Dauntless wrote:I don't think sick refugess fleeing the sol system would much of a problem. from what little we have on that time period space had pretty much been abandaned long before the bugs were relesed.
Also, I can't immediately put my hands on reference that says old earth was infected, and from what i remember it was more nukes and chemical weapons making it on the verge of uninhabitable before Beowulf and the proto SL arrived to fix the planet.
Ukraine revealed the Scrag supersoldiers, Europe responded with Biological weapons, China retaliated with Chemical weapons AND their own supersoldiers, and North America unleashed weaponized nanotech; which is why everybody except Mesa thinks weaponized nanotech is insanity.
I recall reading somewhere, think it was Honor mentioned the Plague never would have made it beyond Sol, it was that well contained before Beowulf arrived to start the healing. So if Beowulf had never come to help....Earth would be dead, Mars almost certainly, the Belters would probably also be dead, and that's it.
From the description of what diseases were used, and how the nanotech weapons functioned, everything "ran hot" and had little to no dwell time. So even if some (rich, but infected) person managed to launch a spaceship and go into Cyrosleep, by the time the ship arrived in another solar system, the passenger would be dead, and the weapons would have gone dormant decades before. Meaning no contamination when someone comes aboard to figure out why it didn't respond to hails, and then crapping their pants when they realized what could have happened.