Brenda Z. Guiberson - Disasters: Natural and Man-Made Catastrophes Through the Centuries

D rops of water glistening on a spiderweb are a delight. A stream of water gushing through a forest is a wonder. But a 40-foot surge of water created by a colossal earthquake is a disaster. Nature in big doses changes our world.

This book travels through times and places that were drowned by water, consumed by fire, buried by dirt, or shaken by the earth itself. It includes intimate quotes and stories from survivors, rescuers, profiteers, and leaders. It teems with details of Indian tribes destroyed by disease, soldiers sickened in trenches, overconfident ship passengers stopped by an iceberg, and young children overworked and underpaid in dusty, dangerous sweatshops.

Disasters provoke questions. What really caused the dust clouds of the 1930s that buried farms in several states? How could Mrs. OLeary and her cow get blamed for the fire that burned the city known fondly as the Queen of the West? How did a virus travel around the world in 1918 and kill more people than World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined? How could an entire city drown after a hurricane that was not as strong as predicted? How could a tsunami catch some by surprise, but not everyone?

Questions need answers. Did you know that water can be more precious than gold? That wetlands are needed to protect coastal lands from waves that can reach as high as 100 feet? That plowing up the grass is a recipe for huge dust storms? That animals detect natural disasters more quickly than humans? That a virus is a parasite, always looking for a host?

Disasters come with warnings, and this book exposes them. Beware of floodplains, fault lines, and Hurricane Alley. Watch out for icebergs, sneezes, and toxic molds. Sometimes it is dangerous to open the refrigerator. Sometimes the best action is to head for the hills.

Nature will always shake, sizzle, gush, and wallop. It has the strength to destroy but also the systems to protect and restore. There is much to be learned from a close look at past disasters. The clues can lead to wiser choices for living in the natural world.

The Parasitic Horror

A Tricky Virus

Starting in the early 1600s, a great disaster struck Native Americans living across the land that would become the United States and Canada. Their population was drastically reduced, from 20 million to less than one million. Ninety-five percent dead, with some tribes extinct! One cause of this great tragedy was a microbe so small that 50,000 of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence.

This horror was the smallpox virus. As a parasite, it must continually find a new human host or it will die. For thousands of years, throughout Asia, Europe, and Africa, among emperors, kings, and poor folk too, smallpox made people so sick that they often died. The virus survived by traveling to new victims in a sneeze, a cough, or the pus of an oozing rash. Millions of contagious microbes lingered in scabs that fell, after four or five weeks, from the dried-up rash of survivors. Blankets and clothing could remain contagious for months.

Smallpox, the variola virus, can cover the body and be transmitted through contact with an infected person or with objects that have touched the infected person.

The smallpox virus, variola, is the largest virus. Poliovirus is the smallest. Each virus has a different lifestyle that we must understand in order to prevent or cure it.

Over the centuries, Old World populations built up defenses against smallpox. One in three people with the disease died. Lucky people who did not get sick passed on this natural resistance to their children. The survivors ended up with an army of defensive microbes in their bodies to protect them from another infection. But children were always born who had yet to catch it. Then a coughing visitor sick with smallpox would arrive. A new epidemic would sweep through the crowds until the tiny microbe ran out of hosts.

But smallpox was unknown in North America. Explorers, settlers, slaves, and missionaries from the Old World were the visitors who transported it there. Unseen and uninvited, this parasite played a huge role in the shaping of the United States.

New World, No Resistance

It is the early 1600s along the coast of Massachusetts. Native Americans meet European fishermen who have come ashore for freshwater. Soon a strange sickness with fiery pain and oozing rashes sweeps through the tribe. Traditional medicines offer no relief.

A mother cradles her feverish child, who has red spots in his mouth and a rash on his skin. The child coughs and sends a spray of saliva into the air, each droplet containing thousands of a tiny virus that no one can see. The mother inhales some into her nose.

Quickly, the virus drills into a cell of her body. Once inside, the parasite stops the cell from doing its normal work and turns it into a smallpox factory. Thousands upon thousands of new viruses are reproduced until poof! the cell explodes into a shower of hundreds of thousands of new microbes. The pox spreads to lymph nodes and travels through the bloodstream. Eventually, it sickens the lungs, spleen, eyes, liverso many important parts of the body.

After a week, the mother is bedridden with severe aches, nausea, and high fever. The child dies. Mourners bring food and carefully remove the child in his soiled blanket. Without knowing it, they become new hosts for the parasitic virus.

This 1620 Plymouth scene shows Pilgrims unloading items from the Mayflower as a lone Native American watches.

Soon a rash breaks out on the mothers skin. When the blisters ooze with pus, it smells like rotting flesh. No one comes to help her. Too many are dead or dying, and the rest have fled in a panic to another village. They have become the visitors who continue the chain of infection. Any survivors will have deep pockmarks on their face, and some will be blind after four weeks of terrible sickness.

Since no Native Americans have been ill with this virus before, or with other illnesses introduced by Europeans, none have the defensive microbes left over from the sickness. Meeting no resistance, the parasite invades and overwhelms most of them.

When the Pilgrims arrive on the Mayflower in 1620, they find the deserted village of Patuxet. The land is already cleared and ready to be planted, but there are no people, only graves and scattered bones. Meeting no resistance, the Pilgrims move in and call it Plymouth.