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20th Century’s Deadliest Disasters

Khalid Elhassan October 26, 2020 32 min

1976 Tangshan earthquake - Tangshan — A bridge destroyed by the Tangshan Earthquake. China Underground

25. Of History’s Most Tragic Disasters, Floods are Usually the Deadliest

Sudden tragic events grab our attention, and dramatic natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are usually what most grip the imaginations. They are the types of violent events that unleash immediate and massive amounts of mayhem in a short amount of time.

However, history’s deadliest disasters – and by a long shot at that – are a bit more prosaic. Historically, when Mother Nature sets out to inflict the most suffering upon us, she has done so not with volcanoes or earthquakes, but with floods. Indeed, as seen below, history’s deadliest flood was almost five times as deadly as the deadliest earthquake (the 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake, with 830,000 deaths), and over fifty-six times as deadly as the deadliest volcanic eruption (the 1815 Tambora eruption, with 71,000 fatalities).

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.