What If UniverseOpen the simulatorPandemic simulator
Choose a disease, place patient zero in any country and watch it travel the world along borders and flight routes.
Try it now: free, in your browser
How it spreads
Each country runs its own outbreak, and the disease jumps between countries along shared borders and air travel in proportion to how many people live in each. The globe colours countries by how many people are sick right now, and the counter tracks infections and deaths.
You can turn lockdowns on or off. Hospitals that fill up let more of the sick die, and a deadly enough disease can overwhelm a country's services altogether.
Questions
Which diseases can I simulate?
Seasonal flu, COVID-19, the 1918 flu, Ebola and a made-up "Disease X" that spreads fast and kills often.
Do lockdowns make a difference?
In the simulator, as in reality, they slow the spread once cases surge, which keeps hospitals from overflowing and lowers the death toll.
Is this a forecast?
No. It is a simple model meant to show how outbreaks spread, not a prediction.
All numbers in the simulator are rough estimates meant to show what could happen, not predictions.