The Black Death - Modern Nightmare?

The food supplies ran out and looting and petty thieving were now rife. Gangs armed with knives and with whatever other weapons they could lay their hands on roved the streets seizing any food they could find.

The authorities, very sensibly, issued advice to the effect that it was dangerous for people to congregate at their places of work, but when the power workers refused to report for duty, the electricity supplies failed. Electricity, not petrol, was the life-blood of the developed economy and many people were now unable even to sterilise the drinking water by boiling.

The complex fabric of life in the twenty-first century collapsed completely. The rugged independence and self-sufficiency of their ancestors had long gone and they had been living a completely artificial existence, based on computer technology, which was driven by international finance and a world economy. They had been cocooned by central heating, refrigerators, TV, rapid transport, convenience foods, microwaves, an array of electrical goods and the pharmaceutical industry. People were adept at surfing the Internet but had lost the basic instinct to survive. The global technology civilisation was precarious and any spanner in the works would have caused a catastrophe. This mysterious and horrific epidemic was an accident that was waiting to happen.

The effects when the pandemic spread to India and China were truly catastrophic. It was unstoppable. The emergency health measures were limited and largely ineffective and supplies of painkillers and sedatives were rapidly exhausted.

Terrified, everybody showed the usual response and fled by bus and train, carrying the disease far and wide. When the authorities prohibited all forms of transport, the people tried to flee on foot, dragging handcarts behind them. All to no avail; each epidemic spread steadily and remorselessly – an inexorable, gigantic evil wave of unimaginable terror and agonising suffering. The conditions were ideal for the bug and the teeming millions provided a seemingly endless supply of susceptible people. It was later estimated that the final death toll would eventually be counted in billions.

The Black Death had returned, 700 years after its first appearance. Its pattern of spread in underdeveloped countries was broadly similar to that of the original pandemic, except that there was now an endless supply of victims all tightly packed together. Transmission was ridiculously simple and the economy of developed countries collapsed completely.

Could the world recover from such a catastrophe?

Click Here to read Part 1 - The History of the Black Death

Or else you can read 20 Black Death Plague Facts from the book

Dr Susan Scott and Professor Christopher Duncan are at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool, England (e-mail: ). They have jointly published over 30 papers and four books and have spent years analysing the series of plagues that ravaged Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Their new book ‘Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer’ has just been published by Wiley (£16.99 or $27.95). Available to buy from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

For more information:

on pandemics download the TV Documentary 'The Flu Time Bomb'
http://www.firstscience.com/home/firstscience.tv/flu-time-bomb_5.html