Transcript How to Create a Black Death

How to Create a Black
Death (Bubonic Plague):
Ten Phases
By: Brennan Appleman
A Period
Phase 1: The Time Machine
• The first item you will need to create a Black Death is a time
machine. It does not matter whether you build your own or
buy a brand new time machine. My only advice is that you
get one. The reason for getting a time machine is to go back
to a time when there was no cure for the plague. The Black
Death started in the fourteenth century, so you have to go
back to the early 1300s so that people have not experienced
the disease and have no immunity. This is one of the most
important steps to make your disease a success.
Phase 2: The Bacteria
• Now is the time to obtain the bacteria. The bacteria that
created the bubonic plague (Black Death) is the Yersinia
pestis. It is a bacteria usually found in certain rodents
and in fleas that have been on rodents. Obtaining this
bacteria may be difficult. You have to make sure you
have rodents that contain the bacteria. A scientist may
be able to assist you by testing the organisms for the
bacteria. If you do not have the organisms with the
bacteria, then you will just be spreading an infestation of
fleas and rodents instead of the disease.
Phase 3: The Fleas
• Fleas. The fleas are the organisms that will transport your
bacteria/disease to other rodents and people after they
obtain the disease from infected rodents. If some fleas
have the disease and bite you, you will then be infected
with the disease, just as in the fourteenth century. Gather
your fleas from any animals or places where fleas are
abundant. You need a lot because the fleas do die from the
disease when it clogs their passageway to their stomach
so they do not get food. Be careful not to let the fleas get
to you. Put them in jars. Your fleas will later spread your
disease by biting infected rodents and then biting other
rodents or humans.
Phase 4: Rodents
• Phase four is all about the rodents-rats, mice, or any rodents
will do. To gather more rodents, take a trip to the sewer.
These rodents will need to be infected by the bacteria, which
can be accomplished by using the fleas and infected rodents
that you gathered in phases 2 and 3. After these rodents are
infected, have all of your fleas bite them. They will now
contain the bacteria, and when the fleas bite another victim,
this will spread the disease. The rodents that you use will
play a bigger role than the fleas because they will live longer,
be able to travel faster, and carry the fleas to different places.
Do not go back in time and release the disease yet. We will
save that for later when everything is planned out.
Phase 5: Spreading Over
Water
• Later, when you choose your starting place for your
disease, you will have to make sure this area has trading
ports where ships are used to export goods to other
countries. This is very important because you want your
disease to spread to other continents. For instance, back
when the Black Death occurred in the fourteenth century,
the rats, fleas, and other rodents or hosts occasionally
boarded ships that were used to trade with North
America. This, in turn, spread the disease throughout
more of the world and claimed more victims. You have to
make sure that the place where you start your infection
will have the same outcome.
Phase 6:The Victims
• By far, this is the easiest step. All you have to do is
know what people or societies you want to infect. The
world is just full of people, so it should be no problem
trying to find people to contaminate. It’s your choice!
No matter who you choose to infect, it will end up
affecting people around the world. Just like when the
Black Death happened before, this will be a world-wide
pandemic. Although, some people with cats will have
better odds. Seeing as most cats chase rodents away,
their owners have better chances of not being infected.
Phase 7:Location,
Location, Location
• Now it’s time to choose your starting location. You can
start your bubonic plague in central Asia, just as the first
Black Death, or you can choose any country in the world
that you feel would be deserving. It might just depend on
your mood which country you choose. If you’re feeling
happy, choose a country with a funny name. If you are
angry, choose a country you despise. Just make sure you
look at the surrounding countries too because it will
spread to them and then onto the whole of that continent,
like it did in Asia. Even though it will spread to other
continents, it will affect the original continent the worst, so
choose wisely. For example, Europe and Asia suffered the
greatest impact from the bubonic plague, losing over
seventy five million people.
Phase 8: Staying Disease
Free
• In our modern day society, we have a cure for the bubonic plague,
so it is not much of a threat. But, if you were to go back in time to
create the disease all over again, there is a high possibility that you
will in turn be affected. So, before you go back in time, pack some
antibiotics and some items that will help you stay sanitary, like hand
sanitizer. These will help you avoid the symptoms of the Black
Death. Be careful! You can get the disease from more than just
fleas or rodents. For instance, if you were to touch an item that has
the bacteria, it can spread through an open cut and give you the
disease. The symptoms include coughing, fever, vomiting, muscular
pain, mental disorganization, and delirium. The victims of this
disease also experience buboes, which are horribly painful, and
engorged lymph nodes that fill up with pus. Also, back in the 1300s,
during the time of the plague, 60-90% of infected people died in just
a few days when untreated. Most weren’t treated because the
doctors didn’t really know of any treatments. These obviously are
symptoms you would not want to suffer from.
•
Phase 9: Uneducated
Doctors
•
For the ninth phase, you will need to make sure the doctors in the
place and time in which you choose to start your bubonic plague are
uneducated. In the time of the first bubonic plague, the doctors did
not know how the disease spread, what caused it, or how to cure it.
This factor is important because you don’t want a doctor who knows
what he is doing. If there is one, then that doctor might create a cure.
The doctors who are uneducated are the ones you want. In Europe,
during the period of the first Black Death, the doctors were
uneducated. These doctors wore long robes and masks that looked
like a bird’s beak. The beak was used to contain sweet smelling
flowers. The doctors back then thought that the disease spread
through the air, so they filled the beaks with flowers to block the
disease from traveling. This belief was false, of course, and the
flowers didn’t help at all. The long robes actually helped them even
though they did not know it. They protected the doctors from the
fleas and rodents spreading the disease to them. These doctors
attempted to cure people, but did not prevail. They used strange
techniques. For example, they tried putting hot onions on the
buboes, letting pigeons suck the blood out of the buboes, and even
blood ledding, a technique that involved the patient losing blood so
that the disease would be lost with the blood. Most of the techniques
did not work, but some slowed down the journey to death. Some
techniques however, may have brought patients closer to death.
Phase 10: Time to Spread
and Conserve
• The last phase is critical to having a successful epidemic. All you
have to do is ration your supplies when you spread the disease. You
want to save some of your materials and remember your information
for later so that you can cause some smaller outbreaks. By the way,
you have to choose places for your smaller outbreaks too. In the
place where you begin your outbreak, you should use only about fiveeighths of your materials so you are able to cause smaller outbreaks
later. These smaller outbreaks will go on for decades if you ration
wisely. In the time period of the first Black Death, around the mid
1300s, smaller outbreaks occurred after the original devastation.
Some of these smaller outbreaks occurred in the United States,
England, and many other places, but they were not as devastating as
the large scale outbreaks. Most of these smaller outbreaks just
stayed in the local area because people started to build up an
immunity to the disease. You want to make sure that you can cause
smaller outbreaks to continue the devastation for years to come. Now
is the time to go back to the past to your chosen destination and let
your rodents and fleas begin to spread your disease, staying at a safe
distance of course. All you have to do is get comfortable and watch
the action. Good luck!
Sources
•
Information
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Other (Pictures)
go.grolier.com
www.worldbookonline.com
www. Scribd.com
http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/
(both pics. and info)
http://www.medicinenet.com/plague/article.htm
gospelgifs.com
townschool.com
sciencephoto.com
history.com
jonmell.co.uk
mapsofworld.com
squidoo.com
solarnavigator.net
pets.webmd.com
dreamscapegracy.wordpress.com
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/museum/exhibit99/a_2.html
medievaleurope.mrdonn.org