Talking about after-effects... May be it's covered in the book already - if not, here is another bit of trivia on WW1:
Did you know, that the so called Spanish Flue (a influenza virus similar to SARS or the Corona virus) killed a lot more people between 1918 and 1920 than the entire war? Between 50 and 100 million it's assumed.
So much about bad choices trying to escape todays cruel reality... :)