". This would have been worrisome 100 years ago. Now it's a trip to the doctor's office." Modern medicine can do only so much.
This is more serious (if it actually happened) than it might appear on the surface.
There have been deaths as recently as December, 2002 in N.Y.C. of a man who contracted Bubonic and consequently died from it.
The major outbreaks of it have been on the Navajo Indian Reservations in New Mexico where it was transmitted from the fleas of field mice.
It's not something to laugh about.
If you want to be worried read "Living Terrors" by Michael T Osterholm Ph.D, M.P.H and John Scwartz.
It is a very well written and researched book by someone who appears to be very much in the "know" about the lack of preparedness currently in the US, and by reading one would assumes elsewhere in the world .
The other is a link of interest of which one point on purchasing gas masks I found interesting. The cut and thrust of this section is don't bother, the odds are that whatever type you buy it will be the wrong type when you need it.
http://www.syndistar.com/terrorism/prepare.html