AHC: The Black Death killed 90% of people in Eurasia

[HotSauce]

Another challenge of mine (muahahaha), so what if a particularly virulent and fatal strain of the Black Death evolved in the grasslands of Central Asia prior to its spread across Eurasia, maybe the genome of the bacteria was changed by a few base sequences or so. By the mid 13th century, the Black Death had killed 90% of its victims and then disappeared from history, almost as if God had wanted to eradicate most of humanity. Only isolated peoples, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and Oceania were left largely intact.

Once bustling centres of trade, once drowned in gold, now drowned in the sickening stench of rotting human bodies. Wars ended in both sides being decimated and irreparably broken. Monarchies fell without most of their base, and societies and religions were lost to history. Yet, someone has to come in and pick up the pieces... Who though?

That's up to you.

 

[Gloss]

This is pretty much impossible, a strain so lethal but at the same time so virulent as to affect all of Eurasia would affect Africa too, basically meaning that the only people left mostly unaffected would be people otherwise already isolated, meaning you are looking more at internal demographic and social recover lasting centuries. It's hard to tell the specifics considering we are dealing with magic at this point.

 

[HotSauce]

This is pretty much impossible, a strain so lethal but at the same time so virulent as to affect all of Eurasia would affect Africa too

Tell me how it would cross the Sahara Desert then? The biggest dry desert in the world that requires specific knowledge and years of experience by Arab traders to even cross. Rats don't find deserts nice to live in at all (and journeys across the desert take weeks or months - and the disease would kill people within days of infection).

It's hard to tell the specifics considering we are dealing with magic at this point.

So such a virulent disease would not be possible? It would sweep through the continent, only stopping when it has no-one else to kill.

 

[Nivek]

That is not the premise of years of rice and salt?

 

[HotSauce]

That is not the premise of years of rice and salt?

Nah, because that's Europe specifically, but I was wondering what if it affected everyone in Eurasia (except Sub-Saharan Africa since its separated by the biggest dry desert in the world)

 

[Gloss]

Tell me how it would cross the Sahara Desert then? The biggest dry desert in the world that requires specific knowledge and years of experience by Arab traders to even cross. Rats don't find deserts nice to live in at all (and journeys across the desert take weeks or months - and the disease would kill people within days of infection).



So such a virulent disease would not be possible? It would sweep through the continent, only stopping when it has no-one else to kill.

A single diseases killing so many people all over the world at once is for many reasons unfeasible, the population decline in the American happened over a century and needed different diseases and climatic events to make such big decline possible.

 

[Tonifranz]

Tell me how it would cross the Sahara Desert then?

Through the Nile?

 

[Gloss]

Tell me how it would cross the Sahara Desert then? The biggest dry desert in the world that requires specific knowledge and years of experience by Arab traders to even cross. Rats don't find deserts nice to live in at all (and journeys across the desert take weeks or months - and the disease would kill people within days of infection).

A disease that would kill people within days of infection would not be that virulent, so the whole premise is moot, also the carrier could be moved around by ships over the Indian ocean.

 

[HotSauce]

A disease that would kill people within days of infection would not be that virulent, so the whole premise is moot, also the carrier could be moved around by ships over the Indian ocean.

Not if it doesnt kill its vector (fats and fleas) as fast - the Black Death spread really far and its only a less deadly version of what Im proposing. Unless you want to deny actually history as well, the Black Death did kill people within a week of inital infection.

A single diseases killing so many people all over the world at once is for many reasons unfeasible, the population decline in the American happened over a century and needed different diseases and climatic events to make such big decline possible.

The native americans lost huge amounts of their population in a few decades from 30% - 90% in some regions, tens of millions died from smallpox and other old world diseases. Imagine a similar but worse tragedy for the old world.

Look, I'm not trying to argue if its plausible for not, because we will never know because be only experience OTL. I just want to theorise what would happen, ok?

 

[HotSauce]

Through the Nile?

The actual Black Death didn't reach Sub-Saharan Africa so how would that change with a deadlier version of the disease?

 

[Cassius]

The actual Black Death didn't reach Sub-Saharan Africa so how would that change with a deadlier version of the disease?

Why didn't it reach sub saharan africa though? It hit southern arabia and that's just a short boat ride across from ethiopian and somali trading ports.

 

[Richard V]

Why didn't it reach sub saharan africa though? It hit southern arabia and that's just a short boat ride across from ethiopian and somali trading ports.

No one knows. But perhaps the disease jumped from stowaway rats to native rodents before making the jump to humans. Europe happened to have extremely abundant rodent reservoir. It didn’t spread to India, nor it seems subtropical south China and South East Asia either. It might have been in north China but evidence is sketchy.

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/22/7039