Attack Mode: Surviving the Plague

The bubonic plague.  The Black Death.  You know that Blue Oyster Cult song, "Don't Fear the Reaper?"  I know you know it.  Come on.  "More cowbell."  You caught up now?  Good.  There's a repeated lyric in it: "40,000 men and women everyday."  That's a reference to the amount of people who were estimated to be killed by the plague in Europe during its second major pandemic in the 1300s. 

That's 40,000 people every day dying from a disease that essentially keeps the body's cells from communicating with each other, a disease of which the symptoms range from grotesquely swollen and painful lymph nodes (most prominently in the groin and armpits), a high fever with the accompanying headache and chills, and even severe gastrointestinal distress (read: the horrid shits).  In essence, you'll feel like you've got a case of the flu, but you contracted it from Paul Bunyan while he violated you.  Also, Babe the Blue Ox was combing his shit through your hair.  Gross, right?  Don't blame me:  that's just the bubonic plague.

Now, you're probably thinking, sure, I'm pretty well aware that the bubonic plague was a bad thing.  I mean, we have a modern idiom for when we really want to stay away from something -- we avoid that thing like the plague.  I assume there was a reason for that.  But what does that have to do with me?  The plague is over, man.  Nobody gets it anymore.  But that's where you're wrong, and where I fail to resist the urge to say that you're dead wrong. 

In fact, earlier this month a boy in Mongolia died from complications related to the plague, and just days ago health officials in Flagstaff, Arizona warned the public that a strain of the plague is circulating in the prairie dog population.  Considering that fleas live on prairie dogs, and fleas live on real dogs, and real dogs live with humans, it suddenly doesn't seem so farfetched to think that you, reader, may already have the bubonic plague.  Granted, you probably don't, but maybe it's time to start considering the consequences.  Most health officials consider it unlikely that the plague will ever be fully eradicated or even contained in the animal kingdom given the difficult-to-monitor-and-control nature of wild rodent populations.  So maybe it's time for you to stop depending on health officials to save you.  Maybe it's time to step out of your comfort zone, and step into attack mode.

Preventative Measures

Fortunately for you, there are some actions you can take right now to keep the Horseman of Death from your doorstep.  For one thing you can spray your doorstep with pesticide, and preferably something specifically designed to target fleas.  You're obviously not going to want to stop there, though:  spray the entire perimeter of your house. 

Your pets, if you have them, should be receiving regular flea inspections and dips.  Ideally, you're going to need to keep the fleas away from them entirely, because if an flea gorges itself on your dog's blood and vomits some of that blood back up into the nasty flea wound it's created (yeah, gross. Again:  just the nature of the beast), it's already too late for your dog, and it's most likely too late for you, too.  So help your pets out with their hygiene.  For fuck's sake, if your pet has fleas, that's unacceptable regardless of whether or not those fleas are carrying the bubonic plague.  Take care of your animals.  If you're Michael Vick, for instance, you have a much better chance at contracting the plague than the average person.  Also, people in jail will be looking to fuck you up to enhance their statuses, but that's neither here nor there.

If you already know of an outbreak in your area, of course, you're going to want to take further precautions.  As soon as you know of the outbreak, and preferably beforehand, you need to stock up on supplies.  Treat it as something of a cross between an approaching hurricane and an invasion of the undead.  That is, you're going to want to protect your flesh as you venture out in the world, as any open wounds could provide a path for the infection to reach your bloodstream.  You're also going to want to wear some sort of mask or filter over your mouth, because if anyone happens to be walking around -- however unlikely this may be -- with the later stages of the plague, they may cough their bloody plague cough on you, and it'll be curtains.  So get out there, protect yourself, get your supplies, and get home.  And once you get home, board that shit up and get ready to ride out the storm, because it's going to be a rough one. 

As a final measure of prevention -- and one that's been implied throughout the article and really should be too fucking obvious to bear a mention -- don't allow rodents.  Note that I didn't say not to allow rodents to live in your home, don't allow rodents to feed you, don't allow rodents any particular action.  No.  Disallow the existence of rodents completely.  When you see a rodent, and you have the opportunity to end it, do so.  Rodents are festering cesspools of disease and bacteria, and even if they're not carrying the black death, they're probably carrying something.  Point of fact:  at some time in your life, it's probable that a rodent has -- either directly or indirectly -- made you ill, and you don't even know it.    Maybe they crawled on your pillow and left your a present.  Maybe you foolishly tried to feed a chipmunk in a national park.  Or maybe you ate just a little more of their feces than the FDA allows.  Whatever the exact cause, you should know that rodents are not your friends.  Bats, squirrels, mice, rats:  terminate them all.  If you don't, maybe you'll luck out and end up with just rabies.  I've always heard that's a fun way to die.

What To Do If You Get The Plague

If you somehow forget to part ways with your collection of Prairie Dogs and they turn on you, bite you and infect you with Plague, don't fret. There are treatments for your horrible medieval disease. The main "cure" is a treatment that involves sulfonamide drugs. This is, in LAYMAN's Terms (you dumbass layman), an antibacterial treatment which, as you may know, is totally imprecise. So there's no cure all for The Plague. Because it's the Black Death after all. So let's stress this again--stop hanging out with rodents! I don't know what it is with our readers, but they love messing around with rats n shit. Crazy motherfuckers.

So there's sort of a cure for Plague...it's imprecise, but it somewhat works. But let's say there's an outbreak and all the doctors and shit are wiped out and basically all your options for a cure are gone. Well, you've got three or four days (at most) until you're dead. It's no ebola virus, but for some middle ages steez, it gets the job done, yaheard?

So what should you do if you're absolutely fucked, can't cure yourself and have three or four days to kill? Well, depends how screwed up a person you are. I'm pretty effed up, so I'll tell you all the fun I'd have. First off, I'd spread my Plague to as many non infected people as I could find. I'd probably have about a day before my entire skin surface was covered in bloody boils, so most of my infection-trickery would have to go down that first day. The second day of my disease, I'd raid and loot all the mah fuckers around me...with my eye set dead on any good food and nice cars. Anything else is pointless with one or two days left. Then, in whatever sports car I'd get my hands on, I'd drive off into the sunset, engorging myself on junk food, laughing myself silly until i die at the wheel and cause a fiery crash in a residential area somewhere.

But that's just me.

PS The Plague sucks. Don't catch that.