Video Games Could Prove Useful

University researchers got a glimpse of what a global pandemic could look like, thanks to a glitch in a popular video game.

World of Warcraft, an online virtual world that allows users from all around the planet to interact with each other, became home to an extra little bit of pestilence and death. A virtual disease was infecting the virtual characters, reports the The Times, and killing them off.

The virus in this incident, which happened in September 2005, behaved similarly to how scientists believe a real deadly virus would. And now the researchers are able to see firsthand what could happen on earth without actually unleashing a deadly pandemic here. —Dan Carnevale