The conversation that Richard Preston has with Karl Johnson is very

interesting because the author addresses hard hitting questions like Are you
worried about a species-threatening event. Throughout the conversation, they talk
about how the virus would have affected the world had it been airborne and what
emotions Johnson would have if a species threating virus wiped out the world. You
learn that Johnson wouldnt mind a world threatening virus wiping out 9/10 of the
planet because he implies that the human population is too much of a burden for
earth to bear. In other words, earth has reached its maximum capacity and there
needs to be a predator to deal with the over population.

An environmental change is defined as the surroundings or conditions in

which a person, animal, or plant lives or operates. An environment can change in
many ways including climate, populations, and diversity in plants/ animals. For an
ecosystem to be stable, it must have equilibrium of all of the concepts of an
environment. If a drought occurs that year of if there is a mass of apex predators
and a dwindling amount of secondary consumers, this affects the ecosystems
stability by disrupting the hardly achieved equilibrium. Comparing this standard to
the conversation in the book, an environmental change occurs when a certain
population of monkeys is infected with the Ebola virus. These monkeys then spread
it on to humans and affect us, the apex predator. This alters the ecosystems
stability because the virus impacted 2 different populations with major roles in the
ecosystem.