Monday, March 31, 2014

Zombies and Epidemics

I've always found life in the Middle Ages and Medieval years fascinating. Also of interest was the Black Death, the Plague that killed millions, supposedly from flea bites.

Scientists now are thinking there is a better reason the disease spread so quickly and felled so many so fast, blaming it on the usual mode of transmission - via human to human contact - breathing droplets into the air, sneezing, coughing...

Consider that after coming to Britain from Central Asia in 1348, by the following spring the Black Death killed six of every 10 people in London. That would be comparable to a population of 5 million now-- like wiping out half of Belgium or Hungary today (which have roughly 10 million people each.)

And lest you think this doesn't apply to today or couldn't happen again?

Scientist extracting DNA of the bacterium yersina pestis from the teeth of some of those 1300s era skulls found that the preserved strain of bubonic plague was no more virulent, and a near-perfect match, for a recent outbreak in Madagascar that killed 60.

Old diseases never die, it seems. They just wait... or mutate. Or wait for someone in some lab somewhere to dig it up or experiment with it... familiar zombie fodder.


That's how the Z virus in GIRL Z: My Life as a Teenage Zombie starts - with some virus in a lab, and Becca's cousin Spence coming home to share his deadly secret...he's been infected. Read the Prologue and Chapter 1 to see what happens...

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