What's the most catastrophic disaster of all time?

[Soul Invictus]

I think this thread suits well for the Political and Science forum, so I may start this topic there as well, depending on how it plays here.

There has been a lot of traumatic and terrific events recently, and it got me thinking. In light of the most recents tragedies that come to mind, notably being 9-11, the Asian Tsunami, and now Hurricane Katrina, what's the most catastrophic event that mankind has ever experienced?

[EricK]

I think this thread suits well for the Political and Science forum, so I may start this topic there as well, depending on how it plays here.

There has been a lot of traumatic and terrific events recently, and it got me thinking. In light of the most recents tragedies that come to mind, notably being 9-11, the Asian Tsunami, and now Hurricane Katrina, what's the most catastrophic event that mankind has ever experienced?
The last ice age.

[Soul Invictus]

The last ice age.

Can you explain why? I am not strong in history, so I'm very eager to learn the facts behind people's choices. :)

ETA:(Maybe I should have limited this to modern times. Oh well, we'll keep it as is for now. ;) )

[CowboyHeretic]

World War II. - Man-made.
Noah's flood - Natural. {That should heat up this thread! ;) }

[nancynancy]

In July 1976, a 7.8 earthquake in northwestern China killed almost 250,000 people.

[Phishfood]

Election '04

ZING!

[Matt the Medic]

Moving to S&S.

[Soul Invictus]

World War II. - Man-made.
Noah's flood - Natural. {That should heat up this thread! ;) }

Hello CowboyHeretic. :wave:

We'll discuss both. Why do you think WWII is the worst for man made?

What are other thoughts for other natural disasters outside of the Noachian flood? :D ;)

[Santas little helper]

Noah's flood - Natural
The alien invasion which is described in the movie Independence Day was much worse than Noah's flood imo.

[EsoCyn]

Small pox, just throughout the 20th century, has killed off 300,000,000+ people.

[dancer_rnb]

Supervolcano 70000 years ago in Indonesia.

Supposedly reduced the human rac to a few thousand individuals.

[CowboyHeretic]

Hello CowboyHeretic. :wave:

We'll discuss both. Why do you think WWII is the worst for man made?

What are other thoughts for other natural disasters outside of the Noachian flood? :D ;)
WWII had such a huge impact on humanity that it's effects are still rippling throgh society 60 years later. Millions of people were killed and systematic genocide by a state was born. Atomic technology was invented and is the only thing we've ever invented that could kill the planet itself, go figure.

According to genetic research there was some sort of bottleneck in the human population at one time that brought the worldwide population down to 20,000. You might research this or maybe someone who knows more could chime in?

[CowboyHeretic]

Supervolcano 70000 years ago in Indonesia.

Supposedly reduced the human rac to a few thousand individuals.
This is what I was alluding to, Can you give more info?

[Duck!]

In July 1976, a 7.8 earthquake in northwestern China killed almost 250,000 people.I think those were official figures and are reckoned to be grossly underestimated. I've heard figures of 600,000 for the actual death toll for that earthquake.

Here's an even worse earthquake in China from 1556:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake


Duck!

[repoman]

damn you, dancer!

It actually cut like half of the genetic subgroups of humans right off the planet.

[Garnet]

According to genetic research there was some sort of bottleneck in the human population at one time that brought the worldwide population down to 20,000. You might research this or maybe someone who knows more could chime in?

I *think* that had to do with a fairly rapid Ice Age. I'm not sure though.

ETA: Woops! I should have kept reading.

[dancer_rnb]

This is what I was alluding to, Can you give more info?

Not much, besides that there was probably severe worldwide climate effects. Got the info while watching a tv show on supervolcanos.
There was one in Idaho that killed animals in Nebraska by ashfall. The animals
suffocated.

[Tubby Lardmore]

Though it can't compete in numbers of lives taken with some of the events listed already, Krakatau has been a deadly volcanic field for centuries.

http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeast_asia/indonesia/krakatau.html

[David B]

This is what I was alluding to, Can you give more info?

It would have been my choice, too, but I was beaten to it

http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeast_asia/indonesia/toba.html

and

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/po/population_bottleneck.htm

David B

[repoman]

http://exodus2006.com/supervol.html

strange website, but it has a lot of info about the Yellowstone eruptions in the recent geological past. It going off again would be the worst thing imaginable for the US.

[Garnet]

I found this with a quick Google search:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v359/n6390/abs/359050a0.html

It seems that the Toba supervolcano a little over 70,000 years ago may be the winner.

[dancer_rnb]

damn you, dancer!

It actually cut like half of the genetic subgroups of humans right off the planet.

How would this compare to the Out of Africa theory? Small number of families from one area spread out to become the ancestors of all living humans versus small group of survivors all over the world become ancestors of all living humans? How does the timing work out?

[repoman]

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/evolution/

It is after leaving africa.

[anthrosciguy]

One problem in answering a question like this is the question of how you determine traumatic, esp. if you're asking about being traumatic to "us" -- all of humankind. Even the biggest numbers killed in the last few hundreds are a tiny fraction compared to the number of humans living. So if you had a few hundred thousand or million people on earth and 100,000 die, that's huge; but if 10-20 million out of billions die, that's not huge -- as a percentage.

So what's the critical part of the equation -- absolute numbers or percentages?

[David B]

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/evolution/

It is after leaving africa.

My quick google search came up with this, which seems at first glance consistent with the one above

http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/1337

David B

[Hyndis]

http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect19/moon_formation.jpg

'Nuff said.

[ninewands]

The appearance of photosynthetic blue-green algae approximately 3.8 billion years ago. Their success at converting the Earth's atmosphere from a reducing chemistry to an oxidizing chemistry wiped out almost all the life on the planet.

[Christopher Lord]

The Plague in Europe probably wins for sheer death-toll. Didn't it get 1/3 of all humans(known to europeans) in the 1300's?

Possibly also smallpox in the americas. population estimates are sketchy at best for pre-contact natives, but could be as large as hundreds of millions?

[Negasta]

251 million years ago : Permian-Triassic extinction event, killed 90% of all species

65 million years ago : The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

1600 BC : Santorini (if you are looking for sheer power)

[repoman]

Forgot about the possible release of Methane hydrates from the coastal ocean floors once global warming (may) raises the global temp up by 4 degrees centrigrade. That will jack up the temp by possibly 4-5 degrees more. This is a leading theory for the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction. I hope it doesn't happen again!

[thenendo]

Atomic technology was invented and is the only thing we've ever invented that could kill the planet itself, go figure.

No.

http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html (http://ned.ucam.org/%7Esdh31/misc/destroy.html)

There is no possibility whatsoever that man's atomic arsenal could destroy the planet. It has survived asteroid impacts orders of magnitude more powerful than all existing atomic weapons combined.

[David B]

Forgot about the possible release of Methane hydrates from the coastal ocean floors once global warming (may) raises the global temp up by 4 degrees centrigrade. That will jack up the temp by possibly 4-5 degrees more. This is a leading theory for the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction. I hope it doesn't happen again!

Good point.

And I'd just like to say at this point that I seem to have misread the OP as meaning biggest disaster of the human era. I wonder if it's because I had some sort of subconscious idea that disasters require humans to be around to perceive them as disasters.

But I digress.

David B (is not sanguine about the future)

[David B]

World War II. - Man-made.
Noah's flood - Natural. {That should heat up this thread! ;) }

I take it that by Noah's flood you mean (whether you know it or not) accounts written later of folk memories of a major flood.

I also hope you know that flood stories are, if not ubiquitous, pretty common in oral histories, and later written accounts that may well represent them.

So what was Noahs' flood?

Something completely imaginary? My intuition says not - mainly because of the near ubiquity of such accounts in the whole area of what we now call the middle east.

A true account of what happened? No-one suggests (as far as I know) that anyone alive at the time wrote the account, and it seems impossible for anyone to actually know the extent of any such flood. And how could anyone know that it covered all the highest mountains? There are lots of problems with the biblical account - I don't know where to start. Want to discuss it under a new thread, perhaps in a different forum? I dismiss it as a true account of what happened - and really can't see how it can be defended as a true account. Most christians see it as allegory, as far as I know, and I'd suggest all the sensible ones.

So I'm left with the idea, which I can't prove, but seems so intuitively attractive to me that it is part of my world view, that some, or a number, of big events led to an oral tradition of some widespread flood disaster. Especially in the middle east.

A prime candidate for such an event would be the flooding of what is now the Black Sea, but was then a large below sea level depression with a lake at the bottom fed by rivers. Much like the Dead Sea area now, but much bigger. Then, as the Ice age receded, ice melted, and the seal level rose, the level got high enough to flood the region across the Bosporus.

Archaeology of that period is far from fully worked out, but the Middle East around that time seemed to be the place where man stopped being hunter gatherers. And the Black Sea basin would seem to be a prime site for people to settle in.

So it seems feasible to me that the flooding of that area could have set the development of non hunter gatherer society back quite a lot. Too hard to assess closer than that, pending a lot of archaeological progress.

It's interesting to me that you put down the flood as natural - as, of course, do I. I thought you thought that goddunit, which wouldn't be natural as I understand the word.

But yeah, in the terms in which I describe it, I can see Noah's flood being a pretty major disaster.

David B (doesn't put it in the same class as Toba)

[atonal chaotic]

Ooh, I get to cite one of my favorites:
On Earth there was a plague. Three billion years after the planet's formation there came a virulent mutation, a form of life that used sunlight directly. The more efficient energy source gave the green mutant a hyperactive, murderous vigor; and as it spread forth to conquer the world, it poured out a flood of oxygen to poison the air. Raw oxygen seared the tissues of Earth's dominant life and left it as fertilizer for the mutant. What, did you speciesist bigots only consider disasters for humans? :p

EDIT: Ah, Ninewands beat me to it.

[David B]

No.

http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html (http://ned.ucam.org/%7Esdh31/misc/destroy.html)

There is no possibility whatsoever that man's atomic arsenal could destroy the planet. It has survived asteroid impacts orders of magnitude more powerful than all existing atomic weapons combined.

Is not this an example of a straw man argument?

Cowboy said 'kill' not 'destroy'.

Now I think he's a bit over the top there - I'm sure life could survive all the atmic weapons going off. There are those bacteria that live in rocks, for a start.

But could all the atomics going off wipe out humanity? Maybe, I guess, but if there are survivors they would be back in the stoneage, with all the easily accessed supplies of metal ore and fossil fuel gone.

It would kill all I hold precious, pretty much.

David B

[thenendo]

Is not this an example of a straw man argument?

Cowboy said 'kill' not 'destroy'.

Well, to be fair, he said "kill the planet itself" -- how else do you "kill" a planet than by destroying it? The planet's not alive, so you have to interpret that as an anthropomorphism, like "that guy with the sledgehammer killed my computer", in which case "kill" really means "destroy".

Even if we're talking about the much less ambitious goal of merely destroying all life on the planet, all of the nukes in the world would still not be up to the chance. I'm pretty sure we couldn't even kill all humankind (definitely not outright, and probably not in the long run).

If someone has the numbers, we could do a fun calculation. Take the total surface area that could be bombed by each existing nuke and add it all together. Make the liberal assumption that every human in that surface area dies. Subtract that total destroyed surface area from the total area inhabited by humans. Multiply by the average population density of mankind. Voila, the number of survivors of the nuclear holocaust.

[David B]

Well, to be fair, he said "kill the planet itself" -- how else do you "kill" a planet than by destroying it? The planet's not alive, so you have to interpret that as an anthropomorphism, like "that guy with the sledgehammer killed my computer", in which case "kill" really means "destroy".

Even if we're talking about the much less ambitious goal of merely destroying all life on the planet, all of the nukes in the world would still not be up to the chance. I'm pretty sure we couldn't even kill all humankind (definitely not outright, and probably not in the long run).

If someone has the numbers, we could do a fun calculation. Take the total surface area that could be bombed by each existing nuke and add it all together. Make the liberal assumption that every human in that surface area dies. Subtract that total destroyed surface area from the total area inhabited by humans. Multiply by the average population density of mankind. Voila, the number of survivors of the nuclear holocaust.

Wouldn't we also have to look at nuclear winter calculations?

David B

[Loren Pechtel]

We haven't seen it yet, but how about the Big Crunch?

[Schneibster]

And then there's the possibility for vacuum decay. And of course vacuum decay may already have occurred, transforming a prior universe into this one.

ETA: ...and killing everything that lived in that universe in the process.

[Schneibster]

I think this thread suits well for the Political and Science forum, so I may start this topic there as well, depending on how it plays here.

There has been a lot of traumatic and terrific events recently, and it got me thinking. In light of the most recents tragedies that come to mind, notably being 9-11, the Asian Tsunami, and now Hurricane Katrina, what's the most catastrophic event that mankind has ever experienced?Ahhh, that the human race was around to see? That's a different question than the title implies.

The greatest catastrophe that has happened in the existence of the human race would have to be the Würm Glaciation, which started in 70,000 BC and extended to about 15,000 BC, with the full warming concluding about 10,000 BC and coinciding with the beginning of the current era, the Holocene. Humans developed in Africa between 150,000 and 100,000 BC, and left Africa to colonize Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia about 100,000 BC. In other words, we evolved in Africa during the Riss Glaciation, moved into Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East during the Eemian Interglacial, and then watched many animals die off (and doubtless many of us as well) during the Würm Glaciation.

The climate during the Eemian was much like the current climate. Imagine the catastrophe that our ancestors must have seen, as the glaciers marched down from the pole to cover Europe, North Asia, and North America. Who knows what civilizations might have grown, or how far along we might be right now, had this disaster not taken place: our civilization would be perhaps 30 or 40 thousand years old (assuming it would make it that long). What might we not know, that we have not yet found out?

[dancer_rnb]

Well, to be fair, he said "kill the planet itself" -- how else do you "kill" a planet than by destroying it? The planet's not alive, so you have to interpret that as an anthropomorphism, like "that guy with the sledgehammer killed my computer", in which case "kill" really means "destroy".

Even if we're talking about the much less ambitious goal of merely destroying all life on the planet, all of the nukes in the world would still not be up to the chance. I'm pretty sure we couldn't even kill all humankind (definitely not outright, and probably not in the long run).

If someone has the numbers, we could do a fun calculation. Take the total surface area that could be bombed by each existing nuke and add it all together. Make the liberal assumption that every human in that surface area dies. Subtract that total destroyed surface area from the total area inhabited by humans. Multiply by the average population density of mankind. Voila, the number of survivors of the nuclear holocaust.

How big a rock could you put on an earth intercept using them? :devil3:

[Soul Invictus]

Ahhh, that the human race was around to see? That's a different question than the title implies.


You all are making me think about how less refined my OP was. I wanted to capture them all. Man made;natural. During human timeline; not during timeline.

(sigh) So much for thinking I was a clear communicator. Oh well. Keep em coming...

[Soul Invictus]

We haven't seen it yet, but how about the Big Crunch?

What's that?

[Soul Invictus]

251 million years ago : Permian-Triassic extinction event, killed 90% of all species

65 million years ago : The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

1600 BC : Santorini (if you are looking for sheer power)

Negasta, you made some good contributions! I'vd never heard of the first one or the last one. Any links or numbers on any of them?

[Soul Invictus]

BBC has a link of some natural disasters. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4128509.stm)

I thought the Rwandan genocide (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwanda_genocide) of ~1 million deaths is pretty up there.

[EsoCyn]

What's that?

The opposite of Big Bang. The universe will stop expanding and collapse on itself... that's the hypothesis, anyway.

Going more in line with quantum physics, though... I think the Big Rip is more viable.

[gargoyle]

It would have been my choice, too, but I was beaten to it

http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeast_asia/indonesia/toba.html

and

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/po/population_bottleneck.htm

David B

shhh! the intelligent design people get a hold of this theory and they start saying that god sent the volcano to punish adam and eve and cane and able are the source of all human DNA... :p

[gargoyle]

Forgot about the possible release of Methane hydrates from the coastal ocean floors once global warming (may) raises the global temp up by 4 degrees centrigrade. That will jack up the temp by possibly 4-5 degrees more. This is a leading theory for the cause of the Permian-Triassic extinction. I hope it doesn't happen again!

i can wait to hear the head of FEMA make excuses about not seeing this one coming... :rolling:

[llanitedave]

I'll add my vote for the Permian-Triassic extinction.

It was big and fast.

The advent of photosynthesis took maybe a billion years to complete.
The Big Crunch hasn't happened yet.
Noah's flood would have been supernatural, not natural.

Oh, and the biggest manmade disaster?
Civilization.

[Clivedurdle]

What about abiogenesis? Supernovae? Invention of God?

[CowboyHeretic]

By that I meant kill the large life forms, animals. trees, stuff like that.
There isn't much point in you and I debating the flood, David B, I so closely agree with you that we could only nitpick minor points. :D

[Loren Pechtel]

What's that?

The opposite of the big bang.

Note that it will only happen if the universe is closed.

[Loren Pechtel]

If someone has the numbers, we could do a fun calculation. Take the total surface area that could be bombed by each existing nuke and add it all together. Make the liberal assumption that every human in that surface area dies. Subtract that total destroyed surface area from the total area inhabited by humans. Multiply by the average population density of mankind. Voila, the number of survivors of the nuclear holocaust.
This won't give an answer that's even in the ballpark. There are two big factors that basically don't respect the blast range at all:

1) Fallout. A full nuclear exchange leaves most of the northern hemisphere with fallout levels lethal to unprotected individuals.

2) Nuclear winter. It's not the bombs per se but the fires from the burning cities. The bomb starts out providing circulation up to the stratosphere and the smoke goes up it. Since it's above the level of rain it takes a *LONG* time to come back down.

[llanitedave]

The opposite of the big bang.

Note that it will only happen if the universe is closed.

Otherwise, we may get "the big rip"!

[Negasta]

Negasta, you made some good contributions! I'vd never heard of the first one or the last one. Any links or numbers on any of them?

Santorini is a small volcanic island in the Agean Sea (used to be a lot bigger),that erupted in approx. 1600 BC with 78 times the power of the biggest H-bomb (Tzar Bomba, 50 megatons) ever detonated, thus it had the explosive power of about 3900 megatons, and it caused one big motherfucker of a tsunami. It is stipulated as one of the primary causes of the fall of the Minoan civilization on Crete.

Click here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event) for information on the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

[Schneibster]

Actually, IIRC, Santorini is one of the remnants of the outside edge of the caldera; but you're right AFAIK about the power of the explosion and the hypothesis that it destroyed the Minoan Empire. Wiped them out so badly that it took a hell of a long time to get a handle on Linear B, too, and a genius decoder to do it. I have heard the volcano involved referred to as "Thera" as well, in case that joggles any memories.

However, wasn't the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary, extinction of the dinosaurs) asteroid splashdown bigger than Thera? I could easily be wrong, not having done any research, but off the top of my head, I thought it was on the order of fifty gigatons.

ETA: And vacuum decay is still bigger; a rip in space that destroys the entire universe. :D

[blues runner]

Well, of course pain is relative, and the "most catastrophic disaster" of all time might subjectively range from, say, a mother not being able to get the proper diapers for her newborn, or, as I tend to lean to more, the life and actions of this man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin#Death_toll

His actions speak for themselves. You ask me the most catastrophic event? I give you Joseph Stalin. Death count: a conservative figure 25,000,000. Yep, good old Joseph was repeatedly up to no good. Think about that, for a minute...25,000,000 human beings...

JD

[emphryio]

It's been speculated that Atlantis was destroyed by the 1600 BC Santorini caldera.

I definitely would go with the Toba supervolcano. There might be a ton more genetic variation running around if not for that.

If you want to talk about Stalin then I offer the CIA who has killed at least 6 million and left hundred of millions in poverty thanks to their overthrow of democracies around the world. Most recently kidnapping Aristide when he tried to raise the minimum wage.

[Hyndis]

Otherwise, we may get "the big rip"!

And if its between those two values for the mass of the universe, its a long, cold night.

[Schneibster]

You ask me the most catastrophic event? I give you Joseph Stalin. Death count: a conservative figure 25,000,000. Yep, good old Joseph was repeatedly up to no good. Think about that, for a minute...25,000,000 human beings...

JDI've seen that figure thrown around a lot, and I'd like to know what the natural death rate would have been during that time and see it subtracted. I know for sure he killed a lot of them; we can see that from the decline in population, at a time when it was growing everywhere else. But is every one of the quoted 25 million actually his fault, or are they throwing in the natural death rate too? Having seen far too many such miscalculations, I think I'd be more comfortable with some analysis than a simple figure.

[thenendo]

I've seen that figure thrown around a lot, and I'd like to know what the natural death rate would have been during that time and see it subtracted. I know for sure he killed a lot of them; we can see that from the decline in population, at a time when it was growing everywhere else. But is every one of the quoted 25 million actually his fault, or are they throwing in the natural death rate too? Having seen far too many such miscalculations, I think I'd be more comfortable with some analysis than a simple figure.

Actually, doesn't the wikipedia article give that kind of analysis? It looks at the difference between that actual population, and what we would expect it to be naturally:

Comparison of the 1926 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926)–37 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937) census (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census) results suggests 5–10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostly through famine in 1931 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931)–34 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934). The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 14 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a "wrecker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_%28Soviet_crime%29)'s census" with the census takers severely punished. A census was taken again in 1939, but its published figure of 170 million has been generally attributed directly to the decision of Stalin[7] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#endnote_Cunningham) (see also Demographics of the Soviet Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union)). Note that the figure of 14 million does not have to imply 14 million additional deaths, since as many as 3 million may be births that never took place due to reduced fertility and choice.

[Schneibster]

Reading the article, I find that the estimates are between 10 and 60 million. This includes, however, children who were not conceived, as your excerpt states.

Syntheus' 25 million is IMO at the outside edge of supportable. I think 60 million is piling on everything but the kitchen sink. I'd say the realistic figure of actual deaths attributable to Stalin himself or his actions would be on the close order of 15 million.

And I'll point out that in terms of sheer numbers of individual humans killed, Syntheus is correct to state that it is the largest catastrophe attributable to one person; but WWII killed nearly 70 million people, which makes it the event causing the largest loss of human life in history.

[DISSIDENT AGGRESSOR]

The Inquisition, if not for the number of people, the whole damned concept behind it.

Spanish "colonization" of the Americas...

The Trail of Tears, again, if not for the number of people, the whole damned concept behind it.

[Newton's Cat]

I think this thread suits well for the Political and Science forum, so I may start this topic there as well, depending on how it plays here.

There has been a lot of traumatic and terrific events recently, and it got me thinking. In light of the most recents tragedies that come to mind, notably being 9-11, the Asian Tsunami, and now Hurricane Katrina, what's the most catastrophic event that mankind has ever experienced?

Bird Flu ... er, sorry, that hasn't happened yet.

It was published in UK newspapers recently that if it transfers to humans and maintains the same death rate as in people who have caught it from birds (75%) and 25% of the UK population catch it then there would be 10 million deaths, mostly in the cities. Supposedly the government have plans to quarantine the cities.

... and we can expect this to happen within the next 2 years.

[OneWayTraffic]

The unpremeditated biological warfare waged on the native peoples of the Americas by the largely European settlers.

When the native Americans came across the Bering strait they left most diseases behind. This may have been due to climate; most of our diseases evolved alongside us in tropical conditions. Also a lot of parasites and pathogens require nonhuman, domesticated hosts during part of their lifecycle. Most domesticated animals were also left behind or died on the trip. As a result they may have enjoyed thousands of years free of most western and asian disease but had zero resistance to the pandemics that swept across from coast to coast wiping out settlements that never saw a white face. I read that up to 10,000,000 may have died.


The most lethal of the pathogens introduced by the Europeans was smallpox, which sometimes incapacitated so many adults at once that deaths from hunger and starvation ran as high as deaths from disease; in several cases, entire tribes were rendered extinct. Other killers included measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever. Although syphilis was apparently native to parts of the Western hemisphere, it, too, was probably introduced into North America by Europeans.

About all this there is no essential disagreement. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby, "but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath." It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.

Were it not for these plagues, europeans would never have dominated North America so much. The history of the USA would read more like Africa, Japan or China; all heavily populated areas that came under the attention of a technologically superior rival but managed to keep their identity.

[Loren Pechtel]

The unpremeditated biological warfare waged on the native peoples of the Americas by the largely European settlers.

When the native Americans came across the Bering strait they left most diseases behind. This may have been due to climate; most of our diseases evolved alongside us in tropical conditions. Also a lot of parasites and pathogens require nonhuman, domesticated hosts during part of their lifecycle. Most domesticated animals were also left behind or died on the trip. As a result they may have enjoyed thousands of years free of most western and asian disease but had zero resistance to the pandemics that swept across from coast to coast wiping out settlements that never saw a white face. I read that up to 10,000,000 may have died.

The killer plagues all require a fairly large population to sustain them. Small groups crossing the bearing straight could not have carried them unless there were local animals that could also act as a host--and when you migrate a long distance you generally leave behind any such animal hosts. Thus when you colonize a distant location you normally do not bring any of the real plagues with you. Even if you start out with someone who is infected the plague will burn out in time.

[Vortex]

I think those were official figures and are reckoned to be grossly underestimated. I've heard figures of 600,000 for the actual death toll for that earthquake.
This is interesting — the earthquake, epicentered on the city of Tangshan, was on July 28, 1976. By September that year, the New China News Agency declared the death toll to be 655,000. A year after the earthquake, they revised it to 750,000. Then, in November 1979, they abruptly declared it to be 242,000. The 1976 or 1977 death tolls are undoubtedly closest to the true toll — Tangshan was, at the time, a city of 1.5 million or so, and around 80% of it was destroyed — and the 1979 death toll was an attempt for the Chinese government (if you could call it that) to save face, as this earthquake was a tremendous blunder for them. They had declared a "peoples' war on earthquakes" after one too many deadly quakes, and set about predicting them. They seem to have had success with a 1975 earthquake in Liaoning province (a warning was issued, towns evacuated, and despite considerable damage only 4 people died), but failed to issue a warning after picking up signs of an earthquake (via foreshocks, reports of disturbances in well water and unusual animal behavior) in the Tangshan area; they deemed the reports too ambiguous. The war seems to have ended with the Tangshan earthquake.

[lpetrich]

As to Toba's big eruption and the population bottleneck 70,000 years ago, is there any evidence of similar bottlenecks in the populations of other species? I've seen it claimed that that eruption was not a very big calamity on a global scale.

But could what happened 70,000 years ago be the speciation event that produced our present-day species? According to Punctuated Equilibrium (http://www.skeptic.com/01.3.prothero-punc-eq.html), new species of complex, sexually-reproducing organisms originate in small offshoot populations (simple, asexually-reproducing ones often evolve more gradually), so could we be seeing evidence of such an offshoot population in our ancestry?

[Berthold]

But could what happened 70,000 years ago be the speciation event that produced our present-day species? According to Punctuated Equilibrium (http://www.skeptic.com/01.3.prothero-punc-eq.html), new species of complex, sexually-reproducing organisms originate in small offshoot populations (simple, asexually-reproducing ones often evolve more gradually), so could we be seeing evidence of such an offshoot population in our ancestry?
This should be resolvable by archaeology. As far as I know, artefacts that have been made by modern man have recently been found much earlier than the European Cro Magnon findings (in Africa, of course), the order of magnitude would be about right.

[Ponzi]

How about the influenza epidemic of 1918? It's estimated to have killed over 20 million world wide.

[Gavriel]

Manmade: Destruction of the Library of Alexandria

[OneWayTraffic]

Adam eating that apple. Imagine what kind of paradise we would live in without that.

[wakwak]

The worst event ever had to be when princess Lia's home planet was destroyed by the Lord Vader.

[azidhak]

And I'll point out that in terms of sheer numbers of individual humans killed, Syntheus is correct to state that it is the largest catastrophe attributable to one person.
No that was Mao Zedong: Linky (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm) and Linky 2 (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm)

[atonal chaotic]

This wasn't the largest or most catastrophic, and it's only a large bucket in the swimming pool of Stalin's death toll, but the Allied governments share a great shame for their cooperation in Operation Keelhaul, rounding up people who'd fled the Soviet Union into Europe, and sending them back to die in Russia after WWII.

[MarcelLionheart]

The worst disaster of all time? The 20th century.

[Schneibster]

No that was Mao Zedong: Linky (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm) and Linky 2 (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm)Nice piece of research.

[Will I Am]

Soul Invictus,

I was going to say, “the advent of agriculture�. But, that’s not what you meant.

[Craigart14]

There was an epidemic of swine flu in 1918 that killed 20,000,000 people in the Western world. It may easily have killed another 20,000,000 in the rest of the world, but records are only sketchy. Also, rather than kill infants and the elderly, it seemed to spare them and take individuals in the prime of life.

Craig