TECHNOLOGY × EXTINCTIONS

A Species Deliberately Ended

1980 CE

Phanerozoic · Cenozoic · Quaternary · Holocene · Meghalayan

Rather than vaccinating everyone, teams vaccinated a ring around each remaining outbreak, cutting off the virus wherever it appeared, household by household across three continents. The last natural case was in Somalia in 1977. Certification took two more years of searching for a transmission that was no longer there.

Why it matters

The only extinction on this timeline that was planned, carried out and welcomed. The method is the part worth keeping: a disease does not have to be stopped everywhere at once, only wherever it currently is, which is a far smaller problem and the reason the campaign succeeded where mass vaccination alone had stalled.

Dating & uncertainty

The last natural case was in Somalia in 1977; certification followed in 1980 after two years of searching for any remaining transmission.

Sources

1. Foege (1998), Bulletin of the World Health Organization · Smallpox eradication in west and central Africa revisited
2. Ladnyi & Breman (1983), Journal of Hygiene, Epidemiology, Microbiology and Immunology · Five years of freedom from smallpox
3. Riedel (2005), Proceedings (Baylor University Medical Center) · Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination

Earth history as one day

23:59:59.9991875 µs before midnight

if Earth’s 4.54 billion years were compressed into a single day