The Black Death

[Zenicetus]

I was reminded of this by a BBC article linked on several blogs today, about how the "Little Ice Age" drop in climate temps (14th to mid 19th centuries) might have been caused by the depopulation of Europe due to plague, resulting in farms going fallow, and the forest regrowth scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4755328.stm

I didn't play the original MTW. Did it include a Black Death event? Would the Black Death in MTW2 add or detract from the game?

Obviously CA will do what they want with this, but it would be an interesting *option* to have a timed plague event you had to cope with, where 30-50% of the population (including troops) of the major factions died off in a short perid of time. I'm just not sure I'd want to have it forced on me. This may be a case where historical realism just wouldn't be that much fun.

[Umar bin al-Khattab]

There was a Black Death even in MTW. It mostly caused unrest in the Britannic region. I say that the Black Death, a historical event, would add to the MTW2 experience. The more factual accuracy, the better IMO.

Now, I also think that the Black Death should be avoidable. In the provinces/cities that you build many public health buildings, the plague should not hit. This adds another strategic aspect: Do I train vast armies or ensure public health?

[Watchman]

"Public health buildings" ? Europeans at least didn't have any... but then among the main reasons they suffered so badly was specifically the literally shitty conception of hygiene of the time. I've heard odd minorities with traditions or religious practices that helped maintain a rather higher degree of it, such as the Jews and Gypsies, on the whole got off much lighter (the Gypsies also apparently stumbled onto a reasonably workable quarantine practice). Which, of course, duly put them on the hit list of assorted flagellants and other raving loons for suspicions of being responsible for the plague...

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Anyway, the Black Death caused such impressive mass deaths it ought to have an obvious effect to economies of the affected regions. When half your peasants are dead of disease and the rest are hiding in the woods in hopes of avoiding it, productivity obviously takes a hit.

[Vladimir]

[

"Public health buildings" ? Europeans at least didn't have any... but then among the main reasons they suffered so badly was specifically the literally shitty conception of hygiene of the time. I've heard odd minorities with traditions or religious practices that helped maintain a rather higher degree of it, such as the Jews and Gypsies, on the whole got off much lighter (the Gypsies also apparently stumbled onto a reasonably workable quarantine practice). Which, of course, duly put them on the hit list of assorted flagellants and other raving loons for suspicions of being responsible for the plague...

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Anyway, the Black Death caused such impressive mass deaths it ought to have an obvious effect to economies of the affected regions. When half your peasants are dead of disease and the rest are hiding in the woods in hopes of avoiding it, productivity obviously takes a hit.

There was some consideration of personal hygiene in Germany where some bath houses did exist. This is in sharp contrast to some loony group in France that believed bathing excessively (as in more than twice a year) was harmful to the body. Historical realism ends when you hit the "next turn" button so I don't think it's unreasonable for a player to stress public health more than Medieval Europeans.

I agree that you should suffer a massive income and productivity loss depending on how hard it hits you. Of course knowing this gives the player an unfair advantage but that’s why there are difficulty levels.

[Peasant Phill]

The effect of the plague in MTW was the (premature) death of your faction leader and the loss of income in the province it happend.

Appart from certain minorities, certain regions were also spared for the most part. I'm quite sure about Flandres ( something to do with the eating a lot of fish and the wealth of the cities) and some other region (don't know its name) because was to secluded that almost no travelers past it (and thus couldn't be effected)

This is just al from memory so don't shoot me if you don't agree.

[Vladimir]

OK I finally read the dafted article and there's a problem. One of the reasons the Black Death killed so many people is because an increasingly colder climate was damaging crops. The bad harvests lead to poor(er) health conditions and a virtual playground for the plague. I'm quite sure that the weather was cooling BEFORE the Black Death occurred and I wonder about the base motivations of those who did this "research".

[mfberg]

It will probably result in the killing off of population like the plagues in RTW, damaging your income a little. I hope farming income is related to everything including region, farming upgrades, peasant population, taxation, morale, and bandits, enemies, and armies in the field, so that foraging, looting, and pessimism are at least modeled in the income.
In MTW it resulted in income and loyalty damage.

mfberg

[Nelson]

I don’t think Bubonic Plague effects should be linked to hygiene. It isn’t like cholera where tainted water becomes the agent. The rats and flees were present and no one would have or could have done anything about them. There was no defense.

The bad harvests lead to poor(er) health conditions and a virtual playground for the plague. I'm quite sure that the weather was cooling BEFORE the Black Death occurred and I wonder about the base motivations of those who did this "research".

Me too. Sounds like someone wants to disparage deforestation effects on climate by implying that growing trees will hurl us into an ice age.

[ShadesWolf]

The black death, as an event, would be a nice touch.
It could be a restriction on the amount of soldiers that could be raised in a province infected. And have the same effect if an army moved through an infected area.

city populations could be infected and then the trade would be reduced. Crops could fail etc..

So much could be done, lets hope they dont miss the opportunity.

[Watchman]

There was some consideration of personal hygiene in Germany where some bath houses did exist. This is in sharp contrast to some loony group in France that believed bathing excessively (as in more than twice a year) was harmful to the body.

Hey, monks rarely bathed. Know what it was referred to as ? Le odore sancte... Fact is, for the duration of Middle Ages and well afterwards Europe just plain smelled pretty bad for the most part.

Historical realism ends when you hit the "next turn" button so I don't think it's unreasonable for a player to stress public health more than Medieval Europeans.

Heh. Well, we do happen to have the benefit of actually knowing the whys and hows of diseases and the germ theory. And note that we've only had it since about mid-1800s... you can read some pretty grim stories on how crazy things were, by our standards, in for example hospitals back then. Would you believe it took rudimentary comparative statistical analysis of childbed death rates before folks started figuring out there might be a point in doctors-in-training desinfecting their hands after the morning's autopsy session before they went on to the gynecology wing...?

Ugh. It's not actually such a wonder folks became pretty obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness and hygienie for a while once the microbes were figured out.

[Kraxis]

The black death, as an event, would be a nice touch.
It could be a restriction on the amount of soldiers that could be raised in a province infected. And have the same effect if an army moved through an infected area.

city populations could be infected and then the trade would be reduced. Crops could fail etc..

So much could be done, lets hope they dont miss the opportunity.

Not only that, but the cost of the troops but for training and upkeep should rise. I'm not certain by how much though.

The period of the Balck Death (the time right after the first hard hit) is also known as the European Peasant's Golden Age. Quite simply the loss of so many peasants forced the landowners to pay a lot of workers far more than previously. This was because they had lost not only a lot of their indentured peasants but also a lot of the landless workers that worked on a daily to seasonal basis at farms or estates.

My lecturer on Medieval times put up a nice piece of info. First he had two English peasants from 1320 something and 1330 something. The first was indentured and the other was free. It included how much land they had, their income and the amount of time they needed to work to get paid enough to survive.
Both the indentured peasant and the free peasant were hard pressed to provide for their families, needing to work an almost extreme amount.

Then he had two similar peasant from 1360 something, both from the same vilage as the first two. Not only did they have a lot more lands each, but the free peasant could do without doing extra work, and the indentured peasant could do with a mere 80 days of extra work because of the increased pay. It was an impressive progress for both of them.

So while they were perhaps beset by tragedy, they also began to live a whole lot better and would indeed demand more pay to enter the armed forces.

[The historian]

I think that if the black death is to be avoidable it should be avoidable through a quarantine opytion like the Duke of milan did a tirant all be it but he saved his duchy ,he walled in people who were sick and posted armed guards with order's to kill anyone suspicios of the plague who tried to enter.

[Watchman]

Except, you know, it's not the people who actually spread the stuff. Can't vouch for the pneumonic version though - can that one spread through the "aerosol" method ? But the real culprits being the rats and their resident fleas, whose movements nobody neither could nor even knew to try to restrict...

The Gypsy quarantine method I've heard of went so that when someone in the group was noticed to display the symptoms, the whole group pretty much sat down on a suitable piece of flat terrain with supplies divided to each member, fairly far away from each other but still within sight. Then they simply waited it out. Those who'd already contracted it died or survived as they managed, and nobody went anywhere near the bodies. Eventually they'd figure it was safe, gather their stuff, and return to business as usual.

The trick, of course, being that the carrier fleas could not readily find new hosts to replace the one who just died. Parasites are a bit like that. To them the world is a vast, hostile desert with the oases of suitable hosts being normally few and far between (the critters tend to be small, after all). Flea can manage pretty impressive jumps, but they're going to have a devil of a time naviagating to a living human from twenty meters away...

[Kraxis]

Except, you know, it's not the people who actually spread the stuff. Can't vouch for the pneumonic version though - can that one spread through the "aerosol" method ? But the real culprits being the rats and their resident fleas, whose movements nobody neither could nor even knew to try to restrict...

Yes, it can and will transer from human to human. There was an outbreak in India a few years ago. It got pretty scary for a while (had an epidemic in the making) until enough penicillin and vaccines got sent in.
The bubonic plague can indeed infect from person to person, you would just need any bodily fluid. And it wasn't as if people were exactly clean or even stayed clear of the sick (besides the lepers), so person to person transfers does not seem too far out.
Anyway, the rat theory is getting a lot of flak these days. Quite simply the rats didn't and don't move about very much, and their fleas while able to spread the plague would die after the first bite on humans, so they couldn't really jump back to new rats or other humans.

If it truly had been the rats then we would have seen a much more different pattern than the rather linear advance. We would have seen outbreaks quite soon after the first in Italy in the big Med. ports, creeping around to the Atlantic. Possibly reaching England a few months after the first outbreak. Now that didn't happen... Instead the plague slowly pushed upwards from the landside.
I do not hope that anybody would argue that rats were relatively rare on ships. Or that new rats were transported aboard whenever (mostly) new cargo got lifted on.

[pyradyn]

It cant transfer through air the virus is killed by oxygen thus the need to travel through other things, but yes can easily be transferd from human to human. Here in Alb, New Mexico we have at least 3 cases of bubonic a month. So if you visit us stay away from the rats. I think there should be ways to isolate one self from the world when the pleauge comes. If I was a ruler and heard that people were dieing in the thousands else where I would isolate all trade with them and their trade partners. This may not be easy if your income is mainly trade but a nation like Russia didnt need to trade they mainly produced what they needed so that would be easier for them. Say your playing as Milian and you have few military cities and alot of trade there is an option shut down trade and lose money or keep trade and risk half or more of you population

[Prince Cobra]

Yes, it can and will transer from human to human. There was an outbreak in India a few years ago. It got pretty scary for a while (had an epidemic in the making) until enough penicillin and vaccines got sent in.
The bubonic plague can indeed infect from person to person, you would just need any bodily fluid. And it wasn't as if people were exactly clean or even stayed clear of the sick (besides the lepers), so person to person transfers does not seem too far out.
Anyway, the rat theory is getting a lot of flak these days. Quite simply the rats didn't and don't move about very much, and their fleas while able to spread the plague would die after the first bite on humans, so they couldn't really jump back to new rats or other humans.

If it truly had been the rats then we would have seen a much more different pattern than the rather linear advance. We would have seen outbreaks quite soon after the first in Italy in the big Med. ports, creeping around to the Atlantic. Possibly reaching England a few months after the first outbreak. Now that didn't happen... Instead the plague slowly pushed upwards from the landside.
I do not hope that anybody would argue that rats were relatively rare on ships. Or that new rats were transported aboard whenever (mostly) new cargo got lifted on.

Kraxis, IMHO the explanation of the Black death is far more complicated. On the one hand people can transmit the disease among themselves but in the other we have exhausted human organisms ( not because of the climate, but mainly because the Europe was rather overcrowded at that time ) and the fleas . All this thing made the Black death extremely lethal.
About the ports: as far as I know Genoese sailors brang the disease. Maybe the reason why the disease came later in England is that there was any kind of quarantine.
About the fleas: I have found some interesting facts - yes, the disease was lethal to the flea but it make the flea starve and forced it to bite far more frequently.

P.S. The disease was unavoidable neither the good hygiene ( for ex. Byzantines also suffered although they took care of their hygiene) nor the quarantine could stop it. They could only reduce it.

[Kraxis]

Yes, the Black Death did seem to come with a ship, but after that it didn't jump around like that anymore.

The first movement was supposed to come from the Black Sea and all the way to Italy. After that it 'slowly' moved over land. Seems odd doesn't it?Besides as far as I know there wasn't any real quarantine during the first outbreak in catholic countries. This includes England. Qurantines only came later after bitter experiences.

Besides my point was that animal fleas can't drink human blood. They die from it. Ever been bitten by them? I have, and they die after the first bite on humans. So so it could only have been: rat ---> human. Not the other way round.

[Prince Cobra]

The first movement was supposed to come from the Black Sea and all the way to Italy. After that it 'slowly' moved over land. Seems odd doesn't it?Besides as far as I know there wasn't any real quarantine during the first outbreak in catholic countries. This includes England. Qurantines only came later after bitter experiences.

Besides my point was that animal fleas can't drink human blood. They die from it. Ever been bitten by them? I have, and they die after the first bite on humans. So so it could only have been: rat ---> human. Not the other way round.

Sorry, I was busy on Sunday and couldn't post earlier.
I didn't say that fleas are the only reason for the lethal effect of the plague - they're just one of the factors. But they cannot be ignored.
It's really odd. However you didn't mention any other reason(people and rats were all together if we eliminate the rats as transmitters on the ships then we have to eliminate the humans either).
Not all of the fleas die when they drink human blood. I've had some unpleasant ' adventures' with that nasty creatures and most often than not they bite me again and force me to hunt them because I don't want to care about their children. Maybe the fleas in Bulgaria and in Denmark are different .
And don't ignore the fact that the rats were EVERYWHERE and that the medieval infrastructure esp. land routes was awful.

[Casmin]

I highly recommend the book "The Great Mortality". It mentions that when very young children are malnourished they live with the consequences of this for the rest of their lives and in particular poor immune responses. There was a great famine during the early 1300's so that by the time the children of that famine were well into adulthood the plague hit.

When reading about the plague you realize that it took a million factors to fall into place for it to all happen. That's probably one of the most amazing aspects of the topic.

Some figure in Europe stated that in order to save onself from the plague one had to get a small dose of it. This may sound like a type of vaccine 700 years ahead of its time but it was really just a matter of conjectural superstition imo. People were hovering over cesspits and latrines breathing in the fumes trying to "immunize" themselves.

Some Italian cities implemented quarantines, however, they had minimal effect.

From what I remember, the book states that one of the only people not affected by the plague in Europe were Irish who didn't live in towns but in the mountains and such.