00:00What if the plague came back tomorrow?
00:02Not in history books, in your city.
00:05The bacteria that caused the Black Death never actually left.
00:10It's called Yersinia pestis, and it still lives in rodents and their fleas around the world.
00:15We still get human cases every year.
00:18So why aren't we all terrified?
00:20Because now we have antibiotics.
00:23But here's the scary part.
00:25The plague has three forms.
00:28Bubonic from a flea bite.
00:30Septicemic, when it gets in your blood, and pneumonic, when it gets in your lungs.
00:35Pneumonic is the nightmare scenario.
00:37It can spread from person to person through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs.
00:43And it can kill you within 18 to 24 hours if you don't get treatment fast.
00:49If an antibiotic-resistant strain evolved or was engineered, treating infections could become much harder.
00:55We could see isolation, contact tracing, masks, and other emergency measures.
01:01Only much faster, and potentially much deadlier.
01:05We survived it once.
01:07Could we survive it again?
