WI: mutual die-off when Americas are discovered

Malaria isn't wiping out the majority of the ship's crew, however.
American diseases wouldn't consistently do so either. Only the initial voyages would suffer high death rates, after that people would be immune. It might be written up to the first expeditions having bad luck.

Really, if you want a second Black Death that's one thing. If you want a 95% die off, Europeans are going to have to be utter morons.
Well, for my little extrapolation I postulated a 70% death rate.

Wikipedia tells me the Black Death killed between 1/3-1/2 of Europeans, so a 70% death rate is maybe two Black Death equivalents. They could both have come back with initial forays.
 
American diseases wouldn't consistently do so either. Only the initial voyages would suffer high death rates, after that people would be immune. It might be written up to the first expeditions having bad luck.

It might be, but I would be very surprised if it was. This is going to confirm what the naysayers are saying with a vengeance.

Well, for my little extrapolation I postulated a 70% death rate.

Wikipedia tells me the Black Death killed between 1/3-1/2 of Europeans, so a 70% death rate is maybe two Black Death equivalents. They could both have come back with initial forays.

And I have to ask, why are you so interested in this much death and devastation?
 

Winnabago

Banned
With the Indians, horrific plague can spread pretty easily from one village to the next, with survivors simply running.
With the Europeans, horrific plague would have some difficulty spreading across the Atlantic.

However, it would probably result in a much weaker Europe in general.
 
And I have to ask, why are you so interested in this much death and devastation?
I find it interesting to wonder how civilization would develop in the aftermath. Something like this could change the shape of civilization dramatically.
 
But if the Americans don't both colonize Europe and eventually start giving the Europeans disease-infected blankets, do you really think you could achieve a 70% death rate?
 
Well, the Black Death was about half that deadly IIRC, so get a couple of really nasty bugs over on the first couple of ships and I'd think that should do it.

You could always write it up to a freak superplague if it really strained your suspension of disbelief otherwise.
 
This might be a bit too different from any OTL plagues; but if you're looking just to cripple European civilisation...perhaps, instead of big die offs, one plague alone, with destructive symptoms, a sort of rabies-anologue, or one which sterilised and/or crippled the infected's children?
 
This might be a bit too different from any OTL plagues; but if you're looking just to cripple European civilisation...perhaps, instead of big die offs, one plague alone, with destructive symptoms, a sort of rabies-anologue, or one which sterilised and/or crippled the infected's children?

But what kind of disease is going to do that only in Europe (or at most Eurasia)?

This sounds like you'd have to invent something from whole cloth, not simply "What if _____ was more lethal to Europeans?"
 
But what kind of disease is going to do that only in Europe (or at most Eurasia)?

This sounds like you'd have to invent something from whole cloth, not simply "What if _____ was more lethal to Europeans?"

You're quite right, I'm afraid I was thinking of something new. (With American immunity acquired earlier.)
 
But what kind of disease is going to do that only in Europe (or at most Eurasia)?
Not just Europe, the idea is the whole Old World gets ravaged. Europe, Asia, Africa, everywhere except really isolated places. Europe might be hit worst because it's ground zero, but more-or-less everywhere it's reasonable for the diseases to go you get massive death. That's sort of what drew me to this scenario in the first place: what does a pretty much global near-apocalypse in the 1500s do to the course of history?


Any ideas for the aftermath, anyone?

I wonder what happens to the religious landscape in this TL. An event like this seems perfect to get lots of apocalyptic religions springing up and spreading. Might you get some kind of more radical, crazier analog of the Protestant Reformation?

Good lord, if the Aztecs or something like them exist in this TL what would their idea of an apocalyptic religion look like?
 
\ne?

I wonder what happens to the religious landscape in this TL. An event like this seems perfect to get lots of apocalyptic religions springing up and spreading. Might you get some kind of more radical, crazier analog of the Protestant Reformation?

That's essentially what I did in my American Stinky Pig timeline-due to an American plague, the Protestant Reformation goes crazy and Catholicism is basically reduced to the northwest Mediterranean.

Looking back, however, it doesn't have to go that way. A contagious disease will hit cities worse than the countryside, and the cities were the home of the main base of the Protestant reformation. An American plague could strangle the reformation in its crib. Assuming that this is Black Death II and not an 85% collapse inducing die off, the result would be a Catholic Church that reigns supreme, at least for a few more centuries.

Good lord, if the Aztecs or something like them exist in this TL what would their idea of an apocalyptic religion look like?

Lay off on the Aztecs, all right? The difference between sacrificing humans to please your god like they were doing and massacring entire religious communities because they displease your God like Europeans were doing is a matter of semantics. The Aztecs were human-they will be about as bad (and as good) as the European Christians of their era.
 
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