The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown

OhSheit · May 22, 2016

This is like 3 years old probably, I just thought this was fascinating...especially when stats/history is broken down in graphs or charts.

The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown
By Tim Urban

One of the things about humans is that they die sometimes, and one of the things humans pay a lot of attention to is other people dying. We do a pretty good job of distracting ourselves from the whole “I’m gonna die one day” thing, but the fixation is there, underneath the surface, and one way it shows through is how riveted we are by other people’s deaths.

The news is an obvious example—just open up CNN.com and typically, at least half of the headlines are about people dying. Entertainment is another—nothing locks eyes on a screen like the death of a character.

History is a less obvious example, but it’s the parts of history that involve a lot of people dying that usually compel us the most. That’s why there are so many war movies and so few movies about critical legislation being passed.

But for a crowd so interested in death, humans know surprisingly little about the actual numbers of people that died in key moments throughout history. Most of us know that 3,000 people died on 9/11, but how many Americans know how many Katrina victims there were, or how many people died in the American Revolution. Did the Christian Crusades kill 100 times as many people as the Vietnam War? Or were they identical in their death tolls? Given how much we talk about historical human tragedies, it seems like something we should have a better handle on. So let’s take a look.

Some quick notes:

The area of each circle in the graphic is exactly proportional to the number it’s representing and to the other circles in the graphic. Note the scale, and how it changes as the numbers grow. I chose circles and area because a one-dimensional scale like a bar graph doesn’t work when numbers are growing 1,000-fold over each other—you need two dimensions to be able to handle such a wide range. But keep in mind that with the way area works, a circle with double the diameter of another circle represents four times the deaths, not two.

I focused on human tragedies of various kinds, but sprinkled normal death statistics (the gray circles) throughout as comparison points to help put things in perspective.

I tried to maintain integrity in my research. There are many “sources” citing various death tolls online—so I made sure there was a reasonable consensus for all the numbers below. When there were too many differing opinions (like Howard Zinn saying European Colonialism killed 100 million people, with other sources saying it was 2 million), I left it out. Sometimes, there is genuine uncertainty to the exact death toll in an event, but a consensus about the lower and upper bound that the death toll might be. In those cases, I made the upper bound a big, faded circle, and the lower bound a smaller, brighter circle inside. For example, the total number of lucky people who had their hearts cut out and sacrificed by the Aztecs is unknown. But historians are pretty sure that the number is somewhere between 300,000 and 1,500,000. So I represented that like this, with two circles:

Click to expand...

Alright, on with it. The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown:

KEY

OckyDub · May 22, 2016

This was very fascinating.

ColumbusGuy · May 22, 2016

It says something about being a history freak that I knew most of the historical ones(wars, disease, disaster, etc). I was more surprised at the accuracy of the list. Pretty spot on with the statistics, and when questionable they gave a range-especially with the Atomic bombings-they usually go way higher for both. Only one I would question is the Haiti earthquake-316,000 was the very highest estimate-the lowest was 92,000- not a huge difference really...worst disaster in modern history in the Western Hemisphere. I hate that I know this stuff..I guess I have a fascination with this kind of stuff.
*Also glad the Black Death totals reflect more than just Europe-Asia, Middle East and North Africa were hit very hard at the same time...the higher totals reflect that.

The most surprising thing was the suicides and gun deaths. twice as many as homicides. Damn.

As bad as the motor vehicle deaths look...in 1939 the total was nearly 40,000-with half the population and far less than half the vehicles. That is something that gotten better overall with time.

*also they need to update the Everest deaths. Over 250 now-two died yesterday on the mountain. Over 100 of them are still there, dead and frozen on the slopes and in the crevasses. *shudders*

yeah I am rambling cause I was drinking and woke back up and am drinking some more so I can fall back asleep.

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The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown

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The Death Toll Comparison Breakdown

OhSheit Bae Material The 1000 Daps Club

OckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50 Site Founder The 10000 Daps Club

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Share This Page

OhSheit
Bae Material The 1000 Daps Club

OckyDub I gave the Loc'ness monstah about $3.50
Site Founder The 10000 Daps Club

ColumbusGuy
The 100 Daps Club