The Coming Biological Storm
Throughout history the human species has been profoundly affected by plagues. These have decimated humanity countless times. To cite our first example, around 1918 a single influenza virus underwent a random mutation. This mutation transformed a relatively benign virus into a universal killing machine. The result was a global crisis that killed over 30 million human beings. This Spanish Flu was notable for its ferocity and lethal efficiency. Some people fell ill and died within a matter of hours. New York commuters boarded their trains healthy and were dead upon arrival in the city. Unusually, the virus targeted healthy young people, killing them preferentially over older individuals.
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History is filled with additional examples. The Black Death (actually a wave of epidemics, stretching over centuries, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis) first became visible in the Chinese hinterlands early in the Christian era. The effects were cataclysmic. In some epidemic waves, up to 98% of local populations died. The later effects on India and Islamic countries were often just as severe. The plague then reached Europe in the 14th century, where it proceeded to quickly kill one third of the population. As elsewhere, the effects in Europe of this level of mortality were fundamental and far-reaching. Economies collapsed, cities were abandoned and famine stalked the landscape. And, as in the case of the Native Americans, there were pervasive cultural effects as well. A preoccupation with death became the norm, both in art and in daily life. "People no longer bother with work and planning for the future," wrote one chronicler, "but instead live only for the day."
More examples: the Athenian plague of 430 B.C. that catalyzed the fall of Athens to Sparta; the terrible Roman plagues of 180 A.D. and 252 A.D., leading eventually to the fall of the Empire; countless Indian and Chinese plagues, some of which set population growth back by centuries. Ancient history is full of harrowing accounts of the mass death and dislocation caused by infectious disease.
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