The Plague: It's Still Kicking and Still Killing

Just last month the Chinese government sealed off a city of more than 100,000 people, fearing the spread of a plague outbreak. More than 151 people exposed to the deadly disease were quarantined in that time, and one middle-aged man died from the infamous bacterial infection that is commonly called the Black Death.

A nine day quarantine was placed upon the city of Yumen in the northwest Gansu Province after a 38-year-old man died from what was later identified as an infection of the Yersinia pestis bacterium, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The "pestilence" of old, Y. pestis was carried by rodents and fleas throughout Europe and Central Asia, peaking in the years 1346 to 1353, and killing an estimated 75 to 200 million people in a global tragedy later referred to as the "Black Death." The plague was around long before that time, but it is speculated to have reached devastating pandemic levels after global trade - and thus the spread of invasive rodents - was expanded by the Silk Roads.

Interestingly, a study recently published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases takes analysis of the Black Death and even earlier plagues a step forward, finding that a different chance mutation sparked each major pandemic. While a modern threat is not as dire, author Dave Wagner does say that another chance mutation could cause plague to surge once more.

"If plague could erupt in the human population, cause a massive pandemic, and then die out, it suggests it could happen again," he told Io9. "Fortunately we now have antibiotics that could be used to effectively treat plague, which lessens the chances of another large scale human pandemic."

Lessen the chances, but don't snuff them entirely.