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Originally Posted by Inziladun
I thought I would revive this old thread, because it still fascinates me.
Any thoughts as to the nature of these plagues? Illness caused by micro-organisms isn't exactly a known thing in Tolkien's Arda. How did Morgoth, and later Suaron, manage their bio-terror acts? Could the "plagues" have had a chemical origin, instead of one founded in biology? After all, we see the land around Angband and Mordor rendered sterile and void of vegetation. The Brown Lands were subjected to some sort of assault that made them utterly unusable for anything.
Gas warfare, perhaps?
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Plagues were once considered magic or "God's Wrath". The mind of pre-Enlightenment man would consider plague spreading by the air (often in conjunction with earthquakes or volcanoes), by sight, or by touch, but knew nothing of the actual method of transmission.
But Medieval men knew enough about plague to catapult infected bodies into walled towns under siege (and thus force a surrender), just as later Europeans knew well enough what would happen if they gave blankets infected with small-pox to Native Americans. Sauron or Morgoth, although not microbiologists or epidemiologists would have, being immortal and all, seen countless iterations of disease over many centuries, and would discover an effective method of transmission -- whether that be along trade routes (infected clothing, fabric, blankets), or merely through warfare, which was always an effective means of transmitting disease (hence syphilis was called the 'French Disease' in Italy, the French referred to it as the 'Neapolitan Disease', the Persians called it the 'Turkish Disease', and the Indians called it the 'Portuguese Disease' -- only the Spanish didn't blame another country
).
So, although Tolkien inferred the pestilence was airborne from the enemy, I'd prefer to consider that plague wasn't Dark Lord conjured, but Dark Lord administered.
P.S. Mordor and its environs were filthy by all accounts, and bad sanitary conditions were (and still are) the primary source of plagues and pandemics. So, Mordor could well have been a wonderful incubator for any number of infectious diseases.