The Black Death spreads even further

(Maybe this belong in ASB, I don't know)



The year is 1348: A wealthy French merchant, desperate to escape the plague commissions a ship (maybe a cog or galley) , puts his family onboard with the crew and simply sails blindly westward. After several weeks the battered, half-sunk vessel lands in what we know as Jamestown, Virginia.



The survivors of that hellish voyage gladly fall onto the beach of this strange land and give thanks to their God but their ordeal is not over, indeed there have been quite a few rats onboard the vessel...



So, assuming they encounter Native Americans within a few days, and the plague flea begins to infect local animals and the French what happens next?
 
Black Death

It would rapidly devastate the native population. When the Spaniards arrive a few centuries later, the remaining populations are very small and very easily conquered.
 
It would rapidly devastate the native population. When the Spaniards arrive a few centuries later, the remaining populations are very small and very easily conquered.

If the ship lands at Jamestown why would the Aztecs be affected? The population of what would be Virginia is in big trouble however, and any surviving French are likely to be sacrificed.

If the ship lands in the much more densley populated Mexico? What remaining population?
 
It would rapidly devastate the native population. When the Spaniards arrive a few centuries later, the remaining populations are very small and very easily conquered.

:rolleyes:

They would had recovered eventually. And the French are either killed/ intermarry with the native population.
 

mowque

Banned
Not sure, the Plague needs urban areas and tight trade networks to really spread and kill. Might simply kill off the local natives and then die off.
 
Black Death

If the ship lands at Jamestown why would the Aztecs be affected? The population of what would be Virginia is in big trouble however, and any surviving French are likely to be sacrificed.

If the ship lands in the much more densley populated Mexico? What remaining population?
A good point. I thought that the disease could be spread rapidly by traders, but I'm not certain of the extent of trade networks in pre colonial new world.
 
isnt the plague endemic to parts of the american continent anyway? think i read that somewhere, will have to find the book again. i think its the western side of the north american continent is the area.
 
isnt the plague endemic to parts of the american continent anyway? think i read that somewhere, will have to find the book again. i think its the western side of the north american continent is the area.

Yeah.

pCx0W.jpg


I really have no idea how interconnected Native American tribes in the area were.
 
Bubonic fever is endemic to wild animal populations in several parts of North America, especially in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado. I don't know how it got there, though, or how long its been there. I don't know of any post-Columbian bubonic plague outbreaks in the Americas, but a bubonic plague outbreak could have been lost amongst all the other Columbian plagues (smallpox, measles, etc), and that strikes me as more likely than the possibility that it's been around in the Americas since the last ice age.

But anyway, without large, filthy urban centers to bring large rodent populations in close proximity to large human populations, endemic bubonic fever doesn't lead to plagues. There's probably also an effect from the nature of the animal population: a widely-credited major contributing factor to the scale of the Black Death was that the Black Rat had recently displaced the European Hamster as the dominant urban rodent in much of Europe: they're specifically partially resistant to bubonic fever (making them good carriers), their habits bring them in regular close proximity to humans, and they share fleas well with humans (providing an excellent transmission vector for the plague). When the Black Rats in turn were displaced by the Norwegian Brown Rat, the frequency and severity of European plague outbreaks was greatly reduced. It seems likely that the American carrier animals of plague (squirrels, prairie dogs, etc) wouldn't be the perfect plague carriers that Black Rats were.

For the really devastating plague outbreaks, human-to-human transmission is critical. There's several forms of bubonic fever, depending on what parts of your body get infected. The blood-borne form you'd probably get from an infected flea bite is bad news (unless you live in the 20th century and have prompt access to antibiotics), but it's not particularly contagious. If it gets into your lungs (the Pneumonic Plague form), however, it's both much nastier (a 90% untreated morbidity rate rather than 50% for the regular blood-borne form) to the infected person, and it spreads by coughing like the common cold, and the people who catch it from you will also get the Pneumonic form. Without dense urban populations and trade routes, not only do you not have a large animal resevoir in close proximity to the human population, but you also don't have many opportunities for the Pneumonic form to spread over a large population.
 
Bubonic fever is endemic to wild animal populations in several parts of North America, especially in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado. I don't know how it got there, though, or how long its been there. I don't know of any post-Columbian bubonic plague outbreaks in the Americas, but a bubonic plague outbreak could have been lost amongst all the other Columbian plagues (smallpox, measles, etc), and that strikes me as more likely than the possibility that it's been around in the Americas since the last ice age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_plague_pandemic

Hit San Francisco and went inland in 1900.
 
One problem I see is that BP will go quickly enough through the tightly packed ship that by the time you've reached America, the plague is gone and you're left with a boat full of immune survivors, or corpses.
 
One problem I see is that BP will go quickly enough through the tightly packed ship that by the time you've reached America, the plague is gone and you're left with a boat full of immune survivors, or corpses.

Yeah, just started reading The Great Mortality : An Intimate History of the Black Death after I posted and up came a passage that describes what a sea voyage with plague infested rats would be like. The author describes as being like "stuck in a revolving door with a angry rattlesnake"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_plague_pandemic

Hit San Francisco and went inland in 1900.


Yeah, somehow my abuelita back in Puerto Rico caught the bubonic plague sometime back in the 30's or 40's. Sadly I don't know the circumstances behind it.
 
As noted, plague did not become endemic in the Western North American burrowing rodent population until it arrived as part of the Manchurian based 1900 pandemic. The OP scenario is essentially ASB since the time required in 14th century for an aimless Marie Celeset-style trans-atlantic voyage would have burned out the hosts and in any event the trade routes for effective distribution of an arriving plague did not exist in 14th century North America.
 
As noted, plague did not become endemic in the Western North American burrowing rodent population until it arrived as part of the Manchurian based 1900 pandemic. The OP scenario is essentially ASB since the time required in 14th century for an aimless Marie Celeset-style trans-atlantic voyage would have burned out the hosts and in any event the trade routes for effective distribution of an arriving plague did not exist in 14th century North America.

So I figuerd, ah well.
 
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