Crisis 3: Dracula: A Transnational Threat in late-Victorian Europe
Fictional Crisis: Dracula: A Transnational Threat in late-Victorian Europe
A still photo from the century-old 1922 movie version of the Dracula story, Nosferatu.
Chair: TBD
Email: TBD
Crisis Director: TBD
Crisis Brief: Dracula, a Transnational Threat in Late-Victorian Europe
Background:
It is remembered as the greatest of all Gothic tales, imagining a distant, ancient threat, aroused by contact with the modern world, that suddenly threatens to destroy the stability of the most advanced societies on Earth. In Bram Stoker's novel from 1897, a Romanian Count, Dracula, plans to buy a property in England. Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, is sent to complete the deal. Harker barely escapes back to England, where Dracula has arrived already, sowing terror by infecting a race of vampires. In the novel he is fought by Dr John Steward and Professor Abraham Van Helsing.
What if it wasn't that easy? In our day, we have seen individuals, societies, corporations and states respond to the extraordinary threat of the coronavirus epidemic. How would the Victorian era respond to Stoker's imagined threat to public health? This crisis simulation discovers through The Society for Welfare and Hygiene, an informal association of sociological, scientific, medical, forensic and media experts. Can they organize their diverse skills to overcome an ancient danger that could completely overwhelm their innocent world?