The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Super Spreaders

1. Be Proactive. This is the ability to control one's environment, rather than have it control you, as is so often the case. Self determination, choice, and the power to decide response to stimulus, conditions and circumstances. As a human plague-rat (or a literal plague-rat for you brothers in Nimh – Mrs. Brisby, darling, I’m talking to you, you sexy thing…), you have to make some tough decisions. Not everyone can get away with the lesions of an AIDS victim, the itchiness of smallpox, or the digestive messiness of a flu. Research diseases in advance so that you can make the most of your limited remaining time on the planet. By the most I mean killing as many people as possible. Which diseases spread fastest, how do they spread, what kind of population exposure are we talking here, is your location of choice medically-advanced enough to cure or prevent your outbreak? These are questions you can answer with proactive thinking.

2. Begin with the End in Mind. Covey calls this the habit of personal leadership - leading oneself that is, towards what you consider your aims. By developing the habit of concentrating on relevant activities you will build a platform to avoid distractions and become more productive and successful. While we always encourage genocide, the Mishmash Brotherhood understands that not everyone is physically or emotionally capable of mass murder. What do you, the individual, wish to achieve with your disease? Discomfort, scarring, emotional trauma, it’s all good and it can all be achieved with your disease. Assess yourself and examine what the title “super carrier” means to you.

3. Put First Things First. Covey calls this the habit of personal management. This is about organizing and implementing activities in line with the aims established in habit 2. Covey says that habit 2 is the first, or mental creation; habit 3 is the second, or physical creation. First you need to get a disease. This can be a complicated process and may require repeated experimentation. If you know which disease you wish to spread, you’ll have to live where it is prevalent or break into a government compound to get it. I don’t wish to sound racist, but all Petri dishes look alike. It’s true. Careful planning and step-by-step execution is the only guaranteed way to efficiently spread a disease. Otherwise you might as well charge into a lab like a bull in a feces-encrusted, insect-swarmed, Third World china shop.

4. Think Win-Win. Covey calls this the habit of interpersonal leadership, necessary because achievements are largely dependent on co-operative efforts with others. He says that win-win is based on the assumption that there is plenty for everyone, and that success follows a co-operative approach more naturally than the confrontation of win-or-lose. Taxpayers spend millions of dollars on the CDC. The CDC can’t exist if they don’t have Diseases to Control. So really, by spreading horrible, potentially-deadly contagions, you’re doing the American public a service. They cease to waste their money, and you get to watch them die in slow, agonizing, often wet ways. Win-Win.

5. Seek First to Understand and Then to Be Understood. One of the great maxims of the modern age. This is Covey's habit of communication, and it's extremely powerful. Covey helps to explain this in his simple analogy 'diagnose before you prescribe'. Simple and effective, and essential for developing and maintaining positive relationships in all aspects of life. How can any government agency and/or individual come to revile you and exalt you to the position of Super Spreader if you don’t even know who you’re infecting? How can you truly enjoy the wonder and majesty of spreading disease if you can’t look every man, woman, and child in the face and know the source of their weeping? There’s no point infecting a populace that you don’t understand because you can’t appreciate their suffering. This applies as well to your disease. Don’t infect yourself with anything you don’t understand. You could be caught unaware by a symptom you can’t handle. You could undermine your efforts if you’re a killer or overwhelm yourself if you’re more the “6 month itch” type.

6. Synergize. Covey says this is the habit of creative co-operation - the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, which implicitly lays down the challenge to see the good and potential in the other person's contribution. Sure, giving someone AIDS is a memorable experience. But what if you could give that person AIDS and Typhoid? Don’t limit yourself by spreading alone. Bring along a fellow Super Spreader and really fuck over the local medical community! “Hey, you got SARS in my leprosy!” “No, you got leprosy in my SARS!”

7. Sharpen the Saw. This is the habit of self renewal, says Covey, and it necessarily surrounds all the other habits, enabling and encouraging them to happen and grow. Covey interprets the self into four parts: the spiritual, mental, physical and the social/emotional, which all need feeding and developing. This habit is a difficult one to master for the Super Spreader. The key to self renewal is locating a cure or vaccine for your disease, hording it all in a secret underground bunker, then getting yourself infected all over again. For those devoted souls who choose an incurable disease such as AIDS, self renewal may prove more challenging. But never give up! Remember that the person who walks away clean today may be the victim of your pestilence tomorrow.

Well, Super Spreaders, we here at the Mishmash Brotherhood hope this has been useful to you. If you wish to become a Super Spreader and require research on disease, the Centers for Disease Control can be located at www.cdc.gov. For a list of diseases that have been engineered by the Mishmash Brotherhood, check out the following page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_diseases. They say “fictional”, but that’s our Mishmash Wikipedia code for “Research and Development”.

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