GREATEST NATURAL DISASTERS
The 10 worst natural disasters in terms of death toll are extracted from a list of 66 compiled by David B. Hall. The complete list is available on the internet. I have yet to find an appropriate way to reference the work by Mr. Hall. Sadly, though not a natural disaster Mr. Hall fails to mention the millions of unborn children aborted world wide each year, 50 million slaughtered in the United states alone since the 1973 Roe v Wade decision by the Supreme Court. Strangely approximately one third of all pregnancies in this country are terminated by abortion which comports with the one third mentioned in Revelation 9:15-18.
EGYPT AND SYRIA, 1201
The deadliest earthquake in history hit the eastern Mediterranean in July 1201. Approximately 1.1 million people were killed, mostly in Egypt and Syria. This makes it close to one of the ten worst natural disasters in recorded history.
MOST OF EUROPE AND BEYOND, 1347-1350
Approximately 25 million lost their lives through the "Black Death" - the bubonic plague. Between 25 and 33% of the entire population of Europe at that time, plus millions in Asia and North Africa lost their lives.
WESTERN HEMISPHERE, MOSTLY 16TH - 18TH CENTURIES
Untold millions of lives of American Indians were lost through the various sicknesses brought over from Europe (to which they had no previous exposure or resistance.) It's very difficult to get figures on this that are not politically infected one way or another (very high or very low).
INDIA, 1769
About ten million people lost their lives from a famine in Bengal.
CHINA, 1876 - 1879
The deadliest drought in recorded history was in China between 1876 and 1879. Rivers were dry, so most crops and livestock died. There was no food production in a 1-million km2 area of 9 provinces. The drought caused the death of an estimated nine million people.
WORLD-WIDE, 1918 - 19
Influenza pandemic takes somewhere between 35 million and 75 million lives (some reports estimate around a hundred million, but those can't be confirmed) - at least 16 million people died in India alone. This is clearly the worst disaster - at least in the last thousand years.
CHINA, 1935
Another Yellow River flood "caused 27 counties inundated and 3.4 million victims".* How many actual lives were killed we don't know. If you have facts, let us hear from you
CHINA, 1958 - 61
As many as 20 million people died in this famine. *
* We received the following response to this post
Sirs: I would ask that you consider re-characterizing the 20-30 million who died in China during the period 1959-61 as a political blunder rather than a famine. Famines are typically understood to be the result of diminished food production due to weather or other natural disasters. This was not the case in China. Food production was for the most part normal during this period. What changed was the desire of local cadre wanting to look good and reporting increased food production following Mao's politics of "right" practices. Mao's government simply took their share of the harvest, 50%. But since the reported harvest was in fact inflated, what resulted was the entire production being shipped to Beijing. This more accurately could be labeled Mao's Holocaust.* Respectfully, Doug Searles
AFRICA, 1981 - 1984
Rivers and lakes dried up from the drought that had incredible impact on twenty African nations. During one season about 20,000 were starving to death EACH MONTH.* 150 million were facing starvation if help didn't come right away. People from around the world began to respond to this crisis - but for hundreds of thousands of people, it was too late. (If you have figures for this, please let us know. When combined with other relatively recent African famines, the fugure is well over 1,000,000)
NORTH KOREA, 1995-98
Over 3 million are said to have died from famine and floods in North Korea.
