What If...?
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Caliane
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It should always be pointed out, we don't actually have any idea what the pre-colonial populations were. they didn't have any records, or writing, or anything. its all based on guesswork, often by modern people with bias. People make statements like this as if its fact. its not. And sure, there are historical facts that we can take as fact, due to ample historical sources. this isn't one of them.
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Mahes
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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The scene was..ok, until he pulled the heavy duty gun out of nowhere. That was stupid. I did like how his friend even noted the situation.
After watching the atrocity that was "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier", I have a difficult time watching anything new with those characters.
Its is kind of like when you really enjoy a particular kind of food. You eat it all the time because it tastes great. Then one day, you get a bad stomach virus and throw that shit back up. You are sick for days. Suddenly you want nothing to do with that food you once really enjoyed. That is what watching " The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" did for me with those characters.
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it's been a while and forgot where I read it but this number was always fucking bullshit revisionist history. Obviously they didn't keep records or know how to write, they hadn't invented the wheel yet and had barely tamed fucking fire, but we know this 85% population wipe out to be complete bullshit because the lack of mass graves or charred bone/carrion fields.
I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but when 1% of your population dies then the dead begin to pile up so that you can't perform mortuary services/ritual burial/whatever cultural/technological shit your civilization performs for the dead. when it approaches 3% (like during the spanish flu) then you no longer can hold individual burials and start to bury the dead in series, a long trench is dug and the dead are just layed out side by side in mass.
when its 10%-30% over a multiyear period like the black death in Europe or more recent mass genocides then your lucky to get them in the ground at all, you have no choice but mass graves, tossed in without rhyme or reason, a smorgasborg of corpses, or massive open air burn piles which results in ash and charred bone piles.
Beyond 30% death rate you lack the manpower to bury or even burn your dead. We're talking civilizational collapse, people lie where they fall and after the scavengers and buzzards have their fill you are left with scattered carrion fields of bone.
The various native american tribes buried their dead. We found nothing, no mass graves, no charred bone/carrion fields, nothing to indicate a death rate beyond 3% during pre-colonial times, and only a few sites of minor mass graves consistent with short term war time casualties.
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Chukzombi
Millie's Staff Member
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That makes more sense. It also makes more sense that the Indians have been wiping each other out for thousands of years in war and squabbles. White man comes and hooks a tribe up. Other tribes get jealous and then make war. Them all just dropping dead sounds stupid. 80% lack of immunity to diseases? They weren't gone that long.
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Yeah not sure how people believe a lack of exposure to a disease magically makes the disease 10x more lethal. Smallpox, the major variety (more lethal) only had a mortality rate of around 1% (less, actually). Humanity has been dealing with small pox for 70k+ years, if it were capable of killing 85% of a population of previously unexposed people it would have ended us before we came out of the fucking caves.
Seriously not sure how people believe the "small pox blanket gifts" bullshit. check it out. you get infected. You start to get symptoms and you become contagious (able to spread the disease to others) for a period of 2 weeks. That was it's infectivity time. After 2 weeks you either died or your body fought off the infection and you became immune to small pox and could never contract it again.
It only was able to become an issue with the rise of cities and later rail and other transportation methods which enabled the disease to become a problem. Only in the most extreme scenarios (huge city populations without sanitation/running water like pre-industrial revolution cities) was it ever a threat, because only in those conditions can it spread faster than it killed people. (much like the bubonic plague)
Even if it were intentionally spread to tribes by the white man and even if Small pox had a 100% mortality rate, it would only be able to infect a handful of tribes, kill maybe half a dozen people that that person actually came in contact with, before it died off. Native American's didn't have cities. They also didn't have horses. How fucking far do you think sick people can walk in 2 weeks before they died?
The extremely sparsely populated Americas full of dozens of warring, nomadic tribes that the colonists found is same extremely sparsely populated America's that the explorers found which is same extremely sparsely populated Americas that the vikings found.
whiskey and depression kills more indians a year than white-man diseases ever did.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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It does make a disease potentially more lethal or impactful because the population was never exposed to it and therefore you don’t have a population descended from people who survived the disease in the past and therefore genetic predisposition to a bad disease outcome had not been weeded out. That is a simple Darwinian concept.
As for tribes or people getting thinned out by disease, we do have contemporary people relaying information about disease impacts in places. That doesn’t mean all tribes or communities got hit that hard, but consider that certain tribes would probably have a lot of genetic similarities due to small populations. If you had smaller tribes with genes that made them predisposed to getting extremely sick from a certain virus, then those people would see much worse outcomes. Like the initial tribe encountered by the Pilgrims - they got hit hard by illness, which made them vulnerable to rival tribes and made them seek out the Pilgrims as a potential ally
uncognito
Trakanon Raider
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I probably like the peggy carter tv show and character more than anyone else, but this was just ok even though it featured her. did love the 1600s episode
the native stuff was bad. why not just have a what if.. the vibranium comet landed in north America instead of africa.
show has endless potential, looking forward to more seasons.
the native stuff was bad. why not just have a what if.. the vibranium comet landed in north America instead of africa.
show has endless potential, looking forward to more seasons.
Mahes
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Aldarion
Egg Nazi
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You seem to be conflating two very different things.
Smallpox blankets are made up revisionist bullshit.
The actual dieoff happened hundreds of years earlier. There was a more or less continent wide plague spread (unintentionally and unknowingly) by contact with the earliest settlers - Spanish and Portuguese. This is pretty well documented and not really disputed by anyone as far as I can tell.
Your point about "but wheres the bodies??" forgets that (a) these were stone age savages and (b) it was hundreds of years. Wheres the evidence of the hundreds of millions of whitetailed deer that died in the same region in the same period? You can't apply the assumptions of modernity in this situation.
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Chukzombi
Millie's Staff Member
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Ok but why are they dying off at 85%? Who dies like that? It's bullshit.
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Aldarion
Egg Nazi
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I have no idea where that specific number came from, but the numbers I've read have been over the course of like a century or so. I don't think anybody said 85% overnight.
Ever hear of the black plague? killed what, like 50% of Europe or something? And thats in a population with some resistance. Just because covid was madeup bullshit doesnt mean all diseases are.
Ever hear of the black plague? killed what, like 50% of Europe or something? And thats in a population with some resistance. Just because covid was madeup bullshit doesnt mean all diseases are.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Another good point - the Black Plague was devastating on Europe, so there is plenty of evidence of a non-resistant population suffering heavy mortality rates to disease. 40-60% of the population died from it.
This fucking smooth brain "hur dur diseases don't kill lots of people" is what happens when you guzzle too much anti-vax/anti-covid propaganda.
This fucking smooth brain "hur dur diseases don't kill lots of people" is what happens when you guzzle too much anti-vax/anti-covid propaganda.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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The idea of a disease spreading throughout an entire sparsely populated continent without any established transportation networks is absurd.
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Black plague ravaged Europe because they had actual towns and cities. Natives in North America had neither.
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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They had trading networks and hubs. The French fur traders exploited the existence of this heavily to get goods they needed, like pemmican
Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Is this like a black Wall Street thing? I’ve never heard of this nor even seen it depicted.