[Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague

[Allen Hall]

Hi Osondrea,

True enought, including the can of worms!  The original plague came in as bubonic and mutated, evolved into pneumonic plague.  Nasty critters, both.  It is still around?  Yes, absolutely.  A guy living pretty much alone on the south rim of the Grand Canyon died from it about 2-3 years ago.  That just makes the discussion a little more interesting...

So, how do we deal with it?  If commerce is shut down, as well as transportation of "stuff" via truck and rail, and the power starts to go down because no will/can go to work...what'cha gonna do?

Food and water comes to mind....

Let's hear how a person could deal with it.  What skills/knowledge, experiences would be useful?  We know how to make bread ovens and use wood to fire them.  What do we put in them and how do we get it?

Thanks for picking up on the topic.  I bet this will be an interesting one!

Alan

> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:53:03 -0600
> From: osondrea at gmail.com
> To: artemisia at lists.gallowglass.org
> Subject: Re: [Artemisia] A New Discussion - SCA Skills in a Modern Plague
> 
> What a great can of worms to open, Allen! I got to do a nice little research
> project on the plague when I was in school, so here's a few things to think
> about...
> 1) The plague is NOT gone! It's a bacteria that travels around and
> germinates in the gut of a flea. The flea starts to starve because all the
> food it eats gets used by the bacteria and the flea isn't getting anything.
> This causes the flea to jump around to victim after victim biting them while
> trying to feed and spreading the bacteria as it goes. A full blown case of
> plague can be caused by just 50 cells of the bacteria!
> 2) There are actually 3 different types of the plague. 2 of them are pretty
> similar in how they respond to the current antibiotics: gentamycin and
> streptomycin. These two antibiotics will have about a 75-90% success rate on
> two types of plague. The third type, however, is a great big problem! It's
> called pneumonic plague and, as the name suggests, it infects the lungs like
> pneumonia. It's also a much hardier type of plague because it survives up to
> three weeks in the air and soil! Even when diagnosed very early the
> antibiotics have only about a 10% success rate in treating this form of
> plague. It's an extreme biohazard and any area where it is found must be
> quarantined immediately for at least three weeks. That includes livestock.
> 
> Questions anyone??
> 
> Osondrea