5 Lethal Diseases You Would Totally Mistake For The Flu

Published November 23, 2014
Updated May 6, 2020

Anthrax

Flu Dead Animal

Source: Phys.org

There’s a reason that when the world’s most insane military supervillains went looking for a disease they could turn into a weapon, they settled on anthrax. It’s fast, lethal, and you can get anthrax just by touching something that has touched something that had anthrax spores on it in a sort of Six Degrees of Separation of Death.

Flu Kevin Bacon

The 2001 attacks . . . It was him all along!
Source: Bam Smack Pow

Initial symptoms of inhalation anthrax are, you guessed it, just like the flu. Except for the part where you die, which shouldn’t take longer than a few days. Play us out, obligatory Scott Ian reference:

“The horror of it all
The horror of it all
The horror of it all
The horror of it all
Say goodbye; it’s such a horror
My memories; there’s nothing harder
Anger and hatred fill the page
So smash the walls—it’s time to rage.”

author
Richard Stockton
author
Richard Stockton is a freelance science and technology writer from Sacramento, California.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
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Stockton, Richard. "5 Lethal Diseases You Would Totally Mistake For The Flu." AllThatsInteresting.com, November 23, 2014, https://allthatsinteresting.com/lethal-diseases-flu. Accessed May 8, 2024.