Bill Gates reveals what frightens him most

Bill Gates has revealed his greatest fear for humanity and it’s not artificial intelligence or nuclear war.

The Microsoft founder and multi-billionaire instead believes the most likely cause of the death of millions of people will be a pandemic disease - and we will not get many more warnings like the Ebola crisis before a “huge tragedy” occurs.

He told Vox News his modelling predicted if a disease similar to the Spanish flu of 1918 was unleashed today it would be in all urban centres around the globe within 60 days and would kill more than 33 million people in 250 days.

The disease would spread so fast because people move around the world more than ever before with 50 times more people crossing borders today than in 1918.

“We’ve created, in terms of spread, the most dangerous environment that we’ve ever had in the history of mankind,” Gates said.

Gates first funded the modelling system to assist his foundation’s work eradicating polio.

He said the world had learned nothing from the Ebola outbreak and rated the chance of a widespread epidemic that was even worse occurring in his lifetime as more than 50 percent.

“The Ebola epidemic showed me that we are not ready for a serious epidemic, an epidemic that would be more infectious and would spread faster than Ebola did. This is the greatest risk of a huge tragedy,” he said.

“This is the most likely thing, by far, to kill more than 10 million excess people in a year.

“We don’t need to invest nearly what we do in military preparedness.

“This is something where less than a billion a year on R&D (research and development), medical surveillance, standby personnel, cross-training the military so they can play a role in terms of all the logistics here – this can be done and we may not get many more warnings like this one to say, ok, it’s a pretty modest investment to avoid something that really, in terms of the human condition, would be a gigantic setback.”

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, headed by its namesakes and business mangate Warren Buffett as trustees,  is the largest private foundation in the world, supporting initiatives in education, world health and reducing extreme poverty.

Gates alone has donated more than US$26 billion of the foundation’s reported US$42 billion endowment.