the.com/pestilence
nature's reset button, pressed by something too small to see and too patient to lose
means A deadly, fast-spreading infectious disease — especially one that sweeps through a population like a plague.
from From Latin 'pestilentia,' meaning an unhealthy or infected condition, built on 'pestis' — plague, disease, ruin. It traveled into English through Old French 'pestilence' in the medieval period, an age that knew the word's weight all too well. The same 'pestis' root gives us 'pest' — though that little word has softened over centuries from 'a killing plague' to 'an annoying mosquito,' a rare case of language growing less afraid.
- black death
- killed up to half of medieval Europe
- flea-powered
- plague spread mostly by infected fleas, not rats directly
- war ally
- disease killed more soldiers than weapons until WWII
- horseman rank
- one of the apocalypse's four riders
- smallpox toll
- killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone
black death — killed 75-200 million people in eurasia and north africa, 1347-1353
spanish flu — infected 500 million people worldwide, killed 50-100 million in 1918-1920
plague of justinian — killed an estimated 25-50 million in the byzantine empire, 541-549 ce