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The 10 deadliest disasters in history

Pandemics, famines and floods dominate this ranking: the top ten alone killed more than a hundred million people.

1. 1

   “Spanish” flu

   Pandemic · 1918 – 1920 · Worldwide

   An H1N1 virus spreads in three waves, carried by troop movements during the First World War.

   ≈ 50 million deaths

2. 2

   Great Chinese Famine

   Famine · 1959 – 1961 · China

   Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward imposes forced collectivisation in people’s communes, unrealistic production targets and grain requisitions based on overstated harvests.

   ≈ 30 million deaths

3. 3

   The Black Death

   Pandemic · 1347 – 1351 · Europe, Asia, North Africa

   Carried from Central Asia along trade routes, bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) reaches the Genoese trading post of Caffa, from where ships spread it across the Mediterranean in the autumn of 1347.

   ≈ 25 million deaths

4. 4

   Plague of Justinian

   Pandemic · 541 – 549 (first wave) · Byzantine Empire

   The first plague pandemic attested with certainty: ancient DNA confirms Yersinia pestis.

   ≈ 15 million deaths

5. 5

   COVID-19 pandemic

   Pandemic · December 2019 – May 2023 · Worldwide

   The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, identified in Wuhan at the end of 2019, spreads to every continent within weeks.

   ≈ 7 million deaths

6. 6

   Bengal famine

   Famine · 1943 – 1944 · British India (today’s India and Bangladesh)

   In the middle of the Second World War, the end of Burmese rice imports after the Japanese invasion, a cyclone in 1942 and runaway inflation send prices soaring.

   ≈ 3 million deaths

7. 7

   Yangtze and Huai River floods

   Flood · July – August 1931 · China

   After a drought and then a very snowy winter, record monsoon rains and a series of cyclones make the Yangtze, the Huai and the Yellow River burst their banks.

   ≈ 2 million deaths

8. 8

   Asian flu

   Pandemic · 1957 – 1958 · Worldwide

   A new influenza virus, H2N2, emerges in southern China in early 1957.

   ≈ 1 million deaths

9. 9

   Great Irish Famine

   Famine · 1845 – 1852 · Ireland (United Kingdom)

   Potato blight (Phytophthora infestans) destroys several successive potato harvests, the near-sole food of a third of the population, while the island keeps exporting grain and livestock to England.

   ≈ 1 million deaths

10. 10

    Ethiopian famine

    Famine · 1983 – 1985 · Ethiopia

    A severe drought combines with civil war and the policies of the Derg military regime, which uses famine as a weapon against rebel regions.

    ≈ 1 million deaths

Wars are not included. Other scourges that killed millions, such as HIV/AIDS, smallpox or the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876 – 1879, are not yet in the atlas. Ranking based on the disasters in the Mémoire du Globe atlas, using the most commonly accepted tolls. For older events, the figures are orders of magnitude.

Other rankings

• The deadliest earthquakes in history
• The worst disasters in France
• The deadliest volcanic eruptions
• The deadliest hurricanes and cyclones
• The deadliest pandemics in history
• The deadliest floods
• The worst industrial and nuclear disasters
• The costliest disasters in history