Are you dead yet? - Help me kill students!

[lollardfish]

When I go interview at Willamette, I need to teach a 1 hour class. I'm going to do it on the Black Death, but first I want to play a game with the students. I call it, "If you were alive back then, would you be dead!" Better title suggestions gladly accepted.

I ask all the students to stand up, then I ask them questions about their lives, and tell them if they are dead or alive had they lived in the Middle Ages and make them sit down. This time it'll be for 1300, when actually nascent medical developments had improved certain things, like midwifery, to some extent. I try to end up with a few women and a few men left at the end, so I can kill some of the women in childbirth and some of the men in battle, and then tell the remaining ones that they could live to be 90!

It's unscientific. It's not based in hard medieval population data. It's an icebreaker. I need more questions though, and so I turn to you.

I ask:

1 - Who had a very serious childhood illness, so serious you've been told about it by your folks? Mumps, measles, bad chickenpox, etc. I kill about 25% off, but not too many. A nice chunk of people though.
2 - Who has broken a leg or an arm? I kill a few off from infection.
3 - Who has had appendicitis? I kill myself off (age 12! Oh, the humanity!)
4 - Who's been in a serious accident (car, bike, whatever)?
5 - Who has had a bad case of the flu lately?

I'd like a few more questions. Any advice?

Comments

[kalikanzara.livejournal.com]

I was going to post in faver of inheritable traits/birth defects, such as pyloric stenosis, but that is probably covered under illness.

I'm guessing you could kill some percentage of people who'd had major dental work.

Some percentage of those who have glasses or contacts may be more prone to accidental death due to vision impairments, maybe? That's probably a stretch.

Would there be any reasons for infanticide in 1300? I think that's probably too late for the practice.

I'm not sure exactly when the witch hunting craze caught on, but there are documented trials in the 1300s. You could just ask if anyone had ever been accused of having the evil eye.

Pregnancy complications and childbirth should kill a slice, and w/o birth control I figure that would mean there would have been more pregnancies.

You could get creative with travel hazards and just kill 10% of anyone who had travelled more than 500 miles to get to the college.

Oh, and looking at my user icon...

[kalikanzara.livejournal.com]

Get some of them with unwarned severe weather.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Infanticide continues into the modern era. I know a certain amount about it in 17th century France, for example.

I like the really bad vision issue.

Extraction of bad teeth was actually pretty good around 1300.

I like the travel hazards (weather) too!

And yeah, pregnancy always kills a chunk of the last women standing. Then I make one a nun and one a lucky multiple-married rich widow!