The Black Death | 6. how the pandemic transformed societies
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The Black Death - The First Epidemic
In the 13 forties and fifties, you're talking about the first epidemic. I would argue that the crisis that it triggers doesn't properly abate until 13 53. You have the only known occasion in the last millennium of four back to back catastrophic harvest failures in northwest europe. So things like basic food stuffs, the prices of grain is two and a half times what it was before the plague. The cost of metal increases threefold. Cost of salt increases fourfold between 13 forty eight and 13 52. There's a nuclear winter coinciding with the arrival of this disease. And that delays the ability of communities to recover.
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