Spanish flu pandemic WIs

Hendryk

Banned
So we're all aware that the disease popularly known as Spanish flu killed more people than died in WW1; commonly quoted figures tend to be in the 40-50 million range. Recent estimates have in fact revised that figure upwards, and it's now considered that between 50 and 100 million people died in the outbreak. That's between 2.5% and 5% of the world's population at the time--worse than any war, revolution or genocide.

So considering the history-altering potential of such a tremendous death toll, I'm wondering what WIs could be made out of it. I've had a look at other threads mentioning the Spanish flu, and these are those I've found:

No flu. What do do with all the bodies?

Spanish flu in 1916

Spanish flu avoidable?

Alternate influenza epidemic, 1918...

Flu epidemic hits in 1915

What if: No 1919 Spanish Flu?

Most of those threads were either stillborn or received little attention. Yet I can't help thinking that there's an AH potential to the Spanish flu that we have yet to tap into.
 
What if FDR had died from the flu in 1918/19?

What if person "x" does not die, and so the surviving spouse does not remarry, which means that person "y" (either a really destructive or constructive person) is never born?

One of my great grandmothers died in Feb. 1919 from the flu. Had she lived, my grandpa's younger step-brother would never have been born.
 

Hendryk

Banned
I've been looking for a map of the spread of the pandemic at the global level, but can only find maps for the US, such as the following one. Does anybody have one at hand, or knows where to find one?

1918.gif
 
I've been looking for a map of the spread of the pandemic at the global level, but can only find maps for the US, such as the following one. Does anybody have one at hand, or knows where to find one?

1918.gif

There is a big error in that map. That covers only the second round of the Spanish Flu outbreak in the US, although its the largest. The first outbreak started in Kansas in March of 1918.

Some famous people that died from the Spanish Flu:

* Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet († November 9, 1918)
* Felix Arndt, American pianist († October 16, 1918)
* George Freeth, father of modern surfing and lifeguard († April 7, 1919)
* Sophie Halberstadt-Freud, daughter of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, († 1920)
* Harold Gilman, British painter († February 12, 1919)
* Henry G. Ginaca, American engineer, inventor of the Ginaca machine († October 19, 1918)
* Charles Tomlinson Griffes, American composer († April 8, 1920)
* Joe Hall, Montreal Canadiens defenceman, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame († April 6, 1919).
* Phoebe Hearst, mother of William Randolph Hearst, († April 13, 1919)
* Francisco Marto, Fátima child († April 4, 1919)
* Jacinta Marto, Fátima child († February 20, 1920)
* Alan Arnett McLeod, Victoria Cross winner, († 6 November 1918)
* Sir Hubert Parry, British composer, († October 7, 1918)
* William Leefe Robinson, Victoria Cross winner, († December 31, 1918)
* Edmond Rostand, French dramatist, best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac, († December 2, 1918)
* Egon Schiele, Austrian painter († October 31, 1918). His wife Edith, who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease only three days before.
* Yakov Sverdlov, Bolshevik party leader and official of pre-USSR Russia († March 16, 1919)
* Mark Sykes, British politician and diplomat († February 16, 1919)
* Max Weber, German political economist and sociologist († June 14, 1920)
* Prince Erik, Duke of Västmanland (Erik Gustav Ludvig Albert Bernadotte), Prince of Sweden and Norway, Duke of Västmanland († September 20, 1918)


Torqumada
 
Gene Roddenberry was born in 1921 and Isaac Asimov was born in 1920; their parents might have died in the pandemic.

What if Typhoid Mary had died then, or died years earlier? Or what if she had emigrated to another part of the country, or to another country?
 

Hendryk

Banned
Wasn't the Bubonic Plague more destructive proportional to the population?
In terms of percentage, possibly--I don't know the figures. In absolute numbers, I think the Spanish flu was the worse killer. In any case, the pandemic caused more deaths than any human event, and considering what took place in the rest of the 20th century, that's saying a lot.
 

Thande

Donor
A bit like the trenches of WW1, it's almost more interesting to speculate on what influential people would have gone on to be important if they hadn't died then before rising to prominence. Of course, that's an impossible question to answer (I think Dale Cozort had a go once) but it's still a curious idea.
 

Hendryk

Banned
A bit like the trenches of WW1, it's almost more interesting to speculate on what influential people would have gone on to be important if they hadn't died then before rising to prominence. Of course, that's an impossible question to answer (I think Dale Cozort had a go once) but it's still a curious idea.
Indeed, all the more so as, unlike other pandemics (except possibly AIDS), the Spanish flu killed mostly young adults. As Torqu explained elsewhere, what made it such a lethal disease wasn't the virus itself but the overreaction of the host's immune system--the healthier the host, the more likely to die. So many of those 50 to 100 million victims were people in the prime of life, untold numbers of whom could have gone on to make a difference had they not died prematurely.
 
Top