Learn about The Black Death with Dan Snow

Recommendable! Among many other things, we learn that some drastic changes in climate during the 1346-53 period caused e.g. poor harvests and hunger. A number of positive societal changes are also mentioned, e.g. massive change in land ownership distribution, better jobs and pay for peasants and workers, more participation of women in the economy etc. However, also the expansion of government power may have also increased in the aftermath by government assuming increased responsibility for public health

Biological Warfare Is Ancient

Trigger

Following article just reminded me that the history of biological warfare goes way back centuries:

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/black-death-and-taxes

I quote from the beginning of this article:

“Besieging the Black Sea port of Caffa, the Mongols … While the Genoese they wanted to capture were safe within the city, Mongol bodies piled up outside its walls.

The Mongols of the Golden Horde then did something unprecedented in both the history of warfare and the history of disease [ca. 1347 AD]. They piled their dead into catapults and hurled them over the city walls, raining diseased corpses on the besieged Genoese. These Italian merchants—visitors at the edge of the Mongol Empire—boarded their ships to flee the Crimea. It seems they brought the plague [Black Death] home with them. “

Moral Of The Story

Although, the Mongols certainly did not understand much about pathology, but they grasped that infected corpses could spread the disease and this could be used as a weapon.

It happened then, it can happen again. Humanity ought to be keenly aware of this.

Just imagine religious fanatics get hold of biological weapons.