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).