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Naturally occurring biological warfare. (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Ishmael wrote:

But is there another way to explain "The Plague?"

If we assume it wasn't a plague at all, what could produce death-by-disease on such a massive scale?

Climate Changes - of the cold kind.

Just like the weather we've had this "summer", but going on for decades, causing catastrophic downturns in agriculture production. What seed can be saved from one year to the next fails to grow properly, or doesn't ripen or rots where it stands.

There have been several such periods.

e.g. see the Late Bronze Age Collapse. No surplus, no trade, no goodies to swap for bronze ware.

It happened again in late Roman times. Other peoples further north have it even worse, and up sticks and move south. See The Huns. Empires collapse under the strain.
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Jorn



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Ishmael wrote:
Jorn wrote:
Ishmael wrote:

But is there another way to explain "The Plague?"

Economic collapse.


Your answer lacks the simplicity and elegance present in my father's proposal. Your model also lacks his model's immediacy and near certainty of outcome.

So why don't you tell us your father's suggestion?

My real guess is a combination of economic collapse and emigration to America and Russia. The pilgrims and the first French Canadians must have had unprecedented fertility to grow as fast as they are supposed to have grown.
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Chad


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So why don't you tell us your father's suggestion?

Ishmael is a master practitioner of the cliff-hanger... (Problem is, he often forgets he has left people dangling.)
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Hatty
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Jorn wrote:
Ishmael wrote:

But is there another way to explain "The Plague?"

If we assume it wasn't a plague at all, what could produce death-by-disease on such a massive scale?


Economic collapse.

Starvation in short. But the only instances of mass starvation that come to mind were engineered deliberately and then covered up for many decades (not even talked about 'at home').
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Hatty wrote:
Jorn wrote:
Ishmael wrote:

But is there another way to explain "The Plague?"

If we assume it wasn't a plague at all, what could produce death-by-disease on such a massive scale?


Economic collapse.

Starvation in short. But the only instances of mass starvation that come to mind were engineered deliberately and then covered up for many decades (not even talked about 'at home').


At least it would solve the housing shortage. And the price of Starter Homes.
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Ishmael


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How do you create a massive "black plague" in medieval Europe, if communicable disease is eliminated as an option?

Answer is...
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Ishmael


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"Ban alcohol."
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Jorn



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Hatty wrote:

Starvation in short. But the only instances of mass starvation that come to mind were engineered deliberately and then covered up for many decades (not even talked about 'at home').


I am not aware of any cover up of mass starvation in Scandinavian history, and I don't think any of them were deliberately engineered.

The last one in Norway was during the Gun boat war, where you guys attacked Denmark-Norway unprovoked, and finished it off by economic blockade. I am not so sure it qualifies as a famine if you compare it with Ireland though, but compared with Norwegian history it was pretty bad, with upwards to 2000 extra deaths compared to a normal year.

More interesting is the one in 1740, as it was seen as an act of god in Norway, while an act of the British in Ireland.

It seems like famines have been underreported in England though, but that might not be so strange, as it also seems the English were blamed for famines even when crops failed.

Thomas Malthus was correct when he noted that poor people in Norway were forbidden to marry, and that this was the reason Norway had the highest average lifespan in Europe.

Likewise, it is unfair to blame the English for the Irish famines, as the Shitholic Church with it's large family policy should carry A LOT of the blame. The frigging Shitholic Church is still trying to increase the number of Catholics by trying to get the brainwashed to breed like rabbits, even though we are more than enough people on this planet.
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Jorn



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Ishmael wrote:
"Ban alcohol."


Alcohol was never banned in Scandinavia until the 20. century. Forcing everybody to brew beer is some of the oldest laws we have.

It is a quite a rational law as well, as it helped to keep poor people from being able to support more children by eating the corn, rather than making beer out of it.

It is also hard to deny that the climate got colder in Scandinavia at least, as it is so easy to see the tree line in the mountains going up or down. Also where there were once ashes, oaks, elms and linden, we got pine, aspen, birches and spruce. In the early iron age, grapes grew in Norway.

Islam banned alcohol and let rich men have many wives, a policy that made everybody poor in the long run. I don't know what was done in central and southern Europe though. Perhaps they banned alcohol, but I kind of doubt it.
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Hatty
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I wasn't thinking of Scandinavia! The outbreaks of mass starvation that I recall were in Russia and China. The majority of victims were the food-producers it would seem.
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Mick Harper
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The Brits produced one in India in 1877

The death toll from this famine is estimated between 5.5 million to 29 million.

Then another one during the Second World War.
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Ishmael


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Jorn wrote:
Alcohol was never banned in Scandinavia...


D'you get a lot of plague in Scandinavia?
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Jorn



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Mick Harper wrote:
The Brits produced one in India in 1877

The death toll from this famine is estimated between 5.5 million to 29 million.

Then another one during the Second World War.


I don't really buy that one.

Bad weather and population pressure created the famines in 1877.

During ww2, you guys were so kind to sink virtually every vessel we had, while you borrowed the rest of the fleet to get supplies to Britain. No out break of famine followed, and the average lifespan actually increased. (sic)

Britain diverted a few ships from India to Britain, and millions of Indians died. Doesn't this hint on poverty being the real cause of the famine? It is not like Indians even today understand that large families and poverty goes hand in hand.
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Jorn



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Ishmael wrote:
Jorn wrote:
Alcohol was never banned in Scandinavia...


D'you get a lot of plague in Scandinavia?


Nothing like the 1350 one.

As for comparisons with other countries, I don't know. Like always you got more help if you presented an epidemic as worse than it was in reality.
No famine or plague got bad enough for law and order to break down, so my guess is that they were fairly mild in international comparison.

We also have the problem that Marxism infected most of our professional historians, and they tried to present everything as misery and exploitation, so that people would become socialists.

Before the Marxist plague, you had the nationalistic plague, and before that, a pan-Scandinavian one. Go further back and most historians were infected with some form of Christianity.

I have thus more or less stopped reading historians, and try to read local amateur historians instead. Re-enactors and technology historians also seem to have an interest in how it really was to live back then.

From reading the last crowd, it seems life was pretty good for most people. You find toys production, large parties, locally produced musical instruments, fairly good houses, etc. People did drown a lot though, but mostly well clothed in their own boats.

I kind of suspect life was even better in Britain and the Low Countries, but that your historians were infected with the same contagious mental diseases that Scandinavian historians suffered from.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Boreades wrote:
Ishmael wrote:

But is there another way to explain "The Plague?"

If we assume it wasn't a plague at all, what could produce death-by-disease on such a massive scale?

Climate Changes - of the cold kind.

Just like the weather we've had this "summer", but going on for decades, causing catastrophic downturns in agriculture production. What seed can be saved from one year to the next fails to grow properly, or doesn't ripen or rots where it stands.

There have been several such periods.

e.g. see the Late Bronze Age Collapse. No surplus, no trade, no goodies to swap for bronze ware.

It happened again in late Roman times. Other peoples further north have it even worse, and up sticks and move south. See The Huns. Empires collapse under the strain.


Solar Minimum periods also bugger-up agriculture and trade.

See http://www.thegwpf.org/grand-solar-minimum-caused-global-cooling/

When did the Bronze Age end?
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