Over the course of several thousand years, humanity has repeatedly suffered from destructive natural disasters that wiped out entire cities from the face of the Earth, and nightmare epidemics that claimed millions of lives. But which year can rightfully be called the worst year in the past 2,500 years?
1931: The Great China Flood
This period became disastrous for the densely populated regions of South-Central China. A couple of years earlier, a drought reigned in the region, but after a snowy winter, a thaw came, and heavy rains fell on the ground. The rivers overflowed the banks, but the showers did not stop in the summer: their peak fell in August 1931. The incredible activity of cyclones - 9 in July alone against the usual 2 cyclones a year - contributed to the complication of the already catastrophic situation in the region.
The result of the weather anomaly was a flood of unprecedented proportions. The largest rivers of the country (Yellow, Yangtze and Huaihe) overflowed their banks, so by mid-August the water level exceeded the norm by 16 meters! Nanjing was almost completely submerged, and the destruction of the Great Canal dam claimed the lives of almost 200,000 people - the sleeping townspeople were simply washed away by the roaring streams of water.
But the calamities of the Chinese people did not end there either. Due to the huge number of decomposing bodies and high humidity, epidemics of typhus and cholera began, and refugees suffering from hunger were sometimes forced to go to extreme measures and eat their relatives. According to various estimates, between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000 people died that year.
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1918: Spanish flu
The famous "Spanish flu" has become, perhaps, the most massive influenza pandemic in history. In the period from 1918 to 1919, it affected 29.5% of the world's population - about 550 million people were infected. A fifth of them died as a result.
The epidemic came at the end of the First World War and quickly eclipsed even this largest (at that time) armed conflict in the world in terms of the number of casualties and lethality. It is the war that the researchers blame for the fact that the epidemic has taken on such a colossal scale: unsanitary conditions, hunger, crowding of people in the camps - all this gave fertile ground for the spread of the virus. The pandemic got its name due to the fact that the first strong outbreak of the disease was registered in Spain.
1347: Black Death in Europe
Probably, now there is not a single person who has not heard of this notorious plague epidemic. Its source is still unknown. Historians have come to the conclusion that the massive plague, which took on a truly colossal scale, arose as a result of many factors. The unstable climate (famine and drought, and then sudden hurricanes and downpours in China) led to the fact that hordes of small rodents came out of the impoverished wasteland closer to human habitation in search of shelter and food. The rats themselves do not suffer from the disease, but they are its natural carriers, and therefore, in conditions of unsanitary conditions and hunger, the epidemic quickly assumed a first local and then global character.
Having devoured China and India, the “black death” reached the lower reaches of the Don and Volga along the Great Silk Road. After mowing down the Golden Horde, the disease settled in the Caucasus and Crimea, and from there the Genoese brought it to Europe - probably thanks to the same ship rats. Colds and downpours, as well as the epidemics of smallpox and leprosy, which not long before tormented Europeans, weakened their immunity and made them extremely susceptible to infection.
As a result, the Black Death calmed down only by 1353, claiming a total of about 60 million lives around the world.
1201: Syrian earthquake
In July 1201, Egypt and Syria were shaken by an incredibly powerful earthquake that left unprecedented destruction in its wake.
Its epicenter was in the southwest of Syria, but seismic waves reached Mesopotamia, Sicily and Egypt. In the eastern Mediterranean, almost every city has suffered from this disaster, the power of which is estimated by modern experts at 8 points on the Richter scale. In total, 1,000,000 people died as a result of the "earthquake". Geologists believe that the reason for such strong tremors is a fault that has passed along the bottom of the Dead Sea.
541: Justinian's Plague
Eight centuries before the Black Death, such a deadly disease swept the world that historians assigned it the status of a pandemic - a world epidemic. It covered all of Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and, of course, Europe. The culprits of the tragedy were the already familiar rats and fleas that got from Egypt and the countries of the East to Constantinople in the holds of ships carrying grain. The pathogen (bacillus Y. pestis) enters the blood of a person with a flea bite: in one bite, the carrier can transmit up to 24,000 bacteria, although only 3 are enough for infection.
At the height of the epidemic, the plague claimed 10,000 lives a day. There were so many dead that they did not have time to bury them - they were simply piled up on the streets, as a result of which the corpses began to rot and the disease spread even faster. Epidemic foci recurred for another 200 years after its extinction, although the level of toxicity became weaker over time.
536: worst year ever
Amazing, right? How can you compare the middle of the 6th century with massive epidemics and devastating cataclysms? However, scientists recently came to the conclusion that this particular year was the worst in the entire history of mankind. What is the reason for this decision?
Historian and archaeologist McCormick, who leads the Harvard Human Past Science Initiative, is confident that "This year was the beginning of one of the worst periods in history." It's hard to disagree with this: a mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East and part of Asia into pitch darkness - for 18 months, both day and night, there was impenetrable darkness outside the window. The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote that "the sun emitted light without brightness, like the moon, throughout the year." During this time, temperatures dropped to 1.5 ° C, occasionally rising to 2.5 ° C - the coldest decade in the past 2,500 years. It was it that became the beginning of global climate change, which has become a fertile ground for all cataclysms and epidemics of the coming centuries.
In the summer, snow fell in sunny regions of China, and a famine gripped Ireland due to crop failure. According to various estimates, the bubonic and Justinian plague destroyed from 1/3 to half of the population of the Eastern Roman Empire, accelerating its collapse. Only recently did scientists finally manage to find out the cause of such disasters. After conducting ultra-precise analysis of ice samples taken from a Swiss glacier, the team of McCormick and glaciologist Paul Majewski of the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute concluded that a massive volcanic eruption in Iceland, which threw out a huge amount of ash into the atmosphere, was the culprit. In 540 and 547, two more eruptions followed, and then the plague came - and Europe plunged into the most real "dark" ages.
As it turned out, volcanic eruptions released sulfur, bismuth and other chemically active substances into the atmosphere. The combination forms a dense aerosol-like veil that reflects sunlight back into space and, as a result, significantly cools the planet. Scientists have found that nearly every cold summer in the past 2,500 years has been associated with volcanic outbursts.