WI: Vikings bring Smallpox/other disease to new world settlements?

I just thought of this now, why didn't they bring smallpox or another disease they had to the new world? They had settlements and certainly had the diseases that could have spread through the new world.
My proposed effects are (obvious):
  • Millions of Natives Die and the New World is Ravaged.
  • More permanent Norse colonies (lack of hostile natives).
  • When Later Europeans arrive they are recovering (500 year interval) and have an immunity, they may be able to survive longer against invasion (especially against conquistadors).
 
To address why it was never brought to America with the Vikings is because the long voyages it took to arrive in America meant those with Smallpox/other epidemic disease will have either recovered, or died.

The Vikings, in the scenario that smallpox or another disease got through this biological net, the Skraeling might literally all die before they could spread it beyond their tribal areas.
 
I've always thought the best scenario for Amerindian empires surviving would be an earlier exposure to the rest of the world's diseases.

Technically 70-80% of the population would still be wiped out, but it would happen early enough for the population to bounce back with immunities by the time conquistadors and colonists show up.

On a related note, I wonder if worldwide, other populations weren't often decimated on first exposure to smallpox, except unlike Amerindians, these disasters weren't accompanied by invading armies resistant to the disease. Anybody happen to know any info on anything like this?
 
On a related note, I wonder if worldwide, other populations weren't often decimated on first exposure to smallpox, except unlike Amerindians, these disasters weren't accompanied by invading armies resistant to the disease. Anybody happen to know any info on anything like this?

Actually, this is what happened to some of the Amerindians. The Mississippian civilization and the (unknown until very recently) Amazon River civilization were probably destroyed by Old World diseases.

The reason contact with the Vikings didn't have the same effect is that the Vikings had only brief encounters with a thinly populated part of North America whose cultures had relatively little contact with the outside world. Whatever diseases they communicated never had a chance to spread.
 
No guys, WienerBlut has it perfectly here. Most diseases like smallpox have a very small incubation period, while on the other hand having a very high mortality rate, especially in virgin field epidemics. Even if, and its a big if, some Norseman with smallpox or etc., lived long enough to bring it to Vinland, and transmit it to the natives, the die-off would be so severe it would never spread beyond the immediate area.

The reason the death toll in Mesoamerica was so high was partially because the Spaniards stuck around continually reinfecting the native population with successive waves of disease.
 
No guys, WienerBlut has it perfectly here. Most diseases like smallpox have a very small incubation period, while on the other hand having a very high mortality rate, especially in virgin field epidemics. Even if, and its a big if, some Norseman with smallpox or etc., lived long enough to bring it to Vinland, and transmit it to the natives, the die-off would be so severe it would never spread beyond the immediate area.

The reason the death toll in Mesoamerica was so high was partially because the Spaniards stuck around continually reinfecting the native population with successive waves of disease.

It seems for me that an incubation period of around 12 days is a long incubation period.

If you have 10 to 14 days between contraction and the first obvious symptoms of the disease, even on foot, somebody healthy even in difficult terrain can spread the disease in a big territory. And the infected person is contagious until the last smallpox scab falls off.

In OTL, the english and french colonies on the northern atlantic coast don't find many natives as if the smallpox and others european diseases had already killed them.

At the end of the 18th century, the disease spread among the Great Plains indians with little contact with the europeans settlers and in a low density environment and was a major reason for the rise of some tribes and the decline of others...

Even if it is Wikipedia, this article give good informations of the rate of mortality of the smallpox even in natives culture less modern and less urbanized than the Aztecs or the Incans empires.

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

If the Vinlanders will be able to establish even limited contacts with the Natives in what is OTL, Labrador, Quebec, Nova Scotia or even New England, the disease will spread quickly and even more quickly if the Vinlanders spread the disease by boat, each coastal tribe they will contacted and traded with will become a new point of spreading the disease in the hinterland...
 

Flubber

Banned
It seems for me that an incubation period of around 12 days is a long incubation period.


You and the others are missing the point. It's not a matter of keeping smallpox active in the New World, it's a matter of keeping smallpox active among a relatively small population of Norse so they can bring it to the New World. You need someone among the Norse traders/raiders with an active infection, someone who didn't already have it as a child, so they can then infect the locals.

The odds of this occurring keep getting worse the more you examine the situation. The Norse in higher latitudes which have lower infection rates and which reduces the chances of an active case. The Norse have a smaller population from which to select traders/raiders and that population dwindles further as you move westward from Scandinavia to Iceland to Greenland which also reduces the chance of an active case. The Norse also made intermittent contact relative to the post-1492 contacts further south and the Norse contacted much less dense populations who were also living in higher latitudes.

The Columbian Exchange contacts, on the other hand, involved more people from lower latitudes with higher infection rates more often contacting far denser populations. Here all the odds work for transmission; more traders/raiders from more infected populations, better chances of there being a carrier, more contacts much more often, more non-immune peoples in denser populations, etc., so transmission more easily occurred.

Once smallpox makes it ashore, it will be here to stay. The smallpox epidemic which Washington vaccinated his army outside Boston against in 1775 slowly burned it's way across the continent only to be noted again at one of Astor's fur trading posts in Oregon in 1811.
 
Actually, this is what happened to some of the Amerindians. The Mississippian civilization and the (unknown until very recently) Amazon River civilization were probably destroyed by Old World diseases.

The reason contact with the Vikings didn't have the same effect is that the Vikings had only brief encounters with a thinly populated part of North America whose cultures had relatively little contact with the outside world. Whatever diseases they communicated never had a chance to spread.

I actually meant in the Old World, but that's interesting all the same.
Although first exposure in Old World populations may have happened so long ago in prehistory that there's no possible records. Still, I heard that the smallpox virus only crossed over from humans to animals several thousand years ago.

I wonder if that was why Amerindians were so susceptible to smallpox, because it didn't come into existence until after they had been cut off from the rest of the human population.
 
Thank you Flubber, Wolf_Brother and WienerBlut, is there anyway that it could get there? Perhaps without a host? It could come across on a blanket and fall purposely or accidentally into native hands.
 
Thank you Flubber, Wolf_Brother and WienerBlut, is there anyway that it could get there? Perhaps without a host? It could come across on a blanket and fall purposely or accidentally into native hands.

It would have to do it without infecting the Norse carrying it, which is unlikely-though perhaps not impossible. The smallpox virus can survive for a very long time outside of the human body.
 
It would have to do it without infecting the Norse carrying it, which is unlikely-though perhaps not impossible. The smallpox virus can survive for a very long time outside of the human body.
How did the English under Lord Jeffrey Amherst manage to do it without infection?
 
How did the English under Lord Jeffrey Amherst manage to do it without infection?

The English, unlike the 11th century Norse, had gone through about 7 centuries of urbanization, increased population growth, and growth of trade, all of which allowed the spread and establishment of smallpox in all levels of European society. If Lord Amherst's soldiers were adults, chances are they had survived smallpox as children. They were already immune, unlike the Natives.
 
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