Ebola has come to America.

Ebola. It rolls off the tongue like vinegar. Bitter, foul, with an almost palpable sense of doom…a word you almost wish you could take back the moment it curls from your lips.

Words, we can take back. Ebola, unfortunately, we cannot. It is a plague like nothing the world has ever seen before; a disease straight from the most ghastly Stephen King novel. Or maybe worse. The author was once quoted as saying the first chapter of “Hot Zone”, a novel describing the near-epidemic of Ebola in a Pennsylvania lab in 1989, was scarier than anything he could ever hope to conceive.

I first heard the word Ebola in 1995 from a young woman the night before her departure for Army Boot Camp hoping to become a military nurse. I was fascinated with something so small that could do something so unimaginable to a population as large as ours.

I tracked with some naïve interest, the Ebola outbreaks in Africa over the next decade and a half. The disease’s ability to kill so quickly, it seemed was our planet’s best defense. The disease always seemed to kill the host before they had a chance to make it out of the jungle to a densely populated metropolitan area.

Something about the latest outbreak was different. I knew it as soon as I saw the news coverage, slight as it was at first. This was West Africa…not some jungle area, a thousand miles from the nearest air port. It quickly jumped to a densely populated area. It was never under control. There were more case the following week than there was the previous week. It was unprecedented.

Until today however, I was nothing more than hyper-aware, if anything over the startling news of Ebola in this country. Yes, a citizen of Liberia had traveled to the United States infected with Ebola. Yes, a nurse who had treated him had become infected. A second nurse, just yesterday. It was tragic. But not entirely surprising. You had Patient Zero, infected in his Homeland and two nurses, who had direct contact with him before realizing the severity of his condition.

That all changed suddenly and almost violently earlier today when it was revealed that Amber Vinson had boarded a plane filled with nearly 150 people and flown from Dallas to Cleveland, knowing full well she had been exposed to the Ebola virus.

I will say it now, short of a miracle, this may very well have sealed our doom.

A stock market that in the midst of a correction may be now on a free fall and radical spin to the bottom of a black abyss.

A very serious virus, of which civilization has never seen the likes before, that just a day ago was contained, loosely as it may have been, may now have been spread hundreds of miles across our nation and been exposed to nearly 300 people between the two flights.

Even the World Health Organization predicts 10,000 new cases weekly within two months time.

So from here, where do we go?

Years ago when I was in Boy Scouts, I learned the most important motto of my life, “Be Prepared.” Over the years, I’ve practiced it, preached it and lived it. But this is unlike anything our Planet has ever experienced. Its not a flu that kills the old and the young. It’s a ravishing plight, knowing no bounds, social class, economic status….how could we ever hope to prepare ourselves for this?

Should Amber Vinson have infected even three or four people, it will be a mere matter of weeks before hundreds more come down with the virus. Hospitals will quickly be overwhelmed. Symptoms of Ebola mimic those of flu or even the common cold at first. Are we to expect every patient walking through the door with a fever and headache to be immediately quarantined? As quarantines by gun point begin to increase, those with symptoms may steer clear of medical help all together. The disease will spread in back alleys and under the radar of the CDC.

With-in three to four days, grocery stores and Walmarts will be completely sold out of any necessary provision. With-in two weeks, infrastructure will begin to fail as sewer workers and road crews will either be sick or too afraid to come from their homes. Neighbor will turn on neighbor. Those with rations will fight off a never ending mob of looters and thieves. Preppers who stock piled ammunitions will not be able to shoot every intruder. Roads, airports, bus station, train stations, depots, ports……every goat path and foot trail will be shut off. Travel will be halted in an attempt to contain the spread of the disease. Those attempting to escape will be shot. UN forces will arrive and follow out training exercises they practiced earlier this year on the east coast.

You will go to turn up the thermostat, but no one had manned the natural gas plant in weeks. You will go to turn on the faucet, but the water treatment plant has no one to run it.

Food will run out. Women will prostitute themselves out. Men will barter, trade or worse. FEMA will come door to door, rounding up the new refugees. Families will be separated. Healthy will be herded along with sick.

One year from now we will not recognize our civilization.