WI: The Spanish Flu epidemic causes black death level casualties?

How would 1/3 of Mankind perishing affect the rest of the century? Would Fascism and communism still gell? How long would it take for industrial civilization to get back on its feet? Would European rule in the colonies collapse?
 
Well it sorta was in terms of how many people it killed over a very short period of time. By numbers it killed about as many people as the black death over a much shorter period of two years which makes it deadlier.

Having it kill 1/3rd of earth population is ASB though. You basically have to have every case essentially untreated which is impossible even by the healthcare system a hundred years before the flu.
 
Extremely implausible if not ASB. In early 20th century people had more knowledge what causes diseases and how to handle with them than people who lived in Middle Ages. You would need medieval level development before you can get such death toll.
 
Actually in 1918 the fact that influenza was a viral disease was unknown, the role of viruses in human disease was barely in its infancy. A great deal of effort was put in to finding the "bacteria" that caused influenza. Other than supportive care for the sick, there was little specific treatment. A large proportion of the deaths came from superinfection with bacterial pneumonia on top of the influenza pneumonia, and there were no antibiotics in 1918. Oxygen supplementation to aid support for pneumonia was not a thing either. Bottom line was supportive/nursing care and hoping the patient would get well on their own - ZERO specific therapy. Quarantine would help, as this was strictly person to person transmission with airborne mode, and this was effective where it was rigorously enforced. Note that some medieval towns did enforce strict quarantines and avoided the plague even with the rats not "quarantined".

Make the virus as infective as measles (which lingers in the air up to 12 hours in a room and will almost certainly get you) and it is possible to see a death toll approaching 30%+. Isolated and some rural areas may get lucky, OTL American Samoa was locked down and had no flu and some villages in Alaska were quarantined and had no flu get it - just examples. OTL the Black Death was a major cause of the death of the feudal system as the labor shortage and empty land meant serfs could decamp and find a better situation and the new landlords would turn a blind eye. I expect that in the southern USA those African-Americans who survived would find their situation improved as landlords who were abusive or areas that were all Jim Crow would find folks picking up and moving for greener pastures. In any case, there would be massive social changes.
 
One of the terrible aspects of the Spanish Flu was that it tended to kill the younger and healthier people. People just entering their prime of life. Because their immune systems could support a more powerful response to the flu which paradoxically worsened the secondary pneumonia which was the main killer. If a person could survive long enough they could defeat the flu virus. This worse pandemic the OP describes would kill the strongest and healthiest of the population and leave the children and the old. Starting to enter Captain Trips territory here.
 
Good question. The Spanish Flu may have been "too hot" to spread around the world. It struck quickly then moved on. It burned deep in some areas and left some areas alone. We are very lucky the virus did not hang around inside the human body before symptoms were expressed. Remember world travel back then was difficult and very slow. Fortunately. The Spanish Flu today? Yikes!
 
Pretty much the only areas that did not have a flu outbreak were those that were isolated either by quarantine or geography. Since it was person to person any spot that did not have contact with an infected person between summer 1918 and spring 1919 (there were 3 waves) escaped the epidemic.
 
Actually in 1918 the fact that influenza was a viral disease was unknown, the role of viruses in human disease was barely in its infancy. A great deal of effort was put in to finding the "bacteria" that caused influenza. Other than supportive care for the sick, there was little specific treatment. A large proportion of the deaths came from superinfection with bacterial pneumonia on top of the influenza pneumonia, and there were no antibiotics in 1918. Oxygen supplementation to aid support for pneumonia was not a thing either. Bottom line was supportive/nursing care and hoping the patient would get well on their own - ZERO specific therapy. Quarantine would help, as this was strictly person to person transmission with airborne mode, and this was effective where it was rigorously enforced. Note that some medieval towns did enforce strict quarantines and avoided the plague even with the rats not "quarantined".

Make the virus as infective as measles (which lingers in the air up to 12 hours in a room and will almost certainly get you) and it is possible to see a death toll approaching 30%+. Isolated and some rural areas may get lucky, OTL American Samoa was locked down and had no flu and some villages in Alaska were quarantined and had no flu get it – just examples. OTL the Black Death was a major cause of the death of the feudal system as the labor shortage and empty land meant serfs could decamp and find a better situation and the new landlords would turn a blind eye. I expect that in the southern USA those African-Americans who survived would find their situation improved as landlords who were abusive or areas that were all Jim Crow would find folks picking up and moving for greener pastures. In any case, there would be massive social changes.
Pretty much the only areas that did not have a flu outbreak were those that were isolated either by quarantine or geography. Since it was person to person any spot that did not have contact with an infected person between summer 1918 and spring 1919 (there were 3 waves) escaped the epidemic.
That leaves several interesting possibilities – certainly to my mind.

If there had been rapid population loss in Europe and East Asia, this would have destroyed the cheap labour necessary for labour-intensive manufacturing and likely sped up their current shift towards dominance by skill-intensive industries. Because dominance of skill-intensive industries requires a level of education that crowds out a woman’s prime reproductive years, this would likely lead to shifts to lowest-low fertility in Europe and East Asia at a much earlier date (say, 1930 versus 1995 or so). Such a trend would naturally have shifted global geopolitical power earlier and more decisively towards North America and the resource-rich desert states around the Indian Ocean. Observing current environmental politics, I cannot imagine this as a favourable outcome, because the fossil-fuel-rich desert states would have been equally resistant to genuine action as they are today and much more globally powerful. In fact – since they might well have (at least relatively) escaped the Spanish flu due to their aridity and nutrient-poverty – Australia and the Gulf States might even have attracted sufficient energy-intensive manufacturing to be global superpowers, which their relative labour scarcity currently prevents even with extremely low taxes and lax environmental regulation. Such a scenario would have meant a climate catastrophe at an earlier date even with a smaller global population.

Another possibility is that Europe and East Asia would specialise in capital-intensive industries. This is perhaps quite probable in the economy of the 1920s than it is now because:
  1. pollution problems were unrecognised and heavy industry unregulated
  2. with their populations decimated capital would become much more abundant than labour or natural resources
I am not sure what the effects of specialisation in capital-intensive industries would be, but it often seems to be a “worst of both worlds” scenario vis-à-vis specialisation in resource extraction or in skill-intensive industries.

A less likely but more favourable – at least for the planet’s ecology – alternative would see the large landlords retain a sufficient degree of political dominance in Europe and East Asia to prevent minimum wages and technology crowding out agriculture and slowing or reversing their growing comparative disadvantage in this sector – the sector which uses their solitary natural resource of geologically uniquely fertile – and geologically uniquely renewable – soils.
 

hammo1j

Donor
Very good premise and I think plausible.

I had flu in 98 epidemic and it nearly killed me. Nb its not the flu itself that does for you, but the bacterial infection that assaults your weakened lungs.

Could there be some world religion or world government arise as a consequence of a belief we were being punished for our sins?
 
Could there be some world religion or world government arise as a consequence of a belief we were being punished for our sins?
I do not think so.

Even if the Spanish flu epidemic caused Black Death-level mortality, I would not see a popular response as being globalist. Likely such a response would be more localist and sectarian, even if they did have strong elements of punishment for sins.
 
How would 1/3 of Mankind perishing affect the rest of the century? Would Fascism and communism still gell? How long would it take for industrial civilization to get back on its feet? Would European rule in the colonies collapse?

The Black Death killed a third of Europe, not a third of the planet.

But let's boost things up in 1918...
  • Supply chains break down: less ability to travel, deaths of those doing the supplying... trouble.
  • Resulting from the previous, prices increase.
  • Deaths create labour shortages. Wages increase.
My guess is that this combination leads to women (and children) in the workforce - child-labour laws are abolished, traditional gender roles disappear. Women get the right to vote across the globe, and are in a much stronger position socially. The combination of price increases and labour shortage increases the power of unions, and provides fertile ground for socialism and communism. Fascism doesn't develop as a mass-popular movement, but we instead see a desperate struggle by the old order - and employers generally - to hold back the tide. Business profitability takes a massive hit - firms are driven out of business.

I think you have the makings of World Revolution here, at least in the industrialised countries.
 
Starting to enter Captain Trips territory here.

Naturally there would be a lot more people around if it was “just” Plague-level deaths rather than Captain Trips although I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few Randall Flagg’s popped up in the aftermath. On the flip side this could also bring about something akin to the “global civil war” that Lenin envisaged.
 
It had a mortality rate of about 10%. Compared with the Black Death which is about the same. The Black Death kept coming back for years.
That’s what to such enormous death tolls. The Spanish flu ended relatively quickly.
Post Black Death community would basically be like lunch drunk boxers being hit in the next round, so even if one escape the pox, the other amenities of medieval life would get you.
In 1918, if you survived the virus, you would likely survive, period.
 
Spanish Flu is a crazy outlier among flus in its mortality rate. I really doubt that you can triple that with flu.

You might be able to get that kind of death rate with a coronavirus, particularly something like MERS (middle eastern respiratory syndrome). Even SARS wasn't that bad.

Whether such a virus could spread around the world the way Spanish Flu did, that I don't know.
 

Deleted member 96212

One of the terrible aspects of the Spanish Flu was that it tended to kill the younger and healthier people. People just entering their prime of life. Because their immune systems could support a more powerful response to the flu which paradoxically worsened the secondary pneumonia which was the main killer. If a person could survive long enough they could defeat the flu virus. This worse pandemic the OP describes would kill the strongest and healthiest of the population and leave the children and the old. Starting to enter Captain Trips territory here.
Naturally there would be a lot more people around if it was “just” Plague-level deaths rather than Captain Trips although I wouldn’t be surprised if more than a few Randall Flagg’s popped up in the aftermath. On the flip side this could also bring about something akin to the “global civil war” that Lenin envisaged.

Ha. The Stand was a pretty good book, though I thought the ending was weak.

@The Red Considering that the OTL Black Death saw several pogroms when the Europeans blamed local Jews for the spread of the plague, I think you might have a point here.
 
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