4 ms·

Is anyone aware of any pre-industrial epidemics of a similar scale?

jerf 10y ago
Yes. The rapid spread of something an ecosystem is not prepared for is not an industrial phenomenon. The number of such occurrences is. But it's also worth pointing out a lot of this is the result of travel or remote trade. Stopping this sort of thing doesn't look anything like "stop burning so many fossil fuels" or "recycle more", it looks like telling humans they aren't allowed to stray more than a few dozenish miles from where they live. It's not really clear how to prevent this. We have mitigation policies in place, yes, but in the biological world 99.9999% enforcement can be as good as 0% enforcement and that's a hard bar. Heck, we can't even contain the spread of human diseases all that effectively, and that is something that you'd think we have every motivation to do.
acomjean 10y ago
The American Chestnut. It was pretty much wiped out by a disease that infects its cousin, the Chinese Chestnut, which has defenses against it. "The American chestnut tree reigned over 200 million acres of eastern woodlands from Maine to Florida, and from the Piedmont plateau in the Carolinas west to the Ohio Valley, until succumbing to a lethal fungus infestation, known as the chestnut blight, during the first half of the 20th century. An estimated 4 billion American chestnuts, up to 1/4 of the hardwood tree population, grew within this range." http://www.acf.org/range_close.php http://www.acf.org/range_close.php They're trying to reintroduce blight resistant strains by cross breading with Chinese trees. http://www.acf.org/r_r.php http://www.acf.org/r_r.php
- spqr0a1 10y ago
  The american chestnut has been successfully genetically engineered with an oxalate oxidase gene for blight resistance. testing and out-crossing with wild-type chestnuts is ongoing. Wider availability should be possible in the next few years. http://www.esf.edu/chestnut/ http://www.esf.edu/chestnut/
dredmorbius 10y ago
Smallpox against virtually all non-European populations. I'm trying to think of specific instances of pathogen based flora destruction, and don't know if I could mention many offhand. In California specifically, the replacement of wild bunchgrasses with European annuals (the "Golden Hills" are very much a modern phenomenon) would be one. More generally, though, the motto "forest preceed us, deserts follow" has applied to human settlement for millennia. The Cedars of Lebanon and Pines of Rome aren't just allegorical. The former are where the Egyptians secured their lumber (painfully scarce along the Nile), the latter previously surrounded the Eternal City. I'd be interested to know the history of forests in India, Persia, and China, other great centers of ancient civilisation.

jerf 10y ago

Yes. The rapid spread of something an ecosystem is not prepared for is not an industrial phenomenon. The number of such occurrences is. But it's also worth pointing out a lot of this is the result of travel or remote trade. Stopping this sort of thing doesn't look anything like "stop burning so many fossil fuels" or "recycle more", it looks like telling humans they aren't allowed to stray more than a few dozenish miles from where they live. It's not really clear how to prevent this. We have mitigation policies in place, yes, but in the biological world 99.9999% enforcement can be as good as 0% enforcement and that's a hard bar. Heck, we can't even contain the spread of human diseases all that effectively, and that is something that you'd think we have every motivation to do.

acomjean 10y ago

The American Chestnut. It was pretty much wiped out by a disease that infects its cousin, the Chinese Chestnut, which has defenses against it. "The American chestnut tree reigned over 200 million acres of eastern woodlands from Maine to Florida, and from the Piedmont plateau in the Carolinas west to the Ohio Valley, until succumbing to a lethal fungus infestation, known as the chestnut blight, during the first half of the 20th century. An estimated 4 billion American chestnuts, up to 1/4 of the hardwood tree population, grew within this range." http://www.acf.org/range_close.php http://www.acf.org/range_close.php They're trying to reintroduce blight resistant strains by cross breading with Chinese trees. http://www.acf.org/r_r.php http://www.acf.org/r_r.php

spqr0a1 10y ago
The american chestnut has been successfully genetically engineered with an oxalate oxidase gene for blight resistance. testing and out-crossing with wild-type chestnuts is ongoing. Wider availability should be possible in the next few years. http://www.esf.edu/chestnut/ http://www.esf.edu/chestnut/

dredmorbius 10y ago

Smallpox against virtually all non-European populations. I'm trying to think of specific instances of pathogen based flora destruction, and don't know if I could mention many offhand. In California specifically, the replacement of wild bunchgrasses with European annuals (the "Golden Hills" are very much a modern phenomenon) would be one. More generally, though, the motto "forest preceed us, deserts follow" has applied to human settlement for millennia. The Cedars of Lebanon and Pines of Rome aren't just allegorical. The former are where the Egyptians secured their lumber (painfully scarce along the Nile), the latter previously surrounded the Eternal City. I'd be interested to know the history of forests in India, Persia, and China, other great centers of ancient civilisation.