The Black Death was a zombie epidemic

[all fictions]

The plague of 1347-1350, otherwise known as the Black Death, the Great Mortality, and the Year of Annihilation, is as close as human history has ever gotten to going post-apocalyptic (barring the possible Toba catastrophe and the societal collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization). The Euroasian continent's populations were at a high, with population growth slowing down in the preceding decades as the land was stretched to its sustainable limits. When the plague hit, it struck at a time of relatively high population density and malnutrition, the death rates ranging from 15% to over 60% from area to area. Though very little of the population - 10% is a common figure - lived in towns and cities, these were the places that got the worst of it and many were almost totally depopulated as people died or fled.

In Europe it dealt a heavy hand to the nobility, the Church and higher learning in general. Pre-plague, most literate people were clergymen and nearly all clergymen were literate; clerical literacy did not reach pre-plague levels until the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the devastation of the plague and the resultant social upheaval cultivated rebellion, religious fanatacism and anarchy (such as the anti-Semetic, anti-authority flagellants).

Now, those were crappy times to be alive and European, but let's turn it up a notch: what if the Black Death had been a zombie outbreak? Would western civilization survive?

 

[vyor]

Western civilization would be different to be sure. There would be less secular countries and cleanliness would gain a boost. Not much else would change though.

 

[HecateGW]

I imagine that if Western Civilization did survive, there would be an almost military mindedness or at least, everyone would receive some kind of training. Just in case the next outbreak happens again.

 

[Bassoe]

If we're talking WWZ novel-version zombies, I'd suspect it actually would have been a lot easier for the prior social order to survive than the actual Black Death.

 

[Aaron Peori]

This is unanswerable until we know the specifics of the kind of zombies.

Is it an All Rise scenario or only infected rise? If the latter, what is the vector of infection? Walkers or runners? How hard are they to put back down? Tool use or no?

 

[Levhitor]

If we're talking WWZ novel-version zombies, I'd suspect it actually would have been a lot easier for the prior social order to survive than the actual Black Death.

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How do WWZ novel version zombies work? The movies ones were pretty horrible to be honest, they looked more like a humanoid Zerg rush than a Zombie outbreak.

This is unanswerable until we know the specifics of the kind of zombies.

Is it an All Rise scenario or only infected rise? If the latter, what is the vector of infection? Walkers or runners? How hard are they to put back down? Tool use or no?

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All that plz

 

[all fictions]

Yeah, should have fleshed it out more.

Is it an All Rise scenario or only infected rise?

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Half All Rise I guess: everyone dying after the outbreak of whatever causes rises as a zombie.

If the latter, what is the vector of infection?

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Besides dying, being bitten infects you. Also, like the RL plague, animals can be infected as well, and can serve as hosts carrying the virus (the animal reservoir for plague includes mice, camels, chipmunks, prairie dogs, rabbits, squirrels, and rats). Domesticated animals cannot be infected, but can carry infected fleas.

Walkers or runners?

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Let's give medieval folks a chance, and say walkers.

How hard are they to put back down?

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As there are no convenient firearms to shoot them in the head, very hard. IIRC, executioners who were skilled in decapitating people in a single stroke were generally of the upper class at that time, so while beheading is the most used strategy, it is hard to pull off properly by anyone not of noble blood (I think it takes two or three whacks to behead people normally).

Another viable tactic is dismemberment, which ensures that the zombie is incapacitated. Unfortunately, it takes too long when facing a hord.

Last one is just burning everything. Extreme, but practical.

 

[Levhitor]

Do their bodies discompose over time? Are they mummified with lack of moisture? Is the disease transmitted by any body fluid getting inside you?
Do they have pack instincts to hunt and roam in semi-coordinated groups? Do Infected animals become aggressive against Humans?

 

[all fictions]

Do their bodies discompose over time?

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Yes, hence their relatively slow movements.

Is the disease transmitted by any body fluid getting inside you?

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Blood, saliva, etc.

Do they have pack instincts to hunt and roam in semi-coordinated groups?

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No, they roam aimlessly, and they become hords by coincidence (large groups of living humans, big noises, sources of light, etc.)

Do Infected animals become aggressive against Humans?

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Yes, and towards their non infected kindred as well.

 

[Aaron Peori]

Zombie mice? That infect with a bite?

Humanity is fucked. Maybe the America's hold out until the zombies burn themselves out, though if the Vikings are still doing trans-atlantic at the time everyone is screwed.

Do you have any idea how many mice and rats the average town would be infested with? And fleas transmit the virus to them? And they attack humans and infect them with a bite?

Yeah, this is an ELE. Europe is gone within a decade and the plague spreads Eastward and Southward over the course of the next few centuries, wiping out all civilization in its wake.

 

[JMHthe3rd]

Oh, man, I used to fantasize about this very scenario. Truly, the 14th century was an Age of Epic Crapsackery. The Black Death was a catastrophe, but even without it the 1300s was a rotten time to live. You have so many sources of unrest:

• The Hundred Years War. England takes a third of France . . . but lacks of the men to control it. The war drags on, and on, invasion after invasion . . .
  
• The "free companies" roaming unchecked across the devastated countryside, burning, raping and pillaging. Some even took local castles and set themselves up as petty warlords. In a way, the free companies filled the role of post-apocalyptic motorcycle gangs. John Hawkwood was probably one of most famous ones
  
• Peasant revolts: The Jacquerie Revolt. Wat Tyler's Rebellion, the revolt in Flanders . . . seriously, there were a lot of them.
  
• Papal Schism. One pope's in Rome, one pope's in Avignon. They hate each other, and excommunicate each others' followers. The world's gone to hell in a hand-basket, and the Catholic Church is at war with itself.

A third of Europe dying is just the icing on the cake [1]. Plague zombies would be the cherry on top.

And I, Friar John Clyn, of the Order of Friars Minor, and of the convent of Kilkenny, wrote in this book those notable things, which happened in my time, which I saw with my eyes, or which I learned from persons worthy of credit ; and lest things worthy of remembrance should perish with time, and fall away from the memory of those who are to come after us, I, seeing these many evils, and the whole world lying, as it were, in the wicked one, among the dead, waiting for death till it come, as I have truly heard and examined, so have I reduced these things to writing ; and lest the writing should perish with the writer, and the work fail together with the workman, I leave parchment for continuing the work, if haply any man survive, and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and continue the work which I have commenced." Then follows one paragraph for 1349, containing the death and eulogy of Sir Fulco de la Frene, and then the copyist's brief entry: "

Here it seems the author died.

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That's from The Annals of Ireland. Friar Clyn was the last man alive in his monastery. But imagine if he wrote this barricaded in the root cellar, his fellow monks moaning through the thick oak door as they slowly but surely pound the wood to splinters with their shattered, pulpy fists?

This would so make an awesome RPG setting! So many ideas for adventure seeds.

[1] Possibly upwards of two-thirds by the end of the century. The plague kept making successive strikes every few years. Europe didn't recover it's pre-plague population level for 150 years.