The civilised world lies on its knees, a sickness wracking its body. The affliction causes a necrotising of tissues so perfectly uniform in distribution that victims take on the appearance of corpses long before death occurs due to organ failure or secondary infections. ...

Wai Ching Jason Poon of Hong Kong competes in the Men's 1m Springboard preliminary round during Day One of the 14th FINA World Championships at the Oriental Sports Center on July 16, 2011 in Shanghai, China. (Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images)

The MSC Napoli cargo ship lies in a dry dock at Harland and Wolff ship builders as it is dismantled for recycling on April 11, 2008 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

A baby hippopotamus lies next to its mother on the first day it was presented to the public at the Zoo Berlin zoo on November 1, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The baby hippo was born at the zoo on October 23. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Kung Fu master Li Liangui practices “Suogugong” Kung Fu and his wife Liang Xiaoyan (R) practices Qigong at a park in Beijing, China, June 30, 2016. For 50 years, kung fu master Li Liangui has been contorting his body into eye-watering positions while practising one of the more unusual and less popular Chinese martial art forms. The 70-year-old is an expert in suogugong, or body shrinking kung fu, where practitioners dislocate their bones to help them achieve unlikely positions and feats. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A man lies on the floor during a ritual at the Sorte Mountain on the outskirts of Chivacoa, in the state of Yaracuy, Venezuela October 10, 2015. One long night every year in a mountainous rainforest in Venezuela, hundreds gather to dance on red-hot embers, enter trance-like states, and worship an ancient goddess known as Maria Lionza. Those who travel to the mountain known as Sorte in central Venezuela are practitioners of a cult that is built on local indigenous traditions. (Photo by Marco Bello/Reuters)

Tree trunks and rocks are set up to support a leaning wall of Li Yonghua's damaged cave house in an area where land is sinking next to a coal mine, in Helin village of Xiaoyi, China's Shanxi province, August 2, 2016. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)

A Haitian woman lies in a trance during a voodoo ceremony in Souvenance, a suburb of Gonaives, 171 km north of Port- au- Prince, on April 16, 2017. Haitian voodoo followers arrived in Souvenance to take part in the voodoo ceremonies held during Easter weekend. (Photo by Hector Retamal/AFP Photo)