The New Black Death of the 19th Century

Exploring the effects of a global pandemic, perhaps the worst pandemic in a ATL when and where would one be most effective? I was thinking of perhaps 1880 coming out of South Africa and kills about 25%-30% of the WORLD population. Striking just before the Scramble for Africa and riding on re emerging Mercantalist trends it could derail the New Imperialism of the period, and rebalance world power. Especially with the rising world wide urbanism and industrial revolution and lax health protocols of the Gilded Age a perfect storm may be viable.

I don't want to say it might be an off shot of Ebola but it could be.
 
Interesting! I found out awhile ago while doing some random goofing off on wikipedia that some kind of bubonic plague was spread around San Francisco (and other parts of the world) in 1900-1904. IOTL it wasn't actually that dangerous but due to a combination of racism on the part of the government (first they didn't admit it was happening because they didn't want it to impact their financial arrangements; then they blamed the entire thing on the "poor hygiene" of the Chinese immigrants) it spread more than it would have. I think that a good thing to use in your timeline would be government mismanagement, not because of lack of scientific knowledge, but because of a desire to prevent panic, and also possibly for racist reasons.
 
That outbreak of the plague started in China and spread rapidly around the Pacific. Luckily for those involved at the time, doctors and such spotted it and were able to put a stop to any pandemic.
 
Racist reactions to diseases is as old as racism itself. The Spanish flu a few decades later would be able to jump around the world in a matter of six months.

I would think the regions hit the hardest would be the more densely populated and coastal regions. Areas of the world that see the most foot and sea traffic. Areas like the backwoods of Canada and Tibet are least likely to have widespread outbreaks.
 
What about one that started in the trenches of Petersburg and spread worldwide? Especially if it started in the north, the American Civil War gets dramatically changed, along with the Franco-Prussian if it spreads enough. So you get the damaged you already mentioned, along with two wars that may be resolved completely differently
 
A pandemic could hardly account for 25-30% of the world population (which should be close to 1 billion by the 1880s).
The medical knowledge is advanced enough to arrange for quarantines and the spread of the pandemic across the globe will be slowed down by transportation. Btw, if it starts in South Africa it should not be too difficult to stop. It would be worse if it starts in India.
Anyway the Spanish flu of 1918-20 (which was a very serious pandemic) accounted for 20 million victims AFAIK: the one you posit would kill 10 to 15 times this number.
 

katchen

Banned
One pandemic that would be very difficult to stop once it got going (and which could totally devastate both man and beast throughout the tropics and subtropics) would be African tsetse fly and sleeping sickness aka trypanosomiasis brucei brucei, rhodesis, and gambienesis. All that would be required would be the introduction of tsetse fly larva infested hay on cattle boats to North and South America, Australia, India, the Dutch East Indies, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, perhaps out of interest in African cattle as breeding strains. This could easily happen in the 1880s or 1890s--just before Sleeping Sickness is well understood.
 
A good choice might be some kind of virus that lies dormant for some time before causing symptoms to develop. That way you could get around the quarantine problem, since by the time you show symptoms you could have already infected a load of people.
 
A good choice might be some kind of virus that lies dormant for some time before causing symptoms to develop. That way you could get around the quarantine problem, since by the time you show symptoms you could have already infected a load of people.

Like HIV? Get something like that going, especially if it spreads by contact, and it would be devastating.
 
Like HIV? Get something like that going, especially if it spreads by contact, and it would be devastating.

Actually, plain old HIV would be pretty devastating. Look at the figures for syphilis in the 19th century. Then imagine an STD that takes even longer to show symptoms and is 100% fatal without treatment. Which they don't have. Then imagine that it only kills by way of secondary infections, so doctors at first think the problem is the infections. Then imagine they finally figure out it's an STD that's doing this, and when they ask "How do we fight it?" somebody says "With traditional moral values!" Which turns out, in practice, to mean "by not talking about sex even harder."

Grass would grow in the streets.
 
Actually, plain old HIV would be pretty devastating. Look at the figures for syphilis in the 19th century. Then imagine an STD that takes even longer to show symptoms and is 100% fatal without treatment. Which they don't have. Then imagine that it only kills by way of secondary infections, so doctors at first think the problem is the infections. Then imagine they finally figure out it's an STD that's doing this, and when they ask "How do we fight it?" somebody says "With traditional moral values!" Which turns out, in practice, to mean "by not talking about sex even harder."

Grass would grow in the streets.

NB, at the time, syphilis was incurable, and, eventually, fatal. In fact, it probably was transmissable longer, because the victims didnt die as quickly. Yet, even by that articles counting, the infected population was only 10% in the cities - and presumably lower in the country. Id guess that HIV would be nasty - and would devastate certain segments of the population - but wouldnt be anything like the Black Death.
 
All that would be required would be the introduction of tsetse fly larva infested hay on cattle boats to North and South America, Australia, India, the Dutch East Indies, Southeast Asia and the Middle East
You're presuming that the fly could have survived in all of those areas: Some of them it probably could have done, I agree, but probably not [for example] most of Europe or large parts of North America... There was a reason why it didn't spread into [for example] the Cape Province IOTL, after all...
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Like HIV? Get something like that going, especially if it spreads by contact, and it would be devastating.

IMO, it would not even need to be spread by casual contact. From memory, if neither party has any open wounds on the sexual organs, the chance of catching it is only 1% per sexual act. It gets higher if there are open soars, breaks in skin/lining, etc. It is likely is AIDS was merely more sexually transmittable (say 20% base chance going up to 90% for all risk factor) per sex act, it would meet the 25% of worldwide population kill, even with 1950 or 1980 medical technology.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
NB, at the time, syphilis was incurable, and, eventually, fatal. In fact, it probably was transmissable longer, because the victims didnt die as quickly. Yet, even by that articles counting, the infected population was only 10% in the cities - and presumably lower in the country. Id guess that HIV would be nasty - and would devastate certain segments of the population - but wouldnt be anything like the Black Death.

It was cureable in some cases. There was a treatment of giving someone Malaria and then treating the Malaria after 4 fever cycles. So we would expect much lower syphilis rates in zones with Malaria. In fact, any disease you live through that gives you a heavy fever (104 or so) is likely to cure the disease.


Don't we also have an issue with Shypilis where once the open wounds close, the person is much less infectious.
 
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