Why would a modern city be put into lock-down?

Here is a question I found on NaNoWrimo: Why would a modern city be put into lock-down?

The city in question isn’t any particular city. I’ve got the basic plot of the story, I just need a potential ‘how’ – the backstory of the lockdown/siege/quarantine. Those who have the means have fled the city already – bribed the guards, or maybe left before the lockdown?

I’d be going for more corrupt government/dictatorship instead of zombies/mystery disease, but I’ll give everything some thought.

Thanks for giving this a look-in.

And my answer:

My first thought was a wide spread air born disease. Avian/Bird Flue was my first thought. That one is bad enough so that the government (USA gov) comes in and not only slaughters every animal on your farm (chickens, horses, goats, cats, dogs, etc,) but they also burn the buildings to the ground and than send the humans off to quarantine. We farmers keep careful watch over our birds because it’s really the only disease that the gov has the ability to come in a take everything you own because it’s so deadly. So far I only know of this happening once in the US (a turkey farm in 2007) , but for your book you could really go wild with something like that.

Say some wild animal got sick and spread it to domestic animals, who in turn spread it to humans. An air born contagion could spread in a matter of hours, in other words from the time the wild animal gets sick to the time two thirds of the humans are sick could be as little as 4 or 5 hours. To contain something gone wild like that the government would lock down the city, slaughter all the animals, burn down all the buildings except for one big one (a hospital, super market, or mall) where they would quarantine (lock up) all of the humans.

Well, that’s what I would write if it was me.

And if you want some info on real life corruption in government, than you might want to check out this site: On Being Homeless in Old Orchard Beach, Maine: What happens when government corruption goes to the extreme.

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