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We all know that upon the arrival of Europeans smallpox and other very deadly diseases spread with great speed throughout the Native American populations. According to some sources, the pre-Columbian population of natives in the Americans varies between 25 and 125 million, and within a century of Europe's arrival, the population had dropped 90%. I'm not prepared to quote a source, but those numbers stick out in memory, despite the obvious discrepancy in estimates.

Now, the Americas had some nasty things in store for the Europeans, such a siphilis, but nothing on the sheer infectous mortality rate that smallpox could bring to the table.

But what if there had been?

What if Columbus or Cabot or Magellan had brought back a virulent disease to wipe out 3/4s of Europe's population within a century?

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