The Winnowing by Isaac Asimov (book about depopulation by random poisoning)

submitted by zyxzevn from self.NoNewNormal

The setup seems so similar to the current agenda.

Plot summary (from wikipedia )

In the year 2005, the world's population of six billion is suffering from acute famine. The World Food Organization decides on desperate measures to decrease the population by a process of triage. They propose to do this by adding selective poisons to certain food shipments to grossly over-populated areas.

They attempt to blackmail biochemist Dr. Aaron Rodman into cooperating with their scheme (threatening to withhold food rations from his daughter's family if he doesn't comply), proposing to utilise his development of LP - a lipoprotein which when incorporated into foods will cause random deaths.

The scheme is planned but Rodman is unwilling to go along with it. At a meeting between him and senior government officials and members of the World Food Council, he provides as refreshment sandwiches laced with the LP, so that they will die at random, just as they had planned for so many others to die. He carefully matches the LP in the sandwiches (which he also eats) to his own metabolism, so that he will die quickly and not be guilty of involvement in the scheme.

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[–]hennaojichan 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Gore Vidal’s 1954 dystopian satire Messiah is the story of a religious movement that forms around a charismatic undertaker named John Cave. Cave’s central message is, simply and profoundly, that people should not be afraid of death; not because they could look forward to an afterlife of eternal bliss in paradise, but rather because oblivion means an end to all human suffering. His magnetic personality and vision of a world freed from thanatophobia quickly attract devoted followers, and so the odyssey begins.

Cave’s story is narrated by Eugene Luther, an intellectual and writer who is drafted into the nascent Cavite movement by a mysterious older woman named Clarissa, who affects to be over two thousand years old, and a brilliant younger woman named Iris, with whom Luther falls (literally) hopelessly in love. Luther is tasked with refining and elaborating John Cave’s philosophy – which quickly becomes known as “Cavesword” – into a plausible, organized doctrine. Backed up by the Madison Avenue promotions and psychoanalytic acumen of others in their small (but extremely well-financed) cohort, the Cavites succeed beyond Luther’s wildest (and most troubling) dreams."

— More and with spoilers: http://alt-death.com/2021/06/10/cavesword-a-nontheistic-religion-of-radical-death-acceptance-in-gore-vidals-messiah/