Asian Quake - the worst disaster in human history?

[Incubus]

A death count of (at time of posting) of nearly 60,000.
18 Britons are among the dead.

Is this truly the worst disaster in human history?

[HStorm]

I was discussing this exact question with my mother yesterday. What we find most numbing and bewildering is the relentless way that the death toll just keeps climbing. If ever there were a time when the term "No news is good news" it's now, as every time there's more news in this, it always seems to be bad.

The scale of the rise in the death toll is just as scary as the total - it seems to go up by the hundreds every hour, and for the first day and a half showed no sign of slowing at all. And inevitably, disease and starvation are now setting in in the affected zones among the dispossessed masses. Whether or not this is the worst natural disaster in history we can't say (the one that took out the dinosaurs must've been pretty bad), but it's almost certainly the worst in recorded history.

Incidentally, this page on the BBC website has a list of links to aid agency websites. I know the likes of Will and Oliver have cheerfully admitted on the charities thread that they don't care about these things, but hey, any help we can offer...

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4130323.stm

[Gamgee]

My dad came upstair while I was on my computer and said that 20000 people had been killed in a tsunmai. This announcement didn't quite sink in until I sat and saw the devestation on the news.

I havn't been so shocked since September the 11th. Seeing those panick striken people fleeing for their lives if a trully horrible site. I'm thankful I was born in Britian where natural disasters are pitiful in comparrison.

This is most certainly the worst natural disaster thats happened within my lifetime.

[Thanatos]

The two World Wars, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, the Great Terror in the USSR, famines there and in China, the Khmer Rouge regime, the Iraq sanctions and the Rwandan genocide spring to mind.

[HStorm]

Yes, and taking Liquidus' question at face value, those are all worse. But with the (debatable) exception of the famines, those weren't natural disasters and I have a strong suspicion that natural disasters are what Liquidus was referring to. Correct me if I'm wrong, Liq.

[Naselus]

Let's not be too hasty. This disaster is still going on, and just this morning more warnings have been issued to the entire south-east Indian coastline. Even the most optimistic estimates currently count at least 84,000 dead, and possibly as high as 120,000. And that's before the inevitable famine, disease and other secondary effects. I'd rather wait until it's all over before I start comparing it to your examples.

I doubt it'll reach the 30 million death toll of Stalin's purges, or the never-known heights of the Chinese famines, but you have to remember how long those took, and also they aren't all, strictly speaking, disasters. Considering Stalin's aims, the Red Terror and the Soviet famine were both roaring successes. Much as the Nazis consider the Holocaust to be 'a good start'. At least in these cases someone was actually aiming to create the slaughter, so it had a purpose, no matter how misguided and frankly wrong those purposes were. They were atrocities, not disasters.


What worries me is that this may be just the start. If it's a herald of a climactic shift, then these 120,000 deaths shouldn't be counted alone, but added together with the total deathcount of as many other disasters that can be counted together. Taken like that, maybe we should look at it from the deaths per day, in which it's easily holding it's own against the Battle of the Somme, the bloodiest battle in human history. So maybe it doesn't quite measure up to the various five-to-ten year periods you've stated, but since it's only been four days I reckon it can be considered pretty damned bad compared to them anyway..

[ringmasterrob]

In my opinion it doesn't matter if it's the worst natural disaster in history or not, the fact is that it's a very big distater and a problem that's not going to go away. Comparing it to disasters in the past is pretty fruitless as this isn't over yet, there are likely to be more deaths from disease and more bodies found as time goes on. For example when Liquidus started the topic the death toll was at 60,000 and the latest figures show 114,000, so speculation at this stage is futile, especially comparison with disasters that have long since ended...