The geographical location of the Astrakhan region historically determined its status as an outpost, which was not only a place of trade and after joining the Russian state began to be defined as "an advanced point, a beginning and a bulwark in development", but also took on all threats of the emergence and spread of epidemics from the East. In addition, its own natural and climatic conditions also made the region vulnerable. Therefore, epidemics in the history of the Astrakhan region were not uncommon. In the article the task is not to describe the diseases that came to the region, as to show how the methods of fighting with plague, smallpox, cholera have changed at different levels: power, church, people. Particular attention is paid to the transformations taking place in the mentality of the inhabitants and changing, "civilizing" the way of people’s life, especially the nomadic steppes. Researches have shown that, despite of technical progress, change of conditions of existence, the deep, archaic layers of consciousness remain, inhibiting rational perception of existing dangers and deducing on a mythological explanation of reality. That is why in the epoch of high technologies and virtual spaces there is still a place for such a phenomenon as fake, which creates a global problem of infodemy, that spreads rapidly during cataclysms and has serious destructive consequences. The study of this phenomenon is an urgent task of modern science.
