> 📗 The following story stands alone and can be read without any knowledge of my prior works, but does involve story elements that appeared previously in [The Laundress & the Fungal Growth](https://eleanorkonik.com/the-laundress/). "Old Man Jaskin says he caught you sneaking into his wife's garden to ruin her potatoes." Paertan sighed. "Rorgoten spores are rotten-fierce to get rid of and spread like wildfire. That quarrelsome old man was too focused on blaming me for his son's enlistment to notice the attack, Cap'n." # Afterword _Blame_ was originally inspired by the book _[Banana](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/299017/banana-by-dan-koeppel/)_ [by Dan Keoppel](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/299017/banana-by-dan-koeppel/), which was recommended to me sometime in the last year. If you're the one who suggested it, please reach out —  I've forgotten who told me to check it out, but if I remember correctly, they were a friend of the author. Incidentally, I get a lot of recommendations of great books that way; if you come across a book you think I'd like, please do let me know. Although I only got around to reading it recently, and am only about one chapter in, I'm already shook. Going in, I knew about the blight (fungal disease) that switched us over from "delicious sweet" bananas that allegedly tasted like banana-flavored Starburst, but I didn't know much about beyond that — or that the blight is still a problem, for the kind of banana we're eating now — the Cavendish. Although farmers and scientists thought that the new variant was immune to Panama disease, it is only immune to a particular _variant_ of Panama disease. Modern bananas, like seedless varieties of oranges, require human intervention to breed. This makes them even more susceptible to blights than potatoes are. The new variant of Panama disease originated in Malayasia; bananas are native to Southeast Asia, so it makes sense that diseases that evolved to prey on them are more common in Southeast Asia. It's the logical inverse of how an advantage that invasive species have when they travel to an extremely different place than where they're native to is that the organisms native to their new home don't have defenses against them — and aren't prone to preying on them. You might be familiar with how all this works because of the American Chestnut blight in the early 1900s. It's the blight that inspired my flash fiction story [Cat and Wolf](https://eleanorkonik.com/cat-and-wolf/) %% ( [[2021-07-21 Cat and Wolf]] ) %%, but it was essentially the opposite phenomenon: the imported trees weren't as susceptible to the _Cryphonectria parasitica_ fungus, because they had been exposed to it already and built up an immunity... but the native chestnuts got wiped out. In the case of the American chestnut, the blight was brought to its native range and acted as an invasive species. In the case of the banana, the invasive (but vulnerable) banana had no defenses against the native fungus. Historically, banana stands are pretty isolated and the fungus wasn't able to spread much. Now, with our global supply chains and farmers who move from plantation to plantation with contaminated boots, the fungus spreads easily. It hasn't made it to the Western hemisphere yet, but experts think it's only a matter of time. We might lose the Cavendish banana the same way we lost the Gros Michel variety... and the American chestnut. As I mentioned in the Afterword for [Cat and Wolf](https://eleanorkonik.com/cat-and-wolf/) %% ( [[2021-07-21 Cat and Wolf]] ) %%, the American chestnut blight devastated the Appalachian region of the Americas. The loss of the banana probably would not devastate the entire world's economy — but there are many countries and regions whose economies are extremely dependent on the banana, and many of those countries are already unstable (ever hear of a [banana republic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic)?). Bananas are the world's largest fruit crop, and the bestselling fruit in America (even though apples actually grow here, and are sturdier!). If the Cavendish banana gets wiped out by a fungal blight, it _will_ have devastating consequences for the economy in many tropical countries, and disrupt the dietary habits of a great many people — including me. My family eats 4-6 bananas a day alone. After the last two years of the pandemic, most of us are attuned to the idea that people raising the alarm about the possibility of devastating epidemics (ebola, SARS, swine flu) impacting the West weren't just being alarmist. History is full of devastating epidemics, and not just the Black Death or Smallpox. Epidemics have been a problem for urban civilizations since the dawn of urban civilizations; entire articles have been written about ancient [epidemics in the cradle of civilization](https://sciencenordic.com/denmark-epidemic-history/epidemics-in-the-cradle-of-civilization/1758958). I don't want to dwell on them now, but I _do_ want to point out that blights have been a problem for many cultures and civilizations throughout history as well. The ancient [Israelites and Mesopotamians both had rituals for how to handle fungal infestations](https://eleanorkonik.com/fungus/) %% ( [[2021-06-21 Fungus]] ) %%, although the most well-known blight was the Irish famine. Potatoes are great [crops for justice, empire, & tax resistance](https://eleanorkonik.com/potatoes/) %% ( [[2022-02-28 Potatoes]] ) %% — the latter is no doubt why Jaskin's wife grows them. But the domestication process short-circuits some of the natural processes plants usually have; less diversity makes it easier for humans to mass produce food, but it also makes for more fragile systems. According to Alice Roberts in _Tamed_ (which I reviewed [back in August](https://eleanorkonik.com/book-review-tamed/) %% ( [[Review of Tamed by Alice Roberts]] ) %%), the ability for plants like potatoes and bananas to clone themselves functions as a backup method of dealing with environmental challenges. Having so many genetically similar (or identical) crops carries dangers. One of the reasons I wrote _Blame_ (and the other stories about the rorgoten fungus) was because I want to raise awareness about the dangers of blights. It's not that I think they've fallen out of our cultural awareness — [blights show up in video games like Path of Exile](https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Sister_Cassia) as a mechanic, and most of us have heard about [the Irish potato famine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)) — but Americans knew about the bubonic plague before the COVID-19 epidemic hit. Knowing about something is different from the understanding you get from _living_ through it, but telling stories to imagine the struggle is the best I can do to illustrate how a blight might feel. I don't want to live through a devastating blight, but neither Paertan nor Old Man Jaskin have a choice. If we lose the banana in the midst of a bigger problem, like a  war or a threat to my son, though — would I even notice?