumstances, sometimes using weapons to defend quarantine zones, others crumble within the chaos that follows the spreading of the disease. The search for a cure is only a part of the novel while Frank Herbert describes the evolution of relationships between the various powers at international level but also within various nations. O’Neill’s journey to Ireland to see firsthand the effects of his vengeance is the ideal journey of the world’s survivors in search for a new equilibrium but “The White Plague” was written by Frank Herbert so there are no easy answers or a reassuring happy ending.

The fragmentation of O’Neill’s personality in some ways reflects what happens in the world and particularly in Ireland after the plague struck killing the vast majority of women. In “The White Plague” however there isn’t a war between nations but a brilliant scientist who suffered a terrible trauma that fragments his mind bringing the personality that emerges as dominant to unleash in the world a terrible disease. It’s however true that today there are so many people who travel the world that there’s always the risk that a disease might spread to the world before a quarantine can be established. Officially those have been designed to cope with natural diseases such as influenza but it’s hard to believe that competent authorities haven’t thought about germ warfare. In recent years health measures have been prepared to limit the risks of epidemics and pandemics. Over the past thirty years in fact genetic manipulation has become a reality and unfortunately it’s plausible that in some laboratory someone’s trying to create a disease that kills in a selective manner according to some specific genetic traits. “The White Plague” is the kind of novel you hope is science fiction but now you fear it’s not anymore. With his knowledge of biology O’Neill creates a new plague that kills only women but a disease knows no boundaries and soon reaches around the world a level of killing greater than planned by its creator. O’Neill considers guilty not only the Irish, for supporting the terrorists, but also the British, who oppressed the Irish pushing them to resort to terrorism, and the Libyans, for providing weapons and training to terrorists. When a bomb planted by an extremist fringe of the IRA kills his family, O’Neill’s mind gets fragmented and the personality that comes out dominant plans a terrible revenge. John Roe O’Neill is an American molecular biologist whose ancestors emigrated from Ireland and that is where he moved for a genetic study. The novel “The White Plague” by Frank Herbert was published for the first time in 1982. The White Plague by Frank Herbert (Italian edition)

The white plague frank herbert