History of smallpox centuries, the WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in December 1979. Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest, which was declared eradicated in 2011. It has been suggested that smallpox was a major component of the Plague of Athens that occurred in 430 BCE, during the Peloponnesian Wars, and was described by Thucydides. Galen's description of the Antonine Plague, which swept through the Roman Empire in 165–180, indicates that it was probably caused by smallpox. Returning soldiers brought the disease home with them to Syria and Italy, where it raged for
Human extinction we believe." Multiple organizations with the goal of helping prevent human extinction exist. Examples are the Future of Humanity Institute, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Future of Life Institute, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (est. 2011). Omnicide is human extinction as a result of human action. Most commonly it refers to extinction through nuclear warfare or biological warfare, but it can also apply to extinction through means such as a global anthropogenic ecological catastrophe. Omnicide can be considered a subcategory of genocide. Using the concept in this way, one can