Art imitating life... and death

The virtual plague that hit popular massively multiplayer online RPG World of Warcraft has been making the rounds in the news for weeks now because of how unique it is. For the uninformed, a virtual virus that was intended to only kill a few who were fighting a monster managed to find its way back to civilization in the game, killing off thousands of game players' characters and in-game non player characters. The situation was a cool-yet-frightening example of how online worlds can mimic the real world, and can given an example of a very probable real-world scenario.

The story has cracked into the mainstream media now, with NPR doing a story on how scientists could use virtual worlds to see how such scenarios could play out in real life. Who'd have thought that an online game could shed life potential social and scientific disasters?