The black plague is one of the deadliest diseases humans have ever faced; it killed as many as 50 million people – including about a third of the population of Europe – in the 14th century alone, in an outbreak known as the Black Death. In modern days, though, you hardly ever hear about people getting the plague, which might make you think we’ve wiped it out. But the black plague is still around and still infecting people – and we aren’t even trying to eradicate it.
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
– Bubonic plague: a disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis
– Reservoir: a living host in which a pathogen can live, grow, and multiply, and can serve as a source for disease
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Kate Yoshida | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Lizah van der Aart | Storyboard Artist
Arcadi Garcia i Rius | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
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REFERENCES
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Dennis, D.T. & Mead, P.S. (2009). Plague. Tropical Infectious Diseases, 471.
Jones, S. D., Atshabar, B., Schmid, B. V., Zuk, M., Amramina, A., & Stenseth, N. C. (2019). Living with plague: Lessons from the Soviet Union’s antiplague system. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(19), 9155-9163.
Mahmoudi, A., Kryštufek, B., Sludsky, A., et al (2021). Plague reservoir species throughout the world. Integrative Zoology, 16(6), 820-833.
Mitchell, E. P., & Pathirannehalage, S. C. N. (2025). Eradicating infectious disease: can we and should we: a critical examination. IJID One Health, 9, 100088.
Whitty, C. J. (2014). Milroy Lecture: eradication of disease: hype, hope and reality. Clinical medicine, 14(4), 419-421.
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The Pestilence must be cured!
Islam is the true religion. Read the Holy Quran and you will become a Muslim. And for every Christian, read Surah Maryam and Surah Al-Ikhlas and you will become a Muslim. And for every Jew, read the Quran. And for every atheist and polytheist, read the Quran.
NPS has warning signs in Badlands National Park warning visitors to keep their distance from prairie dogs due to Plague, which surprised me. I was under the impression that the Plague was confined to Europe and Asia. NOPE!
Those little zombie-coded plague critters, munching on people's heads are _adorable_. Kudos to the artist <3
I worked on sequencing gut microbiota and then did a double take when I saw Yersinia pestis in the top 20 species. My first thought was, "Where have I seen this name before?" before Googling it and realising what I was looking at. The funny thing was, it was a few days before oral presentation of my boss at a conference.
this is unrelated but i love how the russian word poison (яд) was short enough to write out but insecticide (инсектицид) wasn't so you wrote it in ithkuil 😭😭😭😭
soooo…. plague kills as many percentage population of Europe as todays abortion?
Great to hear Kate 🙂
As someone who has been struck by lightning, I don't want to do it again.
Or catch this disease.
Plz no
Its either called the Plague or Black Death….not Black Plague!!
There are actually three types of plague caused by Yersinia pestis: bubonic plague (infection of the lymphatic system, 30%–90% fatal if untreated), pneumonic plague (infection of the lungs, nearly 100% fatal if untreated), and septicemic plague (infection of the bloodstream, nearly 100% fatal if untreated).
Bacteria resistance will change that. We made the same mistake with Tuberculosis. We will regret this in the future.
It's really deadly
Contradics a lot Iwas told.
By a filk song.
"The Black Death", by Tony Fabris, Michelle Dockrey, Amy Macnally, Seanan MacGuire.
Technically the Soviet UNION didn't exist until 1922; 1917 would have just been the start of Communist Russia before they joined up with the other constituent republics of the Union.
You could say from the start, that MODERN ANTIBIOTICS AND MEDICINE TREATS IT.
In a way you can see it as let's make it to stay this weak so it's easy to handle and not evolve
When I was a kid, my aunt wouldn’t let us feed the chipmunks in Rocky Mountain National Park. She told us they carried the fleas that gave you the Bubonic Plague. So I was terrified of chipmunks my entire childhood.
Then I learned about these things called antibiotics…
Hank Green just posted a video about this subject! It's fun when YouTube EDU all get excited about the same thing.
Black plague isn't a thing, its either the plague or the black death. Plague is the disease, black death the outbreak.
Black plague is also not known as the bubonic plague, the outbreak involved all 3 types of plague: Bubonic, Septicaemic and Pneumonic.
The bird beak mask doctor outfit didn't exist during the black death, it didn't exist during the middle ages, perhaps never even existed at all.
The black plague killed between 75 and 200 million people, its only 50 if you ignore Asia, the middle east & Africa, which is quite the Eurocentric perspective.
Plague is still around, in 2017 over 200 people died of pneumonic plague in Madagascar.
Rats were not the main spreader, during the black death it was fleas on humans, goods and all kinds of animals, the idea that it was the rats was debunked some time ago.
Nitpicking:
In 1917, there was no Soviet Union. It was founded in 1922.
Just end of October 1917, the Bolshevik coup occurred, and then it took some time for those to consolidate their power and then conquer other countries like Ukraine and then declaring one empire aka "Soviet Union".
Just wait till that develops antibiotic resistance.
In the usa we keep an eye on bubonic plague. It is not of unheard of to have a few cases a year, sometimes even 0.
Interested topic!
There are certain very underappreciated details in this video, especially when you use other than the Latin alphabet.
It reached every continent.
Yes the colonialism spred it every where.
Especially in AMERICAS where they with church used such diseses to wipe out native population.