The Worst World Disasters of All Time

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1 – Introduction

I have included the most significant disasters throughout history that I have come across whilst researching for this book. Although choosing which disasters to feature in this book was still a subjective process. After all, how can you really grade a disaster? As this depends on each individual’s perspective. So I have included disasters that have had a profound effect on the world or disasters with a high number of fatalities. There have been so many wars throughout recent history alone, especially after the industrial revolution, so I have kept away from chalking up every war as a disaster in this book. The only war that I could not help but mention in this book was World War 2, as this war gave rise to new technologies that threaten us today. If I included WW2 then how could I not include The Great War? So, these two wars are exceptions. I have also mentioned events that have happened as a result of war and prejudice or politics that have had a devastating effect on innocent civilians, such as the persecution of the Jews in World War 2 for instance.

I hope that this book will serve as a reminder that this world is turbulent and unpredictable, and that peace and tranquillity in our lives should never be taken for granted. Each peaceful morning when we wake up with a stress free day filled with happiness ahead of us really is a bonus.

2 – Latiya Bay Megatsunami

The aftermath of the 1,720 ft high megatsunami

Date: July 9th, 1958.

Location: Latuya Bay, Alaska

Disaster Type: Megatsunami

Fatalities: 5

Resulting Damage: 4.5 Square miles of forest flattened.

Although there were just five deaths from the Lituya Bay magatsunami in 1958, I've included this occurrence as it gives an idea of the destructive force of a megatsunami and demonstrates how nature can suddenly throw unexpected surprises at us.

Can you picture being on a boat and hearing what sounds like an atomic explosion, then being met head on by a 1,720 feet high wall of water? This is exactly what happened to Howard G.Ulrich and his son who were anchored in a small cove. After being woken up by violent rocking of his boat due to an 8.3 magnitude earthquake on the Fairweather Fault, he then went on deck to see what was going on. Following that, 30 million cubic meters of rock and ice fell into the narrow inlet in Lituya Bay, Alaska. Fortunately, they were then miraculously carried by the wave over treetops as the wave crossed land and then dropped them back in the water safely on the other side of the land mass.

Not everyone was lucky on the day that the megatsunami occurred on July the 9th, 1958. Two other people who were anchored in the bay on their boat were killed; three other people also died when the beach that they were standing on suddenly subsided to 100 feet below sea level.

The force of the wave ripped out trees and plant life over a 4.5 square mile area of dense forest, from elevations up to 1,720 feet above sea level. Millions of trees were just swept out to sea. It is the highest wave ever known in recorded history. Lituya Bay has regularly produced tsunamis over 100 feet ; in 1854 a wave of 395 feet occurred, a 200 foot wave in 1899 and a 490 foot wave in 1936. Put it this way, you wouldn't want to build a house there. The shockwave from this megatsunami was felt in Seattle all the way to Yukon in Canada; an area of 400,000 square miles.

About 8,000 years ago in Sicily there was a huge landslide triggered by gushing lava which hit the ocean at 200 miles per hour. Verbal accounts and work from researchers suggest that the wave that spread across the Mediterranean Sea was probably as tall as a ten story building.

On a lighter note, the biggest wave ever surfed was by Garrett McNamara who surfed a wave off the coast of Portugal which was a staggering 100 feet tall.

3 – Death Hailstorms

A giant hailstone, that fell in Vivian, South Dakota, 2010.

Date: 850 AD.

Location: Roopkund Lake, India.

Disaster Type: Giant hailstones.

Fatalities: Hundreds of victims.

In 1942 a British forest guard stationed in northern India came across a strange frozen lake named Roopkund. The reason why the lake was such a shocking sight was that it was surrounded by hundreds of skeletons. From that moment on the discovery was a complete mystery, with the British government paranoid that it might be the bones of Japanese soldiers who were planning a land invasion, and others guessing that it was an epidemic, a landslide or mass suicide.

In 2004 a scientific expedition was sent to seek out an explanation as to how so many people died. After investigation, the surprising conclusion was that everyone had died from blows upon the head, with deep cracks clearly evident on the skulls of the victims.

What had actually happened is that back in around 850 AD a group of travelers, probably pilgrims, were caught out in the open with no shelter by a freak hailstorm with oversized hail. Can you imagine hail the size of cricket balls suddenly raining down upon you? The only way you would ever survive would be to crawl under a dead body, but there probably would have been no time as your body would take a series of lethal blows before you would even be able to consider this.

They could even have been bigger than cricket balls, as the largest recorded hailstone, found in Aurora, Nebraska, was about the size of a football at 7 inches in diameter.

In Bangladesh, almost 100 people were killed in 1986 by grapefruit sized hailstones that weighed more than 2 pounds. Hailstones can fall at a hundred miles per hour, so unless you have immediate shelter your number will be up!

The largest amount of people known to be killed in a freak hailstorm was in Chartres, France in 1360. A staggering 1,000 English soldiers were killed in the event and it was named ‘Black Monday.’ In King Edward’s attempt to conquer France he took a massive force across the English Channel. They burned and pillaged the suburbs of Paris, whilst French soldiers refused to fight them head on by instead choosing to remain behind protective walls. They then headed toward Chartres and camped outside of town. Lightening then struck down at the beginning of a sudden storm and killed 2 people, before massive hailstones hit the stunned troops, even killing men on horseback.

The upside to this is that it was seen as an act of God, which convinced King Edward to negotiate on peaceful terms with the French, at least for a while, during the Hundred Years War between England and France.

4 – Huascaran Avalanche

View of Nevado Huascaran - Image author: Suizaperuana

Date: May 31st, 1970.

Location: Huascaran region, Peru.

Disaster Type: Avalanche.

Fatalities: 74,000 deaths, 25,600 missing & 150,000 injured.

Resulting Damage: 80 million cubic meters of debris which buried everything in its path.

The Huascaran region in Peru was the scene of one of the deadliest avalanches ever to occur in the world. It all started on the afternoon of May 31st, 1970. First came the earthquake, a loud and powerful quake that rocked everything around for close to a minute. This event itself caused a massive amount of damage. Everywhere along the western coast in this South American country, there were buildings destroyed and roads fractured. The quake was caused by a rupture on the Circum-Pacific belt, which is an area of high seismic activity. The Andes mountain ranges have suffered a lot of earthquakes over the years, with both Peru and Chile suffering from some of the devastation resulting from those quakes.

This Huascaran earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale and lasted over 45 seconds. It occurred at 15:23 PM local time and the centre of the quake was around 35 km off the coast, in the Pacific Ocean. It was so intense that people all over the region felt it, even in Ecuador and Brazil, reporting that they felt the ground move during that time. In all, an area of over 80,000 square km was affected by the quake resulting in large-scale destruction. Three million people felt the quake in some way, with some people seeing their homes destroyed or damaged, and others being injured or killed. Local authorities counted over 74,000 deaths with an extra 25,600 missing. Almost 150,000 people were injured in the event.

But the quake itself was just the first problem this region had, as right after the earthquake, a face of the Nevado Huascaran Mountain broke up, destabilizing the whole area where a huge avalanche was produced. Rocks, snow and ice fell upon the village below in a massive 1 mile long avalanche. Debris moved over 11 miles down the mountain range in only eight minutes and completely covered Yungay, a local village which was home to over 20,000 people. Everyone who was in the village itself was covered by the massive avalanche and died almost instantly. Over 80 million cubic metres of debris ended up crashing down on top of the area, burying everything in its path.

The town of Yungay has since then been kept as a national cemetery, a reminder of what happened on that day. May 31st is a day of Natural Disaster Education and Reflection in Peru with people going to visit the location on a yearly basis. Students throughout the Peruvian educational system learn about the disaster on this day and remember those who lost their lives. While stronger quakes have occurred elsewhere, this was the deadliest avalanche to be recorded in history so far.

5 – Bengal Famine

British East India Company flag.

Date: 1770 – 1773.

Location: Bengal, India.

Disaster Type: Famine.

Fatalities: 10,000,000 deaths.

Resulting Damage: Large areas depopulated.

Many people in modern times worry about the flu or other similar epidemic events which may hit hundreds of people in a city, but we easily forget about some of the more brutal events that occurred throughout history. One of the worst, yet mostly forgotten events, was the Bengal famine of 1770 – 1773 where 10 million people died, not from a virus but from a lack of proper nutrients. This event occurred in the area of Bengal which at the time was still ruled by the British Empire. The affected region included West Bengal, Bangladesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha. The people living there used to be part of the Mughal empire, but by the early 1700s they had become tribal people, freed from Mughal rule. This is when the British came and took control of the region.

The controlling power was the British East India Company which was granted full control by the Mughal prince. Throughout the eighteenth century, the British established trade and fought against any opposing local leader, ending with the battle of Plassey in 1757 where Bengal then became fully under the control of London. Due to this new situation, the local villagers saw their agricultural processes modified. The East India Company was interested primarily in profit and exported a majority of the local surplus food supplies. They also imposed very high taxes on the local populations. Finally, a lot of food crops were replaced with opium instead. So in 1769, when a devastating drought occurred, there was simply not enough food to feed everyone. The following year things became even worse and starvation began to set in.

For the best part of two years almost nothing could be grown because of extreme heat and a lack of rain, and as a result deaths started occurring on a large scale, because there were no surplus food supplies available. The selfish policies of the company ensured that the local villagers had no chance of survival during the long drought, until heavy rains returned once again so that the remaining malnourished survivors could grow crops. In all, one third of the population in these regions died from the famine due to poor management from the British Empire, combined with an unusually long drought period.

Large areas became depopulated during the drought, with many survivors understandably abandoning the area affected. During the drought, trade leaders did little to help the local population, instead they increased taxes even more, leading many to despise the British Empire. As a result, the region was kept back from developing for over a decade. This event is even studied in some schools as a lesson on how not to prioritize trading over keeping local surplus food supplies for emergency situations.

6 – Spanish Flu Pandemic

Seattle policemen wearing masks provided by the Red Cross.

Date: January 1918 – December 1920.

Location: Worldwide.

Disaster Type: Influenza pandemic.

Fatalities: 500 million people infected and 20 - 40 million deaths worldwide

The 2009 the H1N1 flu pandemic was a worldwide concern where the so-called ‘bird flu’ mutated to affect some human beings in several regions of the world. But this was the second time that the H1N1 virus threatened human life. Back in 1918, the very first bird flu pandemic caused much more devastation and death. Back then, there was no vaccine and very few medications that could be used to combat this disease, and in all over 500 million people were infected around the globe, from the Pacific Islands all the way to the Arctic, with a death rate close to 20%. Almost 5% of the world’s population perished in a matter of months due to the Spanish flu. While most countries were hit, there were some very large populations decimated in Spain, which is how the pandemic came to be known as the Spanish flu.

World War I and the way soldiers were being deployed to faraway locations, plus their living conditions, were the primary causes of why this particular pandemic was so devastating. Because of the war, soldiers were present in large numbers, and would all sleep together in large tents or buildings. The close quarters that were common to soldiers in those days increased the infection rate, on top of massive troop movements which allowed the flu to spread around the world much faster than it otherwise could have. There were other reasons why the war helped the virus out too, like malnourishment and exhaustion due to intense and stressful combat. Both sides in the conflict were hit, but the Axis side suffered many more casualties, which may actually have helped contribute to the Allies eventual victory in World War 1.

There is no record showing where the flu came from, but in January of 1918 U.S. Army doctors noticed the sickness in Kansas. The virus quickly spread around the base and to surrounding areas. By March, it had made its way to New York and the east coast. Like the 2009 pandemic, H1N1 came from birds, but in the case of the 1918 event, historians think that the virus first mutated to pigs which were kept in large quantities near soldiers as cheap sources of food. The origins were almost certainly somewhere in Europe, possibly France, and soldiers were the main carriers of the disease, spreading it around to the local population.

20 - 40 million people were killed in less than two years by the Spanish flu pandemic, which comes close to the Black Death’s fatality count, making it one of the most deadly diseases in history. While a lot of infants and elderly people were killed, as is the case for most diseases, in this case there were also a lot of 15 to 35 year olds included in the death toll, because soldiers were the main ones to carry the disease from one place to the next and generally would be in this age group. It is believed that India suffered the most deaths with a fatality count of 17 million people. The disease ended very abruptly by the end of 1918, where cases rapidly disappeared, as doctors became better