🪰 There’s Something Fury, Deadly And Medieval Lurking In the Sewers Under Los Angeles…

Los Angeles is no stranger to producing some bizarre headlines, but I don’t think many of us had “L.A. rebuilds conditions for the next medieval disease” on their bingo card.

And yet, here we are…

Flea-borne typhus is surging in L.A., and rats have become enough of a problem that public-health officials are now chasing outbreaks with a pretty alarming sense of urgency.

Suddenly a disease that most Americans mentally filed away somewhere between drawbridges and bloodletting is back and likely creeping somewhere around Shirley Temple’s Hollywood star.

The really uncomfortable part is that this isn’t coming from some guy on TikTok spotting one suspicious-looking rat behind a Taco Bell and declaring the Black Death is back.

Christopher Rufo and investigative reporter Ryan Thorpe have obtained more than 1,000 pages of records from the Los Angeles County health department while digging into the city’s growing typhus problem. And what they’ve found was ugly enough that Rufo headed into Los Angeles with a camera to see what was happening on the ground.

Welcome Back to the Middle Ages, Apparently

Rufo’s video begins with a sentence that sounds like it should require a horse, a torch, and somebody yelling “bring out your dead.”

He’s in Los Angeles investigating what he calls the “return of medieval diseases.” Specifically typhus, hantavirus, and even the possibility of plague.

And according to the records his team obtained, the numbers behind at least one part of that claim are difficult to shrug off. Rufo says Los Angeles County recorded just nine cases of flea-borne typhus in 2009. But then, in 2025, that number has shot up to 220.

His explanation for how L.A. got here isn’t too mysterious: more rats create more opportunities for infected fleas to spread, while trash and homeless encampments can provide rodents with exactly the food and shelter they need to multiply.

Then things get darker…

The video includes a Santa Monica resident describing a dead man whose foot appeared to have been gnawed by a rat and former Los Angeles deputy city attorney Elizabeth Greenwood recounting the brutal symptoms she experienced after contracting typhus while working at City Hall.

So yes, this all escalates rather quickly…

Rufo’s final warning is the biggest one of all: millions of rats are breeding beneath Los Angeles, he says, and he believes it’s only a matter of time before plague joins the party.

Have a watch:

EXCLUSIVE: The are millions of rats breeding under the streets of Los Angeles and they’re carrying medieval diseases like typhus. We obtained more than 1,000 pages of documents from the county health department—and they are not ready for the next major outbreak. pic.twitter.com/oRgZJQvMXF

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@christopherrufo) August 5, 2026

That last claim is where things get especially interesting, because typhus and plague are not the same disease, and nobody has announced a new plague outbreak in Los Angeles.

But before dismissing the comparison as dramatic internet bait, there’s an inconvenient bit of history worth knowing:

The last urban plague epidemic in the United States happened in Los Angeles.

Which means we now have to go down this rabbit hole.

Or, given the circumstances, perhaps the rat hole.

So What Is Typhus? And Why Is It Turning L.A. Into the Middle Ages?

First, a mildly important distinction before everybody starts shopping for plague masks.

Typhus isn’t one single disease.

There are several types, spread by different tiny freeloaders, and the version currently wreaking havoc in Los Angeles is flea-borne typhus, also called murine typhus. It’s caused by the bacterium Rickettsia typhi and is different from epidemic typhus, the louse-borne disease historically associated with overcrowding, war, famine, and abysmal sanitation.

Actually, fun fact, this is similar to the disease that once rose from the smelly streets of 19th-century London…

@historyunfolded1692 the disgusting disaster London tried to forget #medieval #middleages #historytok #story #curiosity ♬ In Essence (Slowed) – Ka$tro

And nearly crushed Napoleon’s army during the 18th century…

@mr.mysterystories Discover the chilling story of the Typhus outbreaks that plagued the French Revolutionary Army. A tale of disease, despair, and history. #Typhus #History #Pandemic #RevolutionaryWar #Disease ♬ original sound – oo

So, this form of typhus spreads like many others: through a ghastly cesspool of human and animal waste, but the newest L.A. version has its own revolting little system.

A flea feeds on an infected animal, commonly a rat, cat, or opossum, and picks up the bacteria. Once infected, that flea can remain infected for the rest of its life. Then it bites a person.

But here’s the part nobody asked for…

The bite itself usually isn’t how the typhus gets into you.

Fleas poop while they eat. That infected “flea dirt” can wind up near the bite, and when somebody scratches the area, the bacteria can get rubbed into broken skin. It can also get into the eyes or, horrifyingly enough, be inhaled.

So we’re looking at a situation that’s disturbingly close to the one we saw above in 19th-century London. You know, the one aptly named “The Great Stink of London”? Well, it looks like we’re now approaching “The Great Stink of Los Angeles.”

The good news is that typhus is treatable with antibiotics, particularly when doctors catch it early.

The less comforting news is that Los Angeles County reported nearly nine out of ten identified patients with known “typhus status” were hospitalized in 2025. And in 2022, the disease was linked to three deaths in the county, showing that while modern medicine has made typhus considerably less terrifying than it once was, it hasn’t turned it into a harmless inconvenience.

So where does the “Middle Ages” part come in?

It’s not like Los Angeles has literally recreated medieval Europe. Nobody is dumping chamber pots from castle windows on Sunset Boulevard. At least not yet…

It’s that the entire disease ecosystem is starting to look uncomfortably “old-school.”

The CDC notes that flea-borne typhus thrives where people regularly come into contact with host animals, particularly in places with poor sanitation and abundant rats. L.A. County says infected fleas there are commonly found on rats, free-roaming cats, and opossums. Give those animals reliable food, garbage, hiding places, and plenty of opportunities to live alongside people, and you’ve built a rather nice little support system for fleas carrying R. typhi.

And Then California Made Killing Rats More Complicated

At this point, the obvious solution would seem fairly straightforward:

Too many rats? Let’s kill ’em!

California, however, had other concerns.

In 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 1788, which sharply restricted the use of several powerful second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides. The goal was to protect mountain lions and other wildlife that can be poisoned after eating rodents carrying the chemicals in their bodies.

Fair enough. Nobody wants to accidentally wipe out a mountain lion while trying to murder Gary the Sewer Rat.

The problem is that California didn’t stop there.

In 2023, the state expanded restrictions to diphacinone, another commonly used anticoagulant rodenticide. Beginning in 2024, most uses of it were prohibited, including many residential, commercial, institutional, and municipal settings.

Then came AB 2552, signed by Newsom in 2024. Beginning in 2025, California also prohibited most uses of two additional first-generation rat poisons, chlorophacinone and warfarin.

So over several years, the list of readily available chemical weapons in California’s war on rats got considerably shorter.

About That Plague Thing… Los Angeles Has Been Here Before

Now we arrive at the word everybody’s been waiting for.

Plague.

Rufo ends his video by warning that with millions of rats breeding beneath Los Angeles, it’s “only a matter of time before the plague returns.”

Is that actually where this is headed?

No one can really say that right now, as there is no current plague outbreak in Los Angeles, and public health officials aren’t predicting one.

Unfortunately though, history does give that sentence a little more weight because Los Angeles doesn’t need to travel all the way back to the Middle Ages to find plague.

It only has to go back about a century.

According to the CDC, the last urban plague epidemic in the United States occurred in Los Angeles from 1924 to 1925.

And this wasn’t simply somebody finding one funky-looking squirrel in the mountains.

The outbreak centered in the densely populated Macy Street district, then commonly known as Sonoratown, where poor living conditions and a rat epidemic helped set the stage for disaster.

Sounds a little familiar, right?

The outbreak included pneumonic plague, the especially nasty form that attacks the lungs and, unlike ordinary bubonic plague, can spread directly from person to person through infectious respiratory droplets.

So is L.A. About to Kick it “Medieval Style”?

No.

At this point, Los Angeles doesn’t seem to be staring down Black Death 2.0.

And Rufo’s prediction that plague’s return is “inevitable” goes a bit further than the available evidence supports.

But here’s what we do know.

A flea-borne disease associated with rats and other urban animals has climbed from nine L.A. County cases in 2009 to a record 220 in 2025. Public health officials are dealing with outbreaks, rat-friendly conditions are abundant, and California has made several powerful rodenticides harder to use. It’s really a recipe for disaster.

And sitting quietly in the history books is the irritating little fact that Los Angeles was the last American city to experience an urban plague epidemic.

That doesn’t mean history is about to repeat itself… but it does mean that dismissing the whole thing as medieval hysteria would be a little premature.

Because a century after Los Angeles beat back its last plague outbreak, the city once again finds itself dealing with rats, fleas, sprawling homeless encampments, and a disease problem nobody expected to be discussing in 2026.

And frankly, that’s medieval enough.