- Just be glad you weren’t around to see these living nightmares.
If you follow the news at all, you might think we’re living in the end times. But in reality, that could be further from the truth.
By many metrics, today is the best day ever to be alive. We’re not saying that there aren’t big problems in the world, but compared to history, we live in paradise.
The global life expectancy is higher than ever, while global poverty — although still a significant problem — is constantly pushing lower. Meanwhile, technology and medical science have advanced beyond our wildest dreams.
Let’s put things in comparison, shall we? Here are X times and places in human history when the living envied the dead.
6) 1816 — Anywhere
In 1815, Mount Tambora in present-day Indonesia erupted in what was the most powerful volcanic eruption ever recorded. The eruption itself killed an estimated 12,000 people.
But the horror really kicked into gear the following year, dubbed the Year Without Summer. The gigantic ash cloud that Tambora belched into the sky devastated the global climate and led to global crop failures and famine.
In China and India, droughts, floods, and diseases killed potentially millions of people. In Europe, crops withered across the continent, leading to widespread starvation.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., a dry fog descended across large parts of the country. Temperatures plummeted and farmers reported their crops dying in the fields.
5) Early 16th Century — America
In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived in America. And for the next 20 years, being an indigenous American wasn’t something to envy.
Not only did Columbus’ discovery mark the colonization of the Americas, which saw practically all indigenous cultures and civilizations repressed and wiped out. The conquistadors slaughtered and enslaved millions across the continents.
But violence wasn’t the largest killer. Europeans brought with them smallpox, a disease for which native Americans had no immunity or medicine.
Scientists estimate that just within one year, between 1520 and 1521, smallpox killed anywhere between 60-90% of all native Americans. The mountains of dead people only made it easier for the Spanish to subjugate the New World.
4) 1958-1962 — China
Chairman Mao launched his Great Leap Forward in 1958. The campaign was intended to modernize China’s agriculture and steel production, but it only ended up being a great leap toward hell on Earth.
The ruling Communist Party enacted mandatory agricultural collectivization policies and prohibited private farming. Fearful of failing their superiors’ goals, officials exaggerated farm yields to the point that there simply wasn’t enough food to go around.
These events triggered the Great Chinese Famine. We don’t know the exact death toll, and probably never will, but estimates range from 15 million to 55 million.
Some 2.5 million people were also executed for suspected anti-government activity. And anywhere between one to three million people couldn’t take the horror and ended their own lives.
3) Early 20th Century — Europe
We probably don’t need to tell you why being in Europe in the early 1900s sucked. There were these two little events called the World Wars.
Although horrible fighting took place globally, Europe bore the brunt of both WWI and WWII. Weapons technology had advanced significantly from the days of Napoleon, and the world’s nations gleefully employed their new toys against each other.
Machine guns, tanks, aerial bombardment, gas attacks, and the Holocaust — just to name a few — killed more than 120 million people over only three decades. And that’s not to count the wounded and displaced soldiers and civilians.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Flu pandemic broke out in 1918. By 1920, it had left potentially another 100 million dead.
2) The 1340s — Europe and Asia
We have three words for you. The Black Death.
This outbreak of the bubonic plague started in 1346. Over the next decade, it ravaged large parts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, killing anywhere between 75 and 200 million people.
The plague left entire villages empty. Some medieval scholars estimate that the Black Death wiped out up to 60% of the population of Europe.
It wasn’t much better elsewhere. In the Middle East, a third of the population perished, while in Egypt 40% of the people died.
Of course, the survivors were desperate to figure out the cause of the disease, and vented their fury on anyone they could. Both peasant mobs and church authorities murdered thousands of Jews, Romani, and other minorities.
1) 536 — Anywhere
And here it is — the worst time ever to be a living human being. Probably not what you were expecting, is it?
But the century following 536 was a complete horror show pretty much wherever you happened to live. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland threw a massive ash cloud into the sky, much like during the Year Without Summer.
Global temperatures crashed, resulting in the coldest decade on record in the past 2,300 years. Crops failed everywhere from Europe to Latin America and China. With snow falling in the summer months, people couldn’t grow wheat or rice for several years.
And then, in 541, the Justinian Plague arrived in Pelusium, a Roman city in Egypt. We have no idea how many people it killed, but between 541 and 549, 5,000 people dropped dead in Constantinople every single day.
The famines and diseases resulted in massive political changes. The collapse of the Sassanid Empire, the weakening of the Byzantine, and rebellions in China directly resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of people.