When the Black Death swept through Europe in 1347, it was one of the deadliest disease outbreaks in human history, eventually killing between a third and half of Europeans.
Prior work by investigators has traced the cause to plague-carrying fleas borne by rats that jumped ship in trading ports. In addition, historical researchers believe that famine in northern Europe before the plague came ashore may have weakened the population there and set the stage for its devastation.
Now, new research using a unique combination of ice-core data and written historical records indicates that the cool, wet weather blamed for the northern European famine actually affected a much wider area over a much longer period. The work, which researchers say is preliminary, paints a picture of a deep, prolonged food shortage in the years leading to the Black Death…
A widespread famine that weakened the population over decades could help explain the Black Death’s particularly high mortality. Over four or five years after arriving in Europe in 1347, the pandemic surged through the continent in waves that killed millions…
The Horsemen travel together. War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. They are all the scythes of K-selection, mowing down the unfit.
All signs right now point to a massive violent cataclysm, and I would definitely prepare for that. But do not underestimate the effects disease may have, or fail to prepare for that as well. Our populations have adapted to free resource availability. Our immune systems are adapted to functioning at a healthy level with full nutritional satiation, and no stress. We have relentlessly tamped down the disgust reflex.
On top of that, we have a massive swath of humanity that would not survive without constant, rigorous medical intervention. Keeping frail, sick people alive, when they would normally die in a heartbeat from the most minor infection has created a pathogen-growing incubator in our population, designed to produce a pandemic from pathogens that would be insignificant in normal times. Once that pathogen develops what it needs, it will spread like wildfire through a stressed, malnourished, densely packed population with no disgust reflex. It could make a flea-borne pathogen like the Black Death look like a probiotic.
Pandemics fueled by shortage kill the poor, incapable, and unprepared, as well as those with limited disgust. In this case, that will mean poorer city-dwellers and the gays. Imagine how different society would look if all of the Occupy Wall Street hippies, starving hipsters, LGBTSTDs, #blacklivesmatters, and welfarites were all wiped from the planet overnight. It would be horrific, but it would take out 99% of the chronic whiners we constantly hear carping about the unfairness of this or that. Add in all the leftists taken out by the wanton violence from the early days of the economic collapse that produced the shortage, and we would live in a society of happy stoics who never complained.
To get there, we wouldn’t even have to do anything ourselves, other than avoid the masses during the pandemic. I do that myself, right now.
Can you imagine why the Renaissance had paintings featuring the warm golden glow of God’s grace raining down on everyone as they smiled? Compared to today, it would be quiet, harmonious bliss, and it just happened all of a sudden, out of the blue.
Apocalypse is not always bad.
Africa given its naturally r-selected environment is slated to experience a malthusian catastophe. When western countries stop pouring aid into those nations.
Their birthrates will hit up against hard and fast limits.
Then let the K selection begin.
It makes me feel guilty to imagine that massive tragedy could lead to a better more comfortable world. Yet that is what the evidence seems to point to. Have you already removed yourself from city life? I almost wonder if having an established farmstead is the best way to weather that sort of massive storm. If not, what sorts of preparation do you recommend city-dwellers should take? Right now I live a hybrid life-style, between urban and rural.
Read up on strategies both successful and unsuccessful in prior economic & social catastrophes in modern times. Ferfal’s blog offered insights into Argentina post 2002 and several bloggers have chronicled Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.
Remember that political power is vested in the mob, and visible wealth or those who appear to be doing “too well” will likely be targeted by both official & freelance criminals. We are likely to see socialist democracy turn to cannibal democracy or even Zombie democracy (like what happened in Cambodia or Rwanda.)
Socionomists like Robert Prechter have established a coincidence between periods of intensely low social mood (indicated by bear markets in investment assets) and spread of pandemic disease mortality.
We know that a person’s attitude is highly aligned with survival, watching how belief, faith & attitude affect the course of recovery from disease or injury.
The rarest element during the coming challenges is apt to be hope. Expect to see an epic epidemic of despondency, then suicide (directly or via inaction.)
Maintaining hope & confidence may be as important as maintaining sources of shelter, food and water.
Cities throughout most of human history were plague nests where more people died than were born. (They only grew larger because people would flock to them for economic opportunity.) First priority when SHTF, get the hell out of the City.