A Study of the most destructive recorded episode of equine influenza in history.Equine Influenza Devastates America

Equine Influenza Devastates America

That would have been the headline in the Autumn of 1872 if the journalists in New York could have correlated the information pouring into The New York Times about the spread of the worst equestrian catastrophe in the history of the nation – and perhaps the world.

Imagine an equestrian health disaster that crippled all of America, halted the government in Washington DC, stopped the ships in New York, burned Boston to the ground and forced the cavalry to fight the Apaches on foot. It was an equine tragedy so deadly that one wave of the infection swept south like a Biblical plague from its origin in Toronto, Canada, down the Atlantic Seaboard to Havana, Cuba, leaving everything in its path in ruins in weeks, while another branch simultaneously raced west to the Pacific.

Now imagine if knowledge of the greatest equine epidemic in North American history had been lost – until now.

The majority of Americans today cannot begin to conceive of life without the smooth-running transportation system which has been part of their lives since Eisenhower was president. Nor can Americans today imagine the inconveniences, and dangers, associated with a disruption of a system they simply take for granted.

Everything they know.
Everything they depend on.
Everything that defines their lives from Pampers, to insulin, to the New York Times, to coffee, to ambulances, to.........
Everything that protects them, keeps them warm, feeds them, defines their personalities and makes them feel safe.
Their entire world is tied into a transportation system that serves them silently from cradle to grave.

Now imagine
No food, no luxuries, no basics, not even any emergency services.
Imagine the recent scenes of floods of climate refugees fleeing on foot from a flooded New Orleans.
Imagine the recent scenes of crowds of frightened New Yorkers running from terror.

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