Looking back on the book now, I like the reason the bad guy gives for setting the virus on the city. He says that in nature, natural events like disease and environmental crises are what keeps a species' population under control. They become too numerous, the food runs out, they all get diseased, and the population goes way down again. Balance is restored. But humans, because of our intelligence and technology, have nothing that keeps our population down. We've outsmarted the plagues that would otherwise keep our numbers in check. Now we're overpopulated in much of the earth, and destroying it in many other ways because of our numbers. So to the bad guy (Cope is his name), the solution was to set loose a disease that no one would be able to control, so the human population would be reduced, like how it was after the black plague. He pointed out that the end of the black plague led to tremendous prosperity for those who survived, and, in Cope's opinion, the end of the dark ages and birth of the Renaissance. Sadly, I kind of agree that it's sort of a problem that humans have no natural problems like that to keep us in place. But obviously, killing millions or even billions of people deliberately doesn't seem like the right solution. As horribly morbid as it is, I almost wish that some natural disease or crisis would come along and lower our numbers, with nobody at fault. That sounds evil though. Still, I see Cope's point. Sometimes I wonder if the massive destruction of our earth is going to be the thing that cuts us down, and that would really be a shame. Or maybe nuclear war will do it. Or maybe nothing will come along, and we'll just all die from lack of resources.