USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Disease. Emigrants feared death from a variety of causes along the trail: lack of food or water; Indian attacks; accidents, or rattlesnake bites were a few. However, the number one killer, by a wide margin, was disease.

Detailed explanation-2: -The game ends when the player reaches Oregon, or if they die along the trail; death can occur as a result of such things as disease, starvation, lack of clothing in cold weather, snakebites and hunting accidents.

Detailed explanation-3: -Three deadly diseases featured in The Oregon Trail – typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery– were caused by poor sanitation.

Detailed explanation-4: -While cholera was the most widely feared disease among the overlanders, tens of thousands of people emigrated to Oregon and California over the course of a generation, and they brought along virtually every disease and chronic medical condition known to science short of leprosy and the Black Death.

Detailed explanation-5: -Spread through contaminated food or water, cholera released an enterotoxin that effectively flooded the intestines with excess water. This led to continual watery diarrhea, causing severe dehydration and often death. The worst outbreaks occurred on the Oregon Trail in 1849, 1850 and 1852.