The elderly are particularly susceptible to trauma, and their outcomes are frequently dismal. Such patients often have complicated clinical courses and ultimately die from infection and sepsis. Recent research has revealed that although elderly subjects have increased baseline inflammation as compared to their younger counterparts, the elderly do not respond to severe infection/injury with an exaggerated inflammatory response. Initial retrospective analysis of clinical data from the Glue Grant trauma database demonstrated that despite a similar frequency, elderly trauma patients have worse outcomes to pneumonia than younger subjects. Subsequent analysis with a murine trauma model also demonstrated that elderly mice had increased mortality after post-trauma Pseudomonas pneumonia. Blood, bone marrow, and bronchoalveolar lavage sample analyses from juvenile and 20–24 month old mice showed that increased mortality to trauma combined with secondary infection in the aged are not due to an exaggerated inflammatory response. Rather, they are due to a failure of bone marrow progenitors, blood neutrophils, and bronchoalveolar lavage cells to initiate and complete an ‘emergency myelopoietic’ response, engendering myeloid cells that fail to clear secondary infection. In addition, the elderly appeared unable to effectively resolve their inflammatory response to severe injury.