what was the greatest disaster?

the focus on the tremendous loss of life because of the Indonesian tsunami leads me to ask; was this the greatest disaster in recorded history? And, if not, what was the disaster that lead to the greatest loss of human life?

(edit to remove caps from title)

[edit on 15-1-2005 by pantha]

Do you mean Natural disaster? If not I'd say wwII or Stalin and then Hitler.

over 27 million russians alone died in wwII
I think the total estimate is over 60 million.

If you want to know what the biggest disaster was in Human history read the Bible(Genesis) or Read Platos stories about Atlantis... Are there any more tales that seem to tell of massive disasters in the Past? Those two are the only ones I know of.

Here is a list that should help you out. disasters

Originally posted by Allan Hildebrandt
Here is a list that should help you out. disasters

Thanks for the link. Not exactly what I was looking for but I learned from it all the same. I never new about the 1201 - Mediterranean quake which was supposedly the deadliest in history(I thought that distinction fell on China :puz that kill 1.1 million peopel...how do they even know how many died is a good question as well.

Two more events in history that caused huge loss of human life were the black death of the 14th century in which an estimated 23 million people died, and the flu epidemic of 1918 that killed between 25 and 50 million.

info.detnews.com...

I think that with greatest disasters in history, you'll have to count in terms of % of population lost due to a single event.

Now with over 6 billion people on the plannet, about 200k dying in one disaster is about a 0.003% population decrease from 1 disaster.

There propably have been alot disasters, plagues and wars in history that made that % look like peanuts.

If you look at the deathtolls of things like the Black Death, it wiped out more then half of europe at several times from the 14th century to now.

35% in the outbreak in 1347(europe still kinda was the world back then), 35 to 70% in the 1630's, 60% in the 1740's.

Considering percentage od population it's definitely black death.

Although eruption of Toba might have been even bigger.

Originally posted by sardion2000
how do they even know how many died is a good question as well.

Well, surely they did somekind population counting even then... after all rulers had to know how many people they had in their country from who to collect taxes.

The Tsunami has been labeled as the "costliest" disaster in history. That's all I can contribute. But I think the Black Plague was probably the worst in terms of percentage of population lost. Post-Atlantis, of course.

The Greatest disaster was the Mass extinction known as the "Great Dying" the Permian-Triassic extinction not to be confused with the better-known Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction which wipe out the dinosaurs.

250 million years ago was a disaster so great it wiped out 95 per cent of animal species on earth.

Now what caused this is still debated but they have found a huge dome of the coast of Australia that suggest a impact dating back to 250.7 million years which might be the smoking gun.

In terms of lose of human life I would have to go with WW2 about 50-55 million people died. The Black death only claimed about half that number.

Dont fooled by the percents of deaths during the black death those are onlt percents of Europe not the whole world even though people back then might have thought Europe was the whole world.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
In terms of lose of human life I would have to go with WW2 about 50-55 million people died.

That's not so many percents of population of the time... around medieval time world's human population was surely much much smaller.

www.prb.org...

In terms of natural disasters, the Cretaceous/Tertiary and -- even more -- the Permian/Triassic die-offs were real Mothers, all right; but I think both of them pale into insignificance to the one in the Archaeozoic, where something caused the reducing atmosphere of the Earth to become contaminated with a deadly corrosive poison which killed off every living thing with the exception of a few organisms who actually metabolized the corrosive - and a few survivors who became the ancestors of today's anaerobic bacteria.

The corrosive poison, of course, was oxygen.

But none of them were in fact Human history.

I'd say the most catastrophic event in human history, given all the ramifications which followed, was the felsic supervolcano explosion in 535 AD which actually split Java and Sumatra into two islands.

The eruption, tsunami, and 'volcanic winter' which followed can be considered a causative of the breakdown of many different cultures worldwide, the kick-start for the first of the Bubonic Plagues, the horse die-off which led the Azars onto their westward trek which ultimately spelled the end of the Roman Empire, and so on.

This story is well-researched and told in David Keys' "Catastrophe: an Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World" (Ballantine, 1999). If you're intersted in such things, I'd really recommend adding the book to your library, along with both the Jared Diamond books.

Although the figures are not as high as other disasters/loss of life with nearly 38 million people affected now and nearly 3 million dead I would say AIDS could be up there some day. Let's hope it's not :

www.unaids.org...

brill

The greatest disaster was the creation of this universe

Originally posted by brill
Although the figures are not as high as other disasters/loss of life with nearly 38 million people affected now and nearly 3 million dead I would say AIDS could be up there some day. Let's hope it's not :

www.unaids.org...

brill

AIDS is not a natural disaster. People know how to prevent AIDS but they refuse to do it.

Originally posted by pantha
Two more events in history that caused huge loss of human life were the black death of the 14th century in which an estimated 23 million people died, and the flu epidemic of 1918 that killed between 25 and 50 million.

info.detnews.com...

I would have to agree with Pantha here. We will never know how many people died from these two outbreaks of disease because it was that damn wide spread. What's really frightening is the fact that the flu pandemic that struck in 1918 wasn't really that long ago. We all take for granted and believe that the flu might be a nasty inconvience but in a week or so we will be back on our feet. It's scary though, how at any time a mutation could occurr and another pandemic could ravage this world. We could fight one a little better this time but still millions would die and thats not just the young and elderly I'm talking about. Man oh man, pandemics, asteroids, earthquakes, volcanoes, pole shifts, irratic weather, we are always living on the edge. WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! (cue the muppets running around the room, with thier arms in the air, screaming)

Originally posted by Off_The_Street
This story is well-researched and told in David Keys' "Catastrophe: an Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World" (Ballantine, 1999). If you're intersted in such things, I'd really recommend adding the book to your library, along with both the Jared Diamond books.

This books sounds interesting. I just ordered it from an Amazon affiliate. The readers on amazon said some impressive things about this book.
Thanks, OTS.

AIDS is not a natural disaster. People know how to prevent AIDS but they refuse to do it.

Not to split hairs but the topic didn't say anything about "natural" disasters. Besides I want to be wrong in the case

brill

although not natural,if your talking abou loss of life in a scale similar to the deaths caused in one day by the tsunami then it would have to be the battle of the som in france ww1 im not sure about the correct figure but it was over 200,000 in one day.