A Giga Plague in the mid-19th Century?

Since big catastrophic plagues are DEFINETLY not ASB as it takes a few minor PODs to mutate a virus (though oddly seen as almost taboo here), what would be the effects of a big plague spreading across the now relatively getting connected world? I'm thinking in the range of at least 60% mortality.
Would we be sent back to the Dark Ages or perhaps somehow keep gunpowder?
Ideas, etc?
 
60% mortality? Even the Black Death was only about 30% -- we're talking about one incredibly lethal disease here. Will it even have a chance to spread very far before it runs out of victims? Even the fastest boat around took nearly 2 weeks to cross the ocean in 1850.

Ok--handwave--a disease like that exists. Do you mean 60% of Europe? Or 60% of the Americas as well?
 
60% mortality? Even the Black Death was only about 30% -- we're talking about one incredibly lethal disease here. Will it even have a chance to spread very far before it runs out of victims? Even the fastest boat around took nearly 2 weeks to cross the ocean in 1850.

Ok--handwave--a disease like that exists. Do you mean 60% of Europe? Or 60% of the Americas as well?
The whole world (China, India were by then relatively connected...)
Let's say it spreads quickly but takes longer to kill the victim.
And yes, 60%. Black Plague didn't cause countries to collapse.
 
The whole world (China, India were by then relatively connected...)
Let's say it spreads quickly but takes longer to kill the victim.
And yes, 60%. Black Plague didn't cause countries to collapse.

But this is twice as deadly as the black death. Countries will collapse.
It would be kind of like a smaller scale Peshawar lancers (30% less than that), except there will be nowhere safe to run off to.
 
it's possible to have a disease with 60% or more lethality, the problem is having it have the capability to spread worldwide. The characteristics the disease would have to have would be the following:

1. It would be a zoonosis, something completely novel in humans and with very limited or no similarities to other pathogens that infect humans, including completely different infection paths. This will ensure lethality

2. It should have a long incubation period before symptoms first materialise - say 2 to 3 weeks. Victims should be infectious for all or most of this period. This will ensure maximum transmission. However 1 and 2 work against each other. The balance would have to be right

3. It should be a virus as previously stated, haemorrhagic ones are always good

4. It should be highly infectious. It needs to be really easy to catch like the common cold

5. It helps if it mutates rapidly, if that's the case then it will be more difficult to create a treatment. So, probably an RNA virus

6. The virus should have some way of evading the immune system

Such a virus is possible, but it would be a Perfect Storm. Even in these 'perfect' conditions the virus will rapidly evolve to a less virulent and less lethal form. Killing off the host that you depend upon is not a good strategy!
 
There was a lot of exploration of 'uncharted territories' in the tropics inthe 19th century by highly-mobile Europeans, so it's possible - an explorer up the Congo/Amazon/Irrawady picks up a flu bug that incubates as he returns to Cape Town/Rio/Singapore. The highly infectious disease finds a home in the crowded slums around the port, and then catches a ride on merchant and war-ships that are heading to all parts of the world. Ports make excellent disease propagation sites, being dirty, wet, and crowded.

You need to provide more information on the epidemology of this uber-plague to say what the effects would be. From the on-set of symptoms, is death quick or prolonged (think Ebola v. AIDS)? How debilitating during the progression? What is the transmission vector (fluid, air borne, rats)? How robust is the virus to temperature/environment changes (Could Scandanavia be spared because cold kills the virus?). How long before the plague burns itself out,allowing interactions again?

If the disease is quick, then it would be devastating to towns and cities. There would be a much greater impact on population centers than on the countryside - farmers may easily be spared, if their contact with others is infreqeunt. A more prolonged disease would mean greater chance of the infection spreading to more remote areas. An emptying of the cities could occur, with survivors abandoning them in favour of refuges in the country. Could set back the migration of humanity from rural to urban by many cetnturies.

If the plague runs its course quickly through the population, leaving immune survivors that can converse without it being a death sentence in a fairly short period of time, then countries may not collapse, but economies will. A step-back to medival economies, with local production for local use on farmsteads and small villages is possible. The specialization of skills that industrialization and cities provided would be lost, much as happened with the decline of Roman cities and populations a thousand years before. Psychologically there might be a huge increase in distrust of foreigners, bringing cross-border trade to a halt as well.

Politically there would of course be great upheaval, but I could see any surviving aristocracy (with the money and power that comes with it) reasserting their traditional roles of overseeing and adminstering the local area - a return to Feudalism bascially. Whether the liberalism of the Renaissance would be seen as a bad example and a reason to keep the peasants on the farm or not is hard to say.

Militarily this would be disaster. For one, barracks being also crowded and unhygenic, the toll on soldiers would be far higher than the general populace. Two, much of the surviving military might will be used to enforce the will of the surviving power structure from the chaos during the transistion. There certainly would be no projection of power over-seas, and colonies would be abandoned to their own devices. It would be come a much 'larger' world again
 
You also have to think of Interactions with other diseases.

Aids by itself is not all that deadly, But a person with Aids will die, from a Illness a non Aids person would hardly notice getting.

Also do you want it to stay around, Bubonic is carried by rats, and transmitted by infected Fleas. As the Rats are world wide, outbreaks are possible from anywhere.

Ebola comes from spider monkeys. [???] If you don't come in Contact with the Monkeys or people who have been in Contact, It is very unlikely you will get it.

So, is this able to infect something as a secondary pool. or will this be a one shot, disappearing till someone travels around in that part of the Jungle again
 
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