That shopping mall will have 1300 ghosts

...from about 1350a.d ?

 

...the black death.

It was in fact a trial run for the MacDonald's rare beefburger menu.

sounds like they have  stumbled on a plague pit. People dying to fast for individual burials .Lots of those in England

That discovery has the makings of a really scary movie.

 

sunday, checking her armpits for buboes

Be sure to let us know if you find any then we can come round and nail you up inside your house and daub a red cross on your door. All in the interests of public safety you understand.

Not before I breathe on you all, Mark.  If I go, we all go.

 

sunday, also checking my rat for fleas

Hypochondria is alive and well and living on the history site.

If you can't squeeze an abscess with a laugh and a joke you must have been to one of those soft State schools. 

My thoughts on this?

 

Grave...very grave.

 

Rabbi.

Does anyone happen to know if the bacteria that causes the plague can go dormant and survive for 700 years?  I'd hate to think of those excavators being set up for a repeat of the Curse of King Tut's Tomb.

 

Interestingly, I saw a PBS special not too long ago that was part of the "Secrets of the Dead" series.  This one concerned the survivors of the plague.  Supposedly, geneticists have discovered a gene that allowed the people in Britain who survived the plague to survive the plague.  That gene has supposedly been passed along to their descendants, so those of us with English ancestry may have some immunity if exposed.  (I would imagine that descendants of plague survivors in the rest of Europe would also share this same immunity.) 

 

Genetic immunity is an interesting theory and certainly explains a lot, but I, for one, would like to see it tested before I go making friends among the local rat population--rodent, that is, not the human one.  Them I already avoid like the plague.

 

Rabbi.

Rabbi, it's good to see you back again.

 

The plague must be alive and well somewhere in the world because our army personnel are immunized for it.  Actually, we always have a couple of case reported from the southwest every year, don't we?

 

plague-resistant sunday

Rabbi

South African cattle which survived Rinderpest, tame rabbits surviving myxymatosis (spelling?) and particularly, those who endured the Sunday roast at my boarding school were called "salted" and commanded particularly high prices .

Open to High Offers Flashman.

Re #11, the plague virus cannot survive, buried or otherwise, for 700 years. However it hasn't stopped the occasional local outcry when the supposed site of a Medieval plague pit is earmarked for development.