Not sucking the pustules of the inflicted is key to not getting infected.

There was an episode of "Secrets of the Dead" devoted to this not long ago. Absolutely worth Tivoing the rerun. Best show on TV.

I'd always wondered if my parents were bullshitting me when they said that our family's robust health was due to the fact that our ancestors gang-fucked plague-bearing rats. Guess not.

And to think of all that time - all those lives - wasted on gerbils. So close... so close.

Ace -

If you search your memory, you'll realize this was an early 80s TV movie, the exact name of which I forget.

Basically, a plague swept the world. If you had a certain genetic characteristic, you were fine. If not, you turned into some sort of powdery thing.

The plot hinged on a parent finding themselves to be immune but the rest of the family was not.

Television - is there anything it cannot prepare us for?

Television - is there anything it cannot prepare us for?

Yeah, infomercials.

I think you may be talking about "Where have all the people gone?"

This report seems vaguely implausible to me, in as much as the infection mechanism used by HIV (or any virus) is really pretty much totally unlike the mechanism used by Bubonic Plague (or any bacterial disease). They don't have anything to do with one another except for the fact that they both like chowing down on humans.

I seem to remember reading that we don't actually know for sure that the Black Death was bubonic plague. I think there is considerable speculation that it was possibly a viral disease along the lines of Ebola. If so, this genetic immunity would make more sense.

Just my $.02,
DRK

I remember that TV movie. I quite liked it and was disappointed it didn't go to series, but then I was ten years old at the time. The later classic 'Night of the Comet' seems to have drawn some inspiration from that source.

"Lets play a game! It's called Scaaary Noises!"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0425196461/103-5387391-2265400?v=glance&n=283155&s=books&v=glance

I recently tried to read a novel based on a similar premise in which small pox exposure caused a gene to become active that conferred AIDS resistance. It is pretty obvious the author had read Richard Preston's excellent 'Demon in the Freezer' and some other material to inspire this dreck. The plot required so many ridiculously improbable events and behaviors it became impossible to continue after the first third. Other than the ideaof creating a medical thriller on the premise of a beneficial use of small pox, there wasn't a single original idea in the waste of paper.

I'll tell you what went wrong with the plague - too many rats, not enough cats!

Um, considering that a lot of us here are of European ancestry, isn't it safe to say that all of us are descendants of Black Plague survivors?

They say that the great french prophet NOSTODAMUS was a doctor who treated victims of the pleague with what were called ROSE LOSIGEZE

Good job