Will AI Induce a Pandemic?
The barrier to designing a virus has dropped from a $100 million lab and a team of PhDs to a high-powered laptop and a grudge. AI is beginning to turn biology into code as if it were a language, allowing anyone with a basic chemistry background to follow step-by-step manuals for synthesizing pathogens.
Some Early Evidence: The release of ESM3 in late 2024 demonstrated that AI can now “simulate 500 million years of evolution” to create entirely new proteins. A 2025 biosecurity evaluation showed that ESM3 could reconstruct 85% of a redacted viral sequence, proving that current biosecurity guardrails are essentially useless against modern protein-language models.
The Pandemic
What follows is a work of fiction — an imaginative look at one possible future, offered not to alarm but to help us think, pray, and prepare.
When the first headlines hit, my irritation rose before I finished reading. NEW OUTBREAK. EXPERTS URGE RESTRICTIONS. I’d lived through enough pandemic rhetoric to distrust the tone. I wasn’t raising my kids to outsource prudence to a press conference. People need people: church, school, potlucks, neighbors. The cure can’t be worse than the disease. I pocketed my phone and went back to the kitchen.
The next day our friend at the country store called my husband. “Come today,” he said. When my husband came home, he set the receipt on the counter like evidence: flour, beans, chicken feed — up again, and some items limited. “Trucking’s getting weird,” he said. “Warehouses short-staffed. People are buying like it’s war.”
“From a virus?” I asked, skeptical.
“From panic,” he said. “And sick workers.”
That night, after the kids were in bed, I read what I could get my hands on. Certain phrases kept showing up: AI-generated, bio model, low-cost lab. The story sounded impossible until it didn’t: a couple of unstable men, a $40,000 wet lab in their garage, a COVID-like strain designed by AI. Early reports claimed it was twice as contagious as the original and five times more lethal. I didn’t know what to believe, but I felt my heart shifting from arguing to preparing.
Sunday morning we dressed for church as usual, until the parish group chat lit up: Two families very ill. If anyone in your family is showing symptoms, please stay home. Potluck likely canceled. Hand on the doorknob, I realized this wasn’t about obedience or defiance. It was about charity. About not turning devotion into a dare. My husband offered, “Back pew, keep our distance, leave right after.”
I wanted to plant our normal like a flag. Then I pictured Mrs. Donnelly — eighty-two, shaking every hand. I pictured my dad’s weak lungs. I looked at my kids, watching me learn prudence in real time.
That afternoon we took inventory: pantry, freezer, water, medicine. Not panic — attention. By Tuesday the grocery shelves were thinning; not starvation, just the system stuttering. A friend texted: School might go remote. I still didn’t want lockdowns. I still distrusted sweeping orders. But I could see the shape of it now: not just sickness, but disruption — and death.
That night, and every night for the next nine months, we lit a candle and prayed for the healing of the world. When the world finally turned its lights back on, one in ten precious souls had been given back to God.