second black plague in 1919

BlondieBC

Banned
The flu (virus) will never become the plague (bacteria). Do you just mean a higher death rate on the Spanish Flu, or to you want a Plague outbreak to follow the Spanish Flu?
 

JoeMulk

Banned
The flu (virus) will never become the plague (bacteria). Do you just mean a higher death rate on the Spanish Flu, or to you want a Plague outbreak to follow the Spanish Flu?

I guess that I just meant the flu spreads more rapidly and kills as many as the plague did.
 

pnyckqx

Banned
The flu (virus) will never become the plague (bacteria). Do you just mean a higher death rate on the Spanish Flu, or to you want a Plague outbreak to follow the Spanish Flu?
Possible that one can follow on the heels of another...but you're right, the Spanish flu is a VIRAL infection, and the Plague is bacteriological.

However: a more agressive attack of the Spanish Flu could have easily caused societal breakdown as the number of sick, dying, and dead overwhelm health care facilities and health care professionals.

THAT could lead to conditions where Y-pestis --the plague-- gets itself back into our lives.

Let's say that this time it's the Pneumonic variant of the plague, which is easily transmitted person-to-person.

Note that in 1919, antibiotics had not been developed to stop the plague and many other diseases.

"Vlad Tepes" territory coming.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Timing is important. Spanish Flu was more in 1918, so if you get a 40% death rate, not a 3% death, it will effectively end the war. Too many governments were near collapse. Best guess is a status quo antebellum on the war borders, and each country desperately tires to deal with the aftermath and trying to keep its country from breaking apart.

But you listed 1919, so lets run with it comes back 10 times worse. Many things happen. First, most political leaders and generals are in over 50, and the death rate is much higher, so say 2/3 of the leaders die. The ToV conference collapse due to too many dead leaders. No one is going to have the will to enforce any harsh peace deal. Lower quality land will be abandoned such as in the black death, so I am not sure the border disputes from OTL will exists. With 4 million dead in Paris, how important will A-L be? Either the French or Germans will have plenty of housing to move the entire population out of A-L. Will the Czech really care so much about the Sudetenland if 4 out 10 people in Prague are dead? Can the Red/White fight a civil war with such a epidemic going on? My guess is all the fighting stops due to an inability to fight.

Now an interesting side effect will be the hunger in Europe. Europe will have a much higher death rate than places like Africa or Latin America due to malnutrition. Many will see it as gods punishment for the War. Interesting religious developments.

With so many dead, I have trouble seeing a WW2. It will take a few generations to replaced the lost dead, so their will be plenty of living space for everyone. And likely, central governments will be too weak to hold minority ethnic groups against their will, so Germany likely gets most of the German speaking areas. Posen likely goes to Poland, etc.

The colonial empires will collapse due to weakness of European countries from the death an the plague.

Serbia will be interesting with an over 55% population loss in the war.
 
My two big thoughts on this right off the bat are that actually using Y-Pestis or similar just won't produce an pandemic in 1919 - there aren't modern antibiotics and the death rate will be pretty atrocious, but there will be a decent idea how to control the spread of the thing. Second I really doubt that the colonial empires (at least all of them) would collapse given that the pandemic would be quite likely to hit the overseas territories as well.

I also wonder if we might be seeing accusations of biological warfare if the 1918/19 pandemic were to play out differently.
 
Personally I believe that a much more lethal version of the Spanish Flu would be just as devastating, if not more, than a resurgance of the black plague.

Should survivability percentages prove especially low, I could easily see Blondie's predictions coming true.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I also wonder if we might be seeing accusations of biological warfare if the 1918/19 pandemic were to play out differently.

There were accusations of bio warfare in OTL, so I would say 100% chance. It related to the use of anthrax and other disease on animals, but the Germans were accused of having a world wide biological warfare plan.


On a side note, Another important issue will be does it hit urban populations harder than rural. In an area where say Jews live in cities and Poles live in the country side, a 50% death rate in cities and 30% death rate in cities could have interesting side effects.

As with any epidemic, a lot depends on what population we assume it to hit hardest. The Spanish Flu spared the young and the old, much like AIDS often does at first. So you could end up with Grandparents raising children too.
 
The Central Powers population was suffering severe malnutrition thanks to the RN blockade so it's not unreasonable to assume that if the Spanish Flu was even slightly more virulant that the death rate would soar in those countries. It seams unlikely though that the mortality rate would reach the levels of tha Black Death.

With the conditions in the trenchs particulary the rats had plague broken out there then it would have been likely to spread fast possibly along the entire front but I don't see it reaching the general population.
 
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