IN 1910, JACK LONDON SAW COVID COMING

Zocalo ^ | APRIL 14, 2020 | JOE MATHEWS

[nickcarraway]

In The Scarlet Plague, the California Author Imagined a 21st-Century Epidemic Hitting the Bay Area and the World

Jack London saw this coming. So why didn’t we?

In 1910 the California author, already famous for The Call of the Wild and White Fang, wrote a short post-apocalyptic novel about a 21st-century pandemic in his home state.

To revisit The Scarlet Plague now, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, is to marvel at how much London understood—a century ago—about the challenges facing Californians now.

London imagined a global epidemic in the year 2013 that killed almost all the people in California, and presumably on Earth. In the novel, this “scarlet plague”—its victims became red-faced before dying—is recalled 60 years later, in the year 2073, by the only living pandemic survivor: a one-time UC Berkeley professor of English literature.

Jack London died in 1916, well before the medical advances that protect us against many diseases. And, having lived through a turn-of-the-century bubonic plague outbreak in San Francisco, he was more familiar with epidemics than we are. The Scarlet Plague thus expertly explains aspects of human behavior with which we have only become reacquainted during the current pandemic—from the enormous value of isolating yourself, to the mass madness at grocery stores, to all the myriad ways, both beautiful and awful, that people behave at moments like this.

But London’s larger message was even more powerful and prescient: When pandemic strikes, don’t be distracted by saving your home or your work or even your economy. Prioritize safety, and saving as many humans—and as much human knowledge—as possible.

London was from the Bay Area, and his plague novel is set firmly in Northern California. We start in 2073, with the elderly professor dodging bears. When he’s handed a 2012 coin found among the herds of goats that are San Jose’s only occupants, the professor tries to explain life before the 2013 plague to his grandchildren, who, like other humans of their time, are illiterate and savage hunter-gatherers. Education died with the 2013 pandemic.

London’s vision of early 21st century life wasn’t really too far off. He foresaw our wireless communications, the growth and wealth of the Bay Area, and the fact that America would be run by billionaires. In London’s story, the president of the United States is appointed by “the Board of Magnates,” a dozen rich men who fund and rule everything. The Bay Area of London’s imagining is full of restaurants and culture.

But in the summer of 2013, the scarlet plague hits, and all the modern institutions quickly stop. Then our basic systems of modern life are undermined by disease and death, and the fear that ensues. “The fleeting systems lapse like foam,” the professor says of the time. “That’s it—foam, and fleeting. All man’s toil upon the planet was just so much foam.”

The Scarlet Plague thus expertly explains aspects of human behavior with which we have only become reacquainted during the current pandemic—from the enormous value of isolating yourself, to the mass madness at grocery stores, to all the myriad ways, both beautiful and awful, that people behave at moments like this. London hits awfully close to our present predicament. For all the 21st century’s medical advances, London’s imaginary scientists can’t understand the micro-organism causing the plague fast enough. In the novel, there is too much confidence in the ability of modern society to find a cure. “It looked serious, but we in California, like everywhere else, were not alarmed,” the professor recalls. “We were sure that the bacteriologists would find a way to overcome this new germ, just as they had overcome other germs in the past.”

This fictional disease, like COVID-19, was transmitted easily by those without symptoms. During a lecture, the professor watches one of his students turn scarlet and die. Universities and schools were among the very first things to close. Before long, all enterprises have shut down, as people struggled to process the reality around them.

“Everything had stopped,” the professor recalls. “it was like the end of the world to me—my world … It was like seeing the sacred flame die down on some thrice-sacred altar. I was shocked, unutterably shocked.”

And London had a clear bead on what would happen at grocery stores during a modern pandemic, too. When hordes descend and begin stealing from a local store, the owner, unable to stop them, starts shooting customers. “Civilization was crumbling, and it was each for himself,” the professor recounts. With the fever spreading in the densely populated Bay Area, those with means try to escape the region. But they just end up spreading the plague to rural areas.

The professor struggles to remain composed as he sees people behave generously and heroically, but then die, even while the selfish live. “He was a violent, unjust man,” says the professor of one man who is spared. “Why the plague germs spared him I can never understand. It would seem, in spite of our old metaphysical notions about absolute justice, that there is no justice in the universe.”

The professor isn’t sure why he survived. Perhaps he is immune. But he also takes his brother’s advice to isolate himself. “To all of this I agreed,” the professor recalls, “staying in my house and for the first time in my life attempting to cook. And the plague did not come out on me.”

With nearly everyone dead, the professor finds a pony and makes his way east, eating fruit still hanging unpicked on trees and dodging packs of dogs that survive by devouring corpses. He crosses the Livermore Valley, and then forages through the San Joaquin, where he finds a horse that he rides up into Yosemite Valley. For three years, he makes “the great hotel” there his home, until the loneliness gets to him. “Like the dog, I was a social animal and I needed my kind,” he says.

So he rides back to Bay Area, where he discovers a few other survivors, who are living in different camps. The professor ultimately joins one such camp in Sonoma.

Society is not reconstituted. Sixty years after the Scarlet Plague, California is a lightly populated place of tiny tribes. There are the Sacramen-tos, the Palo-Altos, the Carmel-itos, and the professor’s own Santa Rosans, who are based in Glen Ellen (where Jack London had a ranch, now a state park). The professor also hears stories about Los Ange-litos. “They have a good country down there, but it is too warm,” he says.

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The professor never reconciles himself to the post-pandemic reality. “The great world which I knew in my boyhood and early manhood is gone. It has ceased to be,” he says. “We, who mastered the planet—its earth, and sea, and sky—and who were as very gods, now live in primitive savagery along the water courses of this California country.”

The novel concludes with the professor telling his grandchildren that he has stored all his books in a cave on Telegraph Hill, hoping that the knowledge will survive him. He predicts that a new civilization will eventually rise, but it too will fail, because nature in the end always wins.

“All things pass,” the professor says.

London was famous for his faith in animals and his skepticism of people and the societies they construct. By my lights, the book underestimates the resilience of 21st-century institutions, and the goodness and determination of our fellow humans.

But this old little novel retains considerable power as a warning about the vulnerability of our state and civilization. Even advanced societies can fall apart quickly. Writing from the past, London reminds us that today’s horrors were not really unthinkable, and that, as we seek shelter now, we must not lose sight of the future.

[exDemMom]

I have always loved Jack London—I grew up in the area where he lived and wrote—but I do not recall ever seeing this work. I will have to look for it. Thank you.

[DugwayDuke]

Lots of folks saw a pandemic coming. But, it’s hard to predict exactly when. It’s difficult to budget for needed supplies when roads need repair. We’ll do better for a few years and then we’ll revert.

BTW, flu pandemics are quite common. You’d be surprised at how many there have been. I believe the first known/remembered one was in Athens about 400 years before Christ by Hipocrates.

[SamAdams76]

Start with “Call Of The Wild”

[Cold Heart]

Thanks for posting this.

Now it’s playtime:)

Chased by bears & dogs. Obviously lost his guns.

Famous for his faith in animals.

And not God.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

The Sea Wolf is one of my favorite books.

[Lurkinanloomin]

I liked Call of the Wild and White Fang.
Never heard of this one, will have to look for it.

[BradyLS]

We may not find a vaccine for Covid-19. But it ain’t the Scarlet Plague, either. We need to re-engage and keep civilization on its feet while science deals with it.

[zeestephen]

Re: Jack London imagined a global epidemic in the year 2013 that killed almost all the people in California

California Death Toll Today - 768

Seasonal influenza is at least twice that high in California.

Open the state.

Go back to work.

Today!

[jocon307]

Great post! I never heard of this book. I’ve read some London, “To Start a Fire” is why I ALWAYS carry matches, even when I was not a smoker.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

In 1910, we were all supposed to be killed by Haley’s Comet.

[yesthatjallen]

The Unparalleled Invasion by Jack London

"Under the influence of Japan, China modernizes and undergoes its own version of the Meiji Reforms in the 1910s. In 1922, China breaks away from Japan and fights a brief war that culminates in the Chinese annexation of the Japanese possessions of Korea, Formosa, and Manchuria. Over the next half century, China's population steadily grows, and eventually migration overwhelms European colonies in Asia. The United States and the other Western powers launch a biological warfare campaign against China, resulting in the total destruction of China's population, the few survivors of the plague being killed out of hand by European and American troops, and China then being colonized by the Western powers. This opens the way to a joyous epoch of "splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output". In the 1980s, war clouds once more gather between Germany and France, and the story ends with the nations of the world solemnly pledging not to use the same techniques that they had used against China."

[reasonisfaith]

True it is.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks for posting. London's biography is amazing. He made a tremendous fortune as a writer and built the 27 room mansion "Wolf House" in Glen Ellen, but it burned before he moved in.

Like most successful authors, he wrote about what he knew (seafaring, Klondike Gold Rush, trips to Hawaii, war correspondent, many others).

He was a strident socialist, but was an ardent capitalist writing to make lots of money.

In 1905 (he was 29 years old), London purchased a 1,000 acres ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. He wrote: "Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me." He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate."

London and his second wife in Waikiki 1915...

[SkyDancer]

Required reading when I was home schooled.

[thecodont]

Thanks. I wonder if George R. Stewart (Earth Abides) borrowed from London’s story.

[Inyo-Mono]

Very, very interesting!

[Rastus]

Typical. Socialism for thee, but give me mine! Or as Elvis Costello sang, “Was it a millionaire who said ‘imagine no possessions’?”

[Who is John Galt?]

“All things pass,” the professor says.

"The Dude abides..."

;^)

[William Tell]

Here is a link to The Scarlet Plague by Jack London http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21970