One hundred years ago death came with astonishing speed and agony as influenza patients admitted to a hospital in the morning in 1918 would be dead by the evening.

It was reported their bodies would turn blue from lack of oxygen. Hospitals also reported an average 100 deaths a day, overwhelming the morgues.

Up to 500 million people – about one-third of the world’s population – became infected with the influenza virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

As many as 50 million died, or one out of every 30 human beings on the planet, killing more American troops than those that died on World War I battlefields.

It was the worst global pandemic in modern history and the intensity and speed with which it struck were almost unimaginable. But most chilling is that they report such a calamity could again occur today.

Top health and science groups, such as the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, predict influenza pandemics are nearly certain to recur.

“A global influenza pandemic is No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 on our list of the most-feared public health crises,” according to Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

“Influenza viruses, with the vast silent reservoir in aquatic birds, are impossible to eradicate,” the World Health Organization warned.  “With the growth of global travel, a pandemic can spread rapidly globally with little time to prepare a public health response.”

A pandemic could also arise if a strain mutates with or develops directly from animal flu viruses, the CDC said. The main contributors to a potential pandemic are the lack of a universal vaccine and humans’ lack of immunity to those potential unborn strains.

“The threat of a future flu pandemic remains,” the CDC said. “A pandemic flu virus could emerge anywhere and spread globally.” If an equal ratio of Americans died in a pandemic today, that would be an unimaginable 2 million Americans. That’s the current population of the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area.

The 1918 pandemic happened during the First World War when it was about to come to its horrific end in Europe and may have played some role in moving the virus around the world.

It was a widespread, worldwide pandemic from a virus no one had ever seen before. The pandemic killed more people in 24 months than AIDS killed in 24 years, and more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century, according to the book “The Great Influenza.”

A prophetic sign in the Bible prophecies of the Gospels and Revelation indicating the Last Days at the end of the age is pestilence.

You can learn more about the Signs of the Last Days prophecies here .

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