rinderpest

In their eyes, yes.

Traub was an expert in viral diseases like like Rinderpest and foot and mouth disease.

And when you place a former SS bioweapons expert who's specialized in highly infectious animal diseases on an isolated island facility near major population centers, you are inevitably going to generate dark theories.

Naturally.

Set the two wars side by side, and the division comes out cold.

Rinderpest could be eradicated because humanity owned its entire ecosystem.

Plague cannot be eradicated because humanity does not own the steppe.

On the list of diseases humanity has settled permanently, plague is not merely absent, it is the case proving, with a certain cruelty, that the list will never grow much longer.

Cattle diseases have shaped human history in ways that are easy to overlook.

Rinderpest, a viral disease of cattle, caused devastating epidemics in Africa in the eighteen nineties, killing an estimated ninety percent of cattle in some regions and leading to famine and social upheaval on a scale that is difficult to comprehend from this distance.

The global eradication of rinderpest was officially declared in twenty eleven, making it only the second disease in history, after smallpox, to be completely eliminated through human intervention, a quiet but remarkable achievement.

Bovine tuberculosis is a chronic bacterial disease that can spread from cattle to humans, and its control through testing, culling of infected animals, and milk pasteurization was a major public health achievement of the twentieth century.

What? Which is also called cattle plague.

Is there a chance that you thought the bubonic plague was rinderpest? No, I just misheard.

I would just buy tickets to Rinderpest.

Rinderpest is a highly contagious viral disease that devastated cattle populations.

It caused fever, mouth lesions, diarrhea, and often death.

Hawk had that in the 80s.

My dad was working seconded to the Ethiopian Air Force.

We had a vet called Stuart Watson who was out there vaccinating against Rinderpest.

And I decided that I wanted to be a vet.

And my only careers advice I ever remember getting was in a school assembly who said that two people wanted to be vets.

When the Europeans brought it to Africa, it was absolutely devastating.

Rinderpest is also called cattle plague, and it's not dramatic to say that kingdoms have risen and fallen on the back of this disease for most of human history.

When it reached Africa, it wiped out 90 to 90% of all hoofed animals.

We're talking wildebeest, buffalo, and cattle.

It is a common belief in Africa that lions only eat humans when they're old and sick and have teeth problems.

Humans are pretty soft and squishy, so these lions may have been looking for softer prey.

Now, you might be wondering why you've never heard of Rinderpest, or never heard about it in just extreme terms.

My answer to that is, I don't know.