This has been a terrible year for Planet Earth. The year 2020 has seen a global pandemic that has claimed millions of victims – about 38 million cases and over one million deaths. On top of this, there have been massive fires, extreme weather events such as cyclones, severe economic downturns and rising unemployment, gas leaks, and more. Some have decided that all this signals the arrival of the apocalypse. But the world has survived worse in the past:
Historians say this was a truly dreadful year. Thought to be caused by huge volcanic eruptions, this period saw the beginning of a two-year-long dense fog. This enveloped most of the inhabited world and had global temperatures plummeting sharply. Crop failure, famine, widespread starvation followed. Just for extra fun, the plague broke out and about 100 million people died across Asia, Europe and Africa. The Justinian Plague was said to last from 541 to 542 – wiping out about a quarter of the population of the world. So some say 536 was the worst year, while some say 542 was the worst year because only about 60% of the world's population survived by then.
The middle ages were a dark, dark time for humanity in any case --- people were ignorant and lived brutish, violent, short lives. And then things got worse. The bubonic plague, also known as Black Death struck in 1347 and went on till 1352. The disease, which caused ghastly swelling pustules – meant that healthy people would be diagnosed in the morning and dead by evening. Thought to kill off between 30 and 50% of entire populations where it struck (25 million Europeans died), this was perhaps one of nature’s ways of thinning the heard; natural selection of a sort.
This year was particularly awful for what they used to call the ‘new world’ or the lands that the Europeans colonised and exploited around this time. The indigenous inhabitants of the Americas had never encountered diseases such as small pox which the invaders generously passed on to them. Starting around 1520, frequent small pox outbreaks in the region killed off millions. An estimated Aztec population of 11 million was decimated and just about 1 million survived. Small pox was a significant factor in the successful colonisation of the land by the Spanish who brought small pox with them.
The plague kept resurfacing every two decades or so and continued to decimate large portions of the population each time. The great plague of London from 1665 to 66 was the last major outbreak. In 18 months this wiped out about one-fourth of the population of London, or about 1 lakh people. Bodies piled up in the street and the stench was unbearable. People locked the sick in their homes and put red crosses outside. There was the widespread slaughter of animals since people believe them to be carriers. So yes, those were some awful years.
World War I had just ended, there were crop shortages and famine-like conditions that made this flu outbreak unusually deadly. This is something historians call the deadliest pandemic in history. It infected about one-third of the world’s population (about 500 million people). In four waves, this pandemic killed off an estimated 50 million people. Some estimates put the death toll in the region of 100 million. It killed off about 4to 6% of India’s population (about 12 to 13 million) and wiped out about one-third of Bengal’s population.
We aren't even speaking about the kind of death toll that war, colonisation, slavery caused. Humankind has had some spectacularly bad years in the past and survived. World War I killed 20 million people and WWII killed about 85 million people or 3% of the world's population.
So the next time you want to crib about how awful 2020 has been, cast your mind back to some of those truly horrible years; the worst years in the world’s history.
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