[Editor’s Note: The Conflict Contagion panel at the center of this story has been canceled due to travel concerns.]
Humans have not benefited from antibiotics for long in the grand scheme of things. Antibiotics were deployed for the first time in 1910. In the century since, antibiotics have extended the average human lifespan by more than 20 years. It is not hard to understand why: Anyone who has survived pneumonia, undergone a surgery, or taken pills to beat strep throat may owe their life to antibiotics.
Now, we face the possibility of a post-antibiotic era. Superbugs like those breeding in Gaza don’t respond to drugs, and they certainly don’t respect national borders.
“War does more than just destroy buildings and kill people. It creates superbugs that will haunt us for the rest of our lives all across the world,” said Antoine Abou Fayad, a microbiologist and speaker on South by Southwest’s Conflict Contagion: The New AMR Threat.
So Abou Fayad has a warning for humanity, and data to back it up. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are multiplying at staggering rates in conflict zones. Some are completely untreatable by existing antibiotics. He fears the result will be an existential turn in human health, back to an era where simple paper cuts are deadly, or require amputation.
“Are we willing to sacrifice that many souls, that many people, or not?” Abou Fayad asked the Chronicle. “And the thing with antimicrobial resistance is, regardless of where you live, nobody is safe.”
Since 2017, Abou Fayad has worked in a lab at the American University of Beirut, studying bacteria samples from Lebanon. He receives vials from regional hospitals, and bacteria growing on bullet casings. Of the bacteria he examines, some are easy to kill, others are resistant to a few drugs, and some are impossible to kill with any known antibiotics. When he started, these super-strong, totally resistant bugs used to pop up in samples about once per month. Now, he said he gets these samples once per day, and sometimes more often.
The spike is astonishing, and it’s not a temporary issue. Unlike viruses, which rely on animal cells to survive, bacteria can live and multiply on their own for a long time while hiding in the soil. Unless new antibiotics that can knock out these powerful new strains are rapidly developed, “this is going to be the norm,” Abou Fayad said.
Conflict zones create perfect breeding grounds for superbugs, he explained. Cities under bombardment are full of open wounds, disrupted and dirty plumbing systems, and nearly expired antibiotics that are donated as aid. Infections from wounds abound. Then, when antibiotics are used in a frenzy before they are set to expire, they can do more harm than good, killing off only the weakest germs and leaving the strongest ones behind to become harder-to-beat strains.
But there’s another big problem in war zones that the microbiologist says is too often overlooked: heavy metals. These metals, like copper and lead, naturally kill bacteria. When an area is full of metals – like those from bombshells – it leaches into the soil where bacteria lay. There, the metals kill off the weakest bacteria, leaving behind the stronger microbes.
Microbiologists have linked metal resistance and drug resistance for decades, but Abou Fayad’s latest research shows exactly how this works, he said. His data describes the way that bacteria exposed to inordinate numbers of shell casings become impervious to drugs. Looking at samples from hospitals in South Lebanon before conflict, during, and after, Abou Fayad’s team has found data that shows “the first actual genetic link” that creates superbugs in war zones, he explained.
“We’re actually going to be showing how the bombing, the shelling – all of that stuff – affects how bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, but it also affects how bacteria become more virulent and more dominant and more of a colonizer at the genetic level,” he said. “It’s no longer a theory.”
South by Southwest may seem an unlikely stage on which to unveil such grim scientific findings. The festival is better known for its celebration of new music, film, and tech. Yet, Abou Fayad will fly 14 hours from Lebanon to Texas to share his findings. Why not one of the world’s myriad microbiology conferences? Why not one of the antibiotic resistance conferences in Switzerland or Washington, D.C.?
Abou Fayad said his findings are grave, and they require an urgent response from people across industries and expertises.
“South by Southwest is not only for scientists,” he said. “There are not that many platforms that allow you to share such data with everyone. South by Southwest is a window to actually share your data with people with various backgrounds, see what they think about it, see how we can work collectively towards a better place.”
Abou Fayad’s long journey from the Middle East to Central Texas serves as a sort of proof, he said. His audience in Austin, and indeed the global audience, should be reminded that bacteria travel to every corner of the globe. War may be concentrated in the Middle East, but the superbugs it breeds could lead to deaths and amputations far from Lebanon or Palestine.
With so many wounds and so much heavy metal in places like Gaza, Abou Fayad wants to urge governments and companies worldwide to do at least three things: First, maintain the effectiveness of antibiotics by limiting how often they’re prescribed, so bacteria don’t evolve resistance to them; second, create new antibiotics by increasing funding to discover and develop new drugs; and third, stop war.
“The human race always came back from difficulties and problems with a better way,” Abou Fayad said.
This article appears in SXSW 2026 Festival Guide.