91³Ô¹ÏÍø

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We fear them like the plague

We fear them like the plague

After a human case of bubonic plague was confirmed in Pueblo County last week, 91³Ô¹ÏÍø scholar Thora Brylowe explores why it and all plagues inspire such terror


Of all the specters humanity fears—the storms and wars, the failures and disasters and vagaries of nature—perhaps none is so pervasive and terrible as plague.

Not just Plague with a capital P—bubonic plague, caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium, the Black Death of 14th-century Europe that killed anywhere between 25 million and 200 million people—but all plagues, real or fictional, that sweep in from other places or rise from Earth itself, scything through populations with maddening indifference, toppling cities and