1870s Horse Flu Epidemic Brought US Economy To Its Knees 118
Nemo the Magnificent writes with this excerpt from the University of Arizona: "A new study (paywalled) published in the journal Nature provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the evolutionary relationships of influenza virus across different host species over time... In the 1870s, an immense horse flu outbreak swept across North America. City by city and town by town, horses got sick and perhaps five percent of them died. Half of Boston burned down during the outbreak, because there were no horses to pull the pump wagons. In the West, the U.S. Cavalry was fighting the Apaches on foot because all the horses were sick... The horse flu outbreak pulled the rug out from under the economy.""
ICF (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. Just wait until the ICF hits (internal combustion flu). Tesla will be laughing all the way to the bank.
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I think that happened during the seventies.
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It seems to be a cyclical problem.
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http://vimeo.com/34571708
(talk on the report requested by the US Department of Energy)
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So it will affect Wankels even more?
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So did my old Chevy. Citation: "Car Bombs" [kuro5hin.org] from The Paxil Diaries (in print soon).
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I think it's the other way around... Tesla cars, Boeing jets, and laptops before them have been catching the Lithium Flu. You'll know it when you see it, because it comes with *quite* the high fever...
Here's one Model S getting some medical attention. [turner.com]
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And here's a lowly Chevy getting the sane treatment.
http://msn.foxsports.com/nasca... [foxsports.com]
Same disease it turns out.
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I think it's the other way around... Tesla cars, Boeing jets, and laptops before them have been catching the Lithium Flu. You'll know it when you see it, because it comes with *quite* the high fever...
...yet, still not quite the same level of fever as the internal combustion flu. And the transmission rate is significantly lower.
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That's nothing. Just wait until the ICF hits (internal combustion flu). Tesla will be laughing all the way to the bank.
It's called peak oil.... it just got delayed by 10 to 20 years, perhaps, due to the introduction of fracking.
When gasoline is no longer available due to global or local resource shortages, or prices --- the same could occur again.
It may be even worse, since the petroleum products are not merely used to fuel our vehicles, BUT they are also required to produce fertilizers, so our farm
Don't use technical terms unless you know their me (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't use technical terms unless you know their meaning. Peak oil looks like it happened in 2008 because it's the maximum point on the graph of crude oil extraction over time. Gas from shale, coal, whatever is something else.
The term "peak oil" acquired a lot of baggage from people who liked to oversimplify things and pretend that crude oil was the only form of energy. The post above is a good example of being influenced by that baggage.
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Peak oil looks like it happened in 2008 because it's the maximum point on the graph of crude oil extraction over time. Gas from shale, coal, whatever is something else.
NO. Peak oil refers to M. King Hubbert's theory [youtube.com] about a bell-shaped pattern, and it is inclusive of all fossil fuels.
Post literate nonsense (Score:2)
Note it's called peak oil and the likely peak of coal production is probably many decades away.
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A video as citation? That's a bit insulting if you expect me to take you seriously.
The medium doesn't matter. It's perfectly valid, notwithstanding your elitist high-horse act. I think what you find insulting, is that the authorities don't share your highly narrow idea as to what the concept of peak oil refers to.
Note it's called peak oil and the likely peak of coal production is probably many decades away.
Yes. But 'oil' does not mean crude oil; it means all the oil products, which include gas
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Ah yes, the tyranny of the "elites" with their book reading instead of picking up random unconnected bits of shit and connecting them the wrong way in between watching music videos.
WTF is it with these people who get the wrong idea and then decide to lecture others about it before they come close to understanding it themselves?
Definition shifting (Score:2)
As for me - I'll go with what the geophysicists call it instead of your gut feeling.
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We already know how to make biofuels which are 1:1 replacements for gasoline. The most notable is butanol, which Gevo and Butamax are fighting over the rights to produce. Except only Gevo is actually trying to sell fuel, and Butamax's patent was produced at a public university. That to me makes Butamax no better than patent trolls.
but nothing else (Score:2)
Which BIO fuel can be used to make plastics? We need to switch before oil isn't available for all of the "other things" we need it for.
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Since you asked...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Peak oil (Score:3)
Every time I hear about peak oil as a concept it gets turned into the idea we'll just run out, all at once.
Why won't the pricing mechanism of markets just raise the price over time and slow consumption, or increase the use of alternatives where they exist, increase research into improving or finding new alternatives? It will also affect choices, so as food prices increase because of fertilizer price increases people will choose food over, say, power boats.
Fracking is kind of the great example as well. AFA
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Every time I hear about peak oil as a concept it gets turned into the idea we'll just run out, all at once.
Why won't the pricing mechanism of markets just raise the price over time and slow consumption, or increase the use of alternatives where they exist, increase research into improving or finding new alternatives? It will also affect choices, so as food prices increase because of fertilizer price increases people will choose food over, say, power boats.
Fracking is kind of the great example as well. AFAIK it was a known technique but not economically viable. As prices increased it was improved as a process and put into use because it was more economically viable at higher price levels.
I have read some arguments that claim significant economic disruption as oil prices cross a certain threshold creating an amplification effect. I think one example is the use of trucks for transportation -- the cost of shipping increases it makes other activities dependent on trucking not economically viable as the transportation costs exceed the marginal value of the thing being transported. I buy this, sort of, but it doesn't take into account the adaptation of the use of localized production or alternative products being used.
Overall I buy the idea that oil is a limited resource, but find the predictions of its increasing scarcity a lot less due to the complexity and sophistication of economies.
That's hard to say because nothing is ever as simple as it ought to be. Pricing could slowly rise, but markets are often more likely to stampede. We could have alternative energy sources (and fertilizer sources) ready to roll, but the current energy barons don't want to risk the possibility that someone else could get rich instead of them and don't want cheaper energy as long as they can make more from oil. So alternative approaches are ignored, locked up, even suppressed in favor of more toxic (but more pr
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But isn't the history of oil consumption a de facto demonstration of pricing? As demand increases, prices increase and production technology improves? The 1970s brought off-shore and deep water oil production, followed by increasingly more fuel efficient cars (as one example).
Contemporary pricing has given us hybrid and viable electric cars. Fracking and tar sands have extended oil production. Even trucking has gotten aerodynamic.
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But isn't the history of oil consumption a de facto demonstration of pricing? As demand increases, prices increase and production technology improves? The 1970s brought off-shore and deep water oil production, followed by increasingly more fuel efficient cars (as one example).
Contemporary pricing has given us hybrid and viable electric cars. Fracking and tar sands have extended oil production. Even trucking has gotten aerodynamic.
It also brought us the Energy Crisis.
I'm not saying that adjustments don't occur. Just that market trends carry an immense amount of momentum. Boom-and-bust are by no means unique to the energy industry. Recent events in the housing industry are another example. But it's not like people didn't see things coming. Remember "irrational exuberance"? Just that too often we swing from one extreme to the other. People get hurt that way.
Re:ICF, no, just a virus (Score:3)
How long before a software virus cripples a good amount of cars and brings "transportation to a halt"?
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Wipe out all the millionaires and watch society crumble without their corrupting influence and flagrant self-interest to prop it up? I'm unconvinced of the outcome, but I'm not seeing a down side... :-P
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Wipe out all the millionaires and watch society crumble without their corrupting influence and flagrant self-interest to prop it up? I'm unconvinced of the outcome, but I'm not seeing a down side... :-P
Two words.
Animal Farm.
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As I remember it the story was one of the Grand Revolution falling to corruption until it looked just like the original situation. Certainly not a cheerful outcome, but at least they tried. And for a while they got a taste of freedom and equality. Better than nothing, and perhaps it will inspire the next generation to learn from their mistakes and try *better*.
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As I remember it the story was one of the Grand Revolution falling to corruption until it looked just like the original situation. Certainly not a cheerful outcome, but at least they tried. And for a while they got a taste of freedom and equality. Better than nothing, and perhaps it will inspire the next generation to learn from their mistakes and try *better*.
We can hope. But Animal Farm, like its more famous peer was the product of someone who believed in the Socialist Ideal and was greatly disappointed in what it became in reality.
Orwell didn't offer solutions, unfortunately. He left it at "He loved Big Brother" and pigs that had become indistinguishable from humans.
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If he had proposed solutions, do you really think they'd be worth much? It's not a simple problem to solve, I suspect it will take many more centuries yet. After all feudalism took centuries, maybe millenia, to evolve into a stable, thriving economic model, as did capitalism, which was able to grow out of it fairly naturally by giving the peasants and tradesmen a share of the profits to promote harder work and more "last mile" intelligence on resource allocation. And those systems both strongly favor the
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At least the soviets tried? You sir, are an idiot.
Did Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot also try?
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No. The farm animals tried. As did the Soviets and the citizens of many other nations. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin and the others cynically manipulated the revolutions to their own ends and completely sold out the citizenry who put them in power. They were the pigs. I thought that was pretty obvious if you read the story.
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Oh, and yes, the revolutions went badly. That's to be expected the first several times you try something completely new, or did you perform triple-axles the first time you ever strapped on ice skates? That's no reason not to try. Yes, there may be a lot of misery and death until you start to get it right, but misery and death are constants in the world, what matters is whether you are willing to face that danger in order to try to win a better future for those who follow, or simply obediently wait and ho
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Wiping out the millionaires is not inconsistent with Ayn Rand's "philosophy".
After all, they're the closest competitor to the billionaires.
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Sure, blame the flu (Score:4, Insightful)
But I bet a little war during the previous decade had a bit more to do with the economic issues of the time.
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I'd take that bet.
If you were talking about slow economic growth immediately after the war, I'd agree that the war would be a plausible contributing factor. But I don't see how a war that ends in 1865 causes a *crash* in 1873.
Re:Sure, blame the flu (Score:5, Informative)
The picture was pretty complex as it turns out - there was a lot going on. But I wouldn't be surprised that the flu outbreak could have had a major impact. The economy was horse driven at the time. Imagine if cars could catch the flu and you couldn't drive them, or they even "died." That could be very disruptive to many sectors of the economy.
The Long Depression (1873-1878) [socialwelfarehistory.com]
The period following the Civil War in the United States from 1865-1873 is generally considered one of economic prosperity. Northern owners of industry and bankers had become wealthy in the war, while cotton exports in the south within the U.S. and abroad met the growing demands of foreign manufacturing for raw materials. In addition to a developing of manufacturing at home and abroad, technological innovations led to improvements in mining, agriculture, and infrastructure.
The Economic Costs of the Civil War [fee.org]
The first and most important point is that the Civil War was expensive. In 1860 the U.S. national debt was $65 million. To put that in perspective, the national debt in 1789, the year George Washington took office, was $77 million. In other words, from 1789 to 1860, the United States spanned the continent, fought two major wars, and began its industrial growth—all the while reducing its national debt.
We had limited government, few federal expenses, and low taxes. In 1860, on the eve of war, almost all federal revenue derived from the tariff. We had no income tax, no estate tax, and no excise taxes. Even the hated whiskey tax was gone. We had seemingly fulfilled Thomas Jefferson’s vision: “What farmer, what mechanic, what laborer ever sees a tax-gatherer of the United States?”
Four years of civil war changed all that forever. In 1865 the national debt stood at $2.7 billion. Just the annual interest on that debt was more than twice our entire national budget in 1860. In fact, that Civil War debt is almost twice what the federal government spent before 1860.
What’s worse, Jefferson’s vision had become a nightmare. The United States had a progressive income tax, an estate tax, and excise taxes as well. The revenue department had greatly expanded, and tax-gatherers were a big part of the federal bureaucracy.
Furthermore, our currency was tainted. The Union government had issued more than $430 million in paper money (greenbacks) and demanded it be legal tender for all debts. No gold backed the notes.
Re:Sure, blame the flu (Score:4, Informative)
But I bet a little war during the previous decade had a bit more to do with the economic issues of the time.
Not as much as you might think.
The country was 50% urban by census definition in 1860. Northern industry, agriculture and transportation prospered mightily during and after the war. The South no longer had a veto over economic development.
Cotton production in the South recovered rapidly. COTTON PRODUCTION FACTS STATISTICS OF THE YIELD FOR TWENTY YEARS.; STATISTICS OF THE YIELD FOR TWENTY YEARS. [nytimes.com] 1850-1880
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I'm not sure why the summary thinks "the US economy was brought to its knees." Nowhere in the article does it say what data they are using. So I'm not sure it had such a huge impact. People still found ways to carry their goods to market, still found ways to fight Indians.
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I'm not sure why the summary thinks "the US economy was brought to its knees." Nowhere in the article does it say what data they are using.
You never heard of the Panic of 1873 [wikipedia.org] or the Long Depression? [wikipedia.org]
only a fool fights in a burning house (Score:1)
The horses are sick, Boston's on fire, we'll fight those Apaches anyway!
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What do you think the Apaches were riding?
Horses were relatively new technology for the natives back then. They'd just have to revert to pre-European behavior.
Besides, if there's any truth to the stereotype, Apaches excelled at stealth, which is a lot harder to achieve if there's a great big noisy horse sticking out of the landscape.
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No written language. They didn't remember the pre-horse days.
Horses had already drastically changed Indian life. Made raider tribes dominant.
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No written language. They didn't remember the pre-horse days.
Horses had already drastically changed Indian life. Made raider tribes dominant.
Ever heard of "oral history"? It's all most people had until fairly recently - how recent depends on where you lived. Stuff like the Eddas or the Kalevela were originally oral.
Raiding isn't dependent on fast transportation either. You just have to be faster (or more elusive) than your pursuit. It wasn't like raiding was something new invented because horses were now available.
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>What do you think the Apaches were riding?
Apaches usually run on Linuxes, but they are being killed off by the nginxes.
What cowboy movies mention this? (Score:2, Funny)
It's not true if it doesn't exist in any cowboy movies.
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It's not true if it doesn't exist in any cowboy movies.
That's a fair point. I don't recall ever hearing of any cowboy movies featuring plagues or epidemics as part of the movie even if individuals became sick. Of course there were a number of them in history, such a small pox, etc. The flu epidemic is one I don't recall hearing about before though. It should make for some interesting follow up reading.
Re:What cowboy movies mention this? (Score:4, Informative)
You don't see any war movies which feature epidemics, either, even though infectious disease has killed more soldiers in war than battle wounds.
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That's a fair point. I don't recall ever hearing of any cowboy movies featuring plagues or epidemics as part of the movie even if individuals became sick.
I"m pretty sure that Westerns like Big Valley featured epidemics at some point.
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Both deadwood, and the far cheesier Hell on Wheels featured small pox.
I'd go as far to say that small pox in western themed serials is cliche, you know it's going to be the running story as soon as someone coughs.
Not as much in movies, I assume because unless it's the main point of a movie there's not much space for it.
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I thought you were talking about the content for a minute.
I mean, seriously, who venerates the genocide of one's native peoples 144 years after the fact? Shame, Slashdot...
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I mean, seriously, who venerates the genocide of one's native peoples 144 years after the fact? Shame, Slashdot...
I'm not in favor of genocide against any group — what does "native" have to do with it? Technically, we're all out of Africa, right? If you diddle the timeline, no one else is a native.
That outbreak had a name (Score:5, Informative)
Folks at the time called it the Great Epizootic* of 1872: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org] . In cities where it hit hardest, men were reportedly pulling carts in the streets because of the shortage of horses.
*pronouced ep-eh-zoo-AH-tick
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9/11 wasn't the breakpoint of the economy
But a large contributing factor: ...the outbreak of a great fire in the heart of the city of Boston on November 9th was a disaster. Firemen were reduced to moving all of the necessary firefighting equipment by hand, and the size of the fire in this particular incident did not allow for such slow movement to be effective. The firefighting sans horse power was so ineffective that the fire raged on to become one of the worst disasters in the history of the city. Reports indicate that the blaze killed 13 people
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Thanks for the link. Very interesting.
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I've heard of Avian bird flu, the Swine Pig Flu, the Hantavirus Mouse flu and now finally the Equus Bronco Bronchial Tube Flu.
While I see this study with some reservations FTA:
According to Worobey, the newly generated evolutionary trees show a global replacement of the genes in the avian flu virus coinciding closely with the horse flu outbreak, which the analyses also reveal to be the closest relative to the avian virus.
So your call, is the relative a parent or child. The evolutionary trees mentioned show nothing that can be called useful.
Still think it's a good idea.... (Score:2)
What I found interesting: (Score:1)
"Half of Boston burned down during the outbreak, because there were no horses to pull fire engines, hose reels, and ladder carts. In the West, the U.S. Cavalry was fighting the Apaches on foot because their horses were sick."
EGW (Score:1)
Centuries of horse shit spewing methane into the atmosphere brought about Equine Global Warming, leading to the flu epidemic.
If only we had Al Gore back then...
Re:EGW (Score:4, Informative)
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Bull (Score:1)
Re:./ sinks to a new low (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the thing; nerds are interested in darn near everything.
The ability for a non-human disease to cause such a negative impact is interesting. The impact of loss of transportation on the economy, even an ancient one, is also interesting.
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The ability for a non-human disease to cause such a negative impact is interesting.
The horse was a big city crisis.
A 1000-pound horse will defecate from 4 to 13 times per day. On the average, this horse's manure will contain about 31 pounds of feces and 2.4 gallons (~ 20 pounds) of urine, totaling up to 50 pounds of manure (not including bedding) per day as excreted.
Stall Waste Production [rutgers.edu]
New York City had 100,000 horses on the streets in 1900. The stench of the manure could be over-powering and flies spread diseases. Dead horses were simply shoved to the sides of streets in summer, as you can see in uncensored photographs of the era. It was simply impossible to clear the carcasses quickly enough.
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Yes, the pollution from horses, the support structure for horses, is a big part of what drove any option to not need a horse. Electric cable cars, for example. Cars vastly simplified the logistics(because you also needed to ship in ~50 pounds of fodder for said horses every day) as well.
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That was how technology was then. I find it interesting as well as other things about the age, like the problems caused by all the horse shit.
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Poor US Calvalry (Score:5, Insightful)
Committing genocide on foot is tiring work.
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Thankfully, they were unpatched Apache, so it was easy to find their weak spot.
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Thankfully, they were unpatched Apache, so it was easy to find their weak spot.
Yes, IIS may have won the west, but thanks in part to its susceptibility to virus, the Apache came back to dominate the world.
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Uh oh (Score:2)
Tough times (Score:2)
And then the trains got sick (Score:2)
Car Virus (Score:2)
Some of you guys are joking about a car virus, but it's not a stretch of the imagination at all.
15 years ago that couldn't happen, but now cars have built in cellular data. Some have built in hotspots. Not just high end cars but cheap cars can get on facebook now either through dedicated cellular data or tethering off your phone. We saw just a few weeks ago that they're trying to make cars that talk to each other for 'safety' reasons. Once they can do that a car to car virus is even easier.
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