Jack London was mostly known for writing about freezing dogs and rugged men punching each other in the Klondike, but in 1912, he took a sharp turn into the end of the world. He wrote The Scarlet Plague. It’s a slim book. You can finish it in an afternoon, but the imagery sticks to your ribs like cold oatmeal. It’s set in a future San Francisco (well, future for him) where a horrific disease wipes out almost every human being on Earth in the year 2013.
Reading it today is a trip.
London wasn't just guessing about biology; he was obsessed with the fragility of the "veneer of civilization." He saw how quickly people turn on each other when the grocery store shelves go bare. While most people think of The Call of the Wild, this specific story basically invented the post-apocalyptic genre as we know it. No The Last of Us or The Road without this weird little novella.
What Actually Happens in The Scarlet Plague?
The story kicks off in 2072. We meet an old man named James Howard Smith—once a prestigious Professor of English Literature at UC Berkeley—who is now a literal goat herder wearing tattered bearskins. He’s talking to his grandsons, Edwin, Hoo-Hoo, and Hare-Lip. These kids are basically savages. They don’t understand big words. They think "literature" is a sneeze.
Smith tries to explain what happened sixty years prior, back in 2013, when the Red Death (or the Scarlet Plague) hit.
The symptoms were brutal. It started with a red flush on the face. Then came numbness in the limbs. Within twenty-four hours, you were dead. Usually sooner. London describes the speed of the collapse with terrifying precision. It wasn't the germ itself that did the most damage; it was the total breakdown of order.
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The social collapse London predicted
He describes "The Chauffeurs." This was London’s way of talking about the working class rising up in a violent, chaotic sprawl once their "masters" could no longer pay them or keep them fed. Smith recounts how the wealthy tried to flee in their private airships (London loved the idea of dirigibles), but the plague followed them into the sky.
There’s a specific, haunting scene where Smith hides out in the chemistry building at Berkeley. He watches the city burn. He waits for colleagues who never show up. It’s lonely. It’s quiet.
Why Jack London Got So Much Right (and a Little Wrong)
London was a bit of a science nerd, even if his social theories were... complicated. He understood that a globalized world is a vulnerable world. In The Scarlet Plague, he notes that the ease of travel was exactly what doomed the planet.
- The Speed of Infection: London’s plague kills in hours. While real-world viruses usually need a longer incubation period to spread effectively, his point was about the reaction time.
- The Loss of Knowledge: This is the heart of the book. Smith is desperate to pass on the alphabet and the concept of science to his grandsons, but they literally don't care. They want to know how to kill a goat or find a tooth.
- Class Warfare: London was a staunch socialist, and it shows. He depicts the "Magnates" who ruled the pre-plague world as arrogant fools who thought their money could insulate them from biology.
One thing he missed? The timeline. He set the apocalypse in 2013. We made it through that year mostly unscathed, unless you count the rise of "Gangnam Style" as a plague. But his description of how quickly we lose our grip on "polite society" feels uncomfortably close to home after the last few years.
The "Red Death" vs. Reality
Unlike Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, which is more of a gothic fever dream, London tries to ground his plague in actual (if dated) medical theory. He talks about "germs" and "microbes" at a time when that was still relatively fresh in the public consciousness. He captures that specific panic of a society that thinks it has conquered nature, only to find out nature has a very long memory.
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The Brutal Reality of "The After"
Most post-apocalyptic fiction focuses on the immediate survival—the zombies, the nukes, the shooting. London is more interested in the long-term decay.
By 2072, the world is empty. There are only a few hundred people left in the entire California region. They’ve formed tribes. The names of the old world have become garbled. "San Francisco" is just a sound. The "Magnates" have been replaced by the strongest bullies.
Smith, the old professor, is the last bridge to the world of books and Bach. And his grandsons mock him for it. They think his stories of "telephones" and "steamships" are fairy tales. It’s a depressing look at how quickly a thousand years of human progress can evaporate when there’s no one left to teach the next generation how to read.
How to Approach the Text Today
If you're going to dive into The Scarlet Plague, you have to deal with Jack London's "baggage." He was a man of his time, which means there are some pretty uncomfortable racial theories and "social Darwinism" peppered throughout his work. He wasn't exactly a paragon of modern progressive thought.
But if you can look past that, the book is a masterclass in atmospheric dread.
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It’s also an incredible piece of "California Gothic." Seeing the familiar landmarks of the Bay Area—Telegraph Hill, the Berkeley hills, the crumbling ruins of the Golden Gate—through the eyes of a man who saw them at their peak is haunting.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a warning.
London suggests that civilization isn't a solid building. It's more like a tent. If you pull out the right pegs—food supply, medicine, communication—the whole thing collapses on your head before you can even scream.
Is it actually a good read?
Yeah. It is.
It's fast-paced. London’s prose is muscular. He doesn't waste time on flowery descriptions of feelings. He tells you what happened, how it smelled, and how many people died. It’s a "just the facts" approach to the end of the world that makes it feel like a long-form journalistic report from a future that never was.
Actionable Ways to Explore Jack London's Vision
If you're intrigued by the themes in The Scarlet Plague, don't just stop at the SparkNotes. Here is how to actually engage with this piece of literary history:
- Read the Original Text: Since it was published in 1912, the book is in the public domain. You can find it for free on Project Gutenberg or LibriVox. It's only about 60–80 pages depending on the formatting.
- Compare to "Earth Abides": If you like the "collapse of San Francisco" vibe, read George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949). It’s widely considered the spiritual successor to London’s book and covers similar ground with more mid-century scientific rigor.
- Visit the "Ruins": If you’re ever in the Bay Area, take a hike through the Berkeley hills or up to Grizzly Peak. Look down at the sprawl and try to imagine it completely silent, overgrown with brush and filled with wild dogs, just as London described.
- Audit the "Knowledge Gap": Think about the "Professor Smith" problem. If the internet went down tomorrow, what actual, practical knowledge could you teach a child to ensure they could rebuild a steam engine or a water filtration system? It's a sobering thought exercise.
- Check out the 1906 Context: Remember that London wrote this just six years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He had seen his city burn in real life. Use that context to understand why his descriptions of the "Scarlet Plague" riots feel so visceral and lived-in.
London didn't just write a story about a virus. He wrote a eulogy for a world he thought was too arrogant for its own good. It's a short, sharp shock of a book that remains one of the most underrated pieces of early 20th-century fiction.