The Plague (After the Plague)

**The Plague** or the **Mortaea Neagra** was the worst plague ever in human history. During its seven-year grip on the world, the Plague killed 2.92 billion people, or over 40% of the world population, mostly in Europe, Asia, North America and Oceania. This plague has had lasting effects on the world, with the most noticeable one being that the world powers, and thus the world order, was changed dramatically due to the old areas of power being depopulated due to plague, and nations once considered backward and irrelevant were suddenly ejected onto the world stage.

## Symptoms

**The Plague** was a strain of the *Yersinia pestis* virus, which is the same virus that caused the Black Death which killed 30% of the European populace in the early to mid-1300s. The symptoms are normal symptoms of bubonic plague, like buboes on parts of the body, for example. The main difference between this strain and other strains is that its infectivity is highest in areas with climates resembling the Syrian Desert, it has a 100% fatality rate, with onset of death coming between 3 days and 2 weeks, and that it is incurable with other cures of *Yersinia pestis*, which leads most microbiologists to believe that the Mortaea Neagra strain was released via an ISIS terrorist attack in Romania.

## Spread of Disease

**The Plague** is very contagious, with the ability to spread via fleas on rats, livestock, birds, insects as well as in the air and water. It is also resistant to all known types of antibiotics, and can withstand a rage of temperatures from -165 degrees Celsius to 155 degrees Celsius. No other known disease can spread through this many avenues, and no other known disease can withstand such extreme temperatures, which leads to more speculation of the Plague being an ISIS attack.

## Timeline

### Beginnings

No one knows how the plague started, but Patient Zero has been tracked down to a certain 12-year old Vasile Petrescu living in the city of Iasi, in the former nation of Romania. This person is also the first casualty, being infected around the 27th of February 2020, and dying on the 3rd of March. However, before he dies, he has infected 22 more people, and the contagion continues to spread.

The most credible explanation of how the Mortaea Neagra strain managed to start a world-altering pandemic is that it was an ISIS attack. There is overwhelming evidence towards it, as the city of Iasi was struck by an ISIS attack using Sarin, VX, and other nerve gases, as well as infecting 2 people with anthrax. More factors include the extremely high infectivity, and extremely high resistance to extreme climates.

### A Threat to Europe

The strain was discovered about 2 months after the first death, however, by then, about 7,000 were already dead. It continued to spread, and infected any countries via plane. However, anticipaing that this would not be too major, the only European countries that closed their borders during this period were Iceland, Spain and Portugal, contributing to the survival of their population, and the eventual rise of the Estados Unidos Espanol, which is a major European superpower, and has a size and world infulence akin to the United States before the plague. By December 2020, about 1.2 million had already died from this seemingly incurable and extremely contagious plague. Most countries were now working towards a cure for the disease.

### The Plague Goes Global

"The Plague",as it was now commonly known, arrived in Norh America in mid-2020, and in Asia and Oceania by early 2021. It arrived in South America at around mid-2023. It seemed to infect and kill every single city town, village, and settlement wherever it went, mostly die to its high infectivity. Tens of thousands were dying every day, and everywhere the Plague was, the fabric of society broke down. Normal life was imposible, as people never knew when they were going to die. No one was working anymore, and famine started gripping plague-affected areas. Millions would flee to the North African nations, which had already closed their borders to protect against the plague. Many more would die to the plague. The European population had decreased from 740 million in 2020 to 235 million in 2024, due to the huge amounts of deaths and refugees leaving.