Slatewiper plagues
tom said:
So many TLs postulate a less virulent New World pandemic of Old World Diseases. What about a more virulent one? Suppose smallpox, etc. killed over nine tenths of the native population instead of some half or two thirds? How would the expansion westward be changed by virtually wiping out the native societies?
European plagues killed 90% of the population each time, and then for several generations there would be no plague because the population would have dispersed from agricultural villages to hunting camps, until population pressure built up farming again.
Then the next plague would come through, and the cycle would repeat.
To get a New World with a substantially European population rather than a mestizo population like we have now (Blacks and Southerners are about one eighth Native, Hispanics one half) we would need to get the Europeans to come over in much greater numbers.
So Hulagu decides to stay in Europe and 1000 times as many people come in 1492, fleeing the demons from the east, as fast as ships can be built. Then the population builds up over time faster than the native population can recover from the more intense and more frequent epidemics. The natives are bred out of existence and absorbed into the European society in only a hundred years.
