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| Congrats! If you are reading this, you are still alive. For now. |
Note that this isn't just a numbers game. Anyone could sort epidemics by their death toll, using zero effort. This isn't Ed Sorts Everything by Numerical Value. It's Ed Ranks Everything. Instead of simply saying "Black Plague wins because it killed the most," I'm weighing factors of deadliness along with other factors like cultural impact, sociopolitical impact, means of spread, leathality (which is completely different than numbers of people killed, because a REALLY lethal bug will actually burn itself out pretty quick by killing its hosts before it can spread too far), and so on. Also note that I am ranking epidemics, rather than the diseases themselves. Which means there are plenty of famous viruses and bacteria out there that are super deadly, but don't make the list because they're not linked to a specific or notable outbreak. Rabies (for example) is super deadly, but there can't really be a rabies epidemic, pandemic, or outbreak unless suddenly bats go crazy and start biting people left and right.Which could honestly happen any day now, the way the world is going in 2020.
10. The Sweating Sickness (1485 to 1551)
For two-thirds of a century, the Sweating Sickness had recurring outbreaks in Tudor England. Probably the only reason it makes this ranking is because it's such a damn mystery. Compared to some other epidemics, this one didn't kill that many, nor spread worldwide. However, nobody knows what the sweating sickness was. There are ancient outbreaks that remain mysteries, but that was ancient times. The Renaissance is, comparatively, a lot later when science was better-ish (stay with me here, people!). Yet we still can only guess as to what this bug was that caused people to break out into sweat, and then die. One of the most famous victims of the sweating sickness was Arthur Tudor. That name doesn't ring a bell? He was SUPPOSED to be the heir of Henry VII. His death is the reason why history wound up with shitty serial-killer Henry VIII instead. One of the most likely causes is theorized to be the Hantavirus, appearing long before it was ever formally "discovered." Nobody really knew about Hantavirus until the Korean War, when strange outbreaks were killing troops. Before Korea, could it have popped up 400 years earlier? Let's go with a strong "uhh... maybe!"
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| Oh shit! Skeletons! |
There are actually a few different outbreaks called "the Russian Flu," because people are pretty racist and nationalistic and really like to blame other countries for diseases. It's why Trump keeps calling the current outbreak "Chinese." You get the picture. The outbreak I'm talking about here was the flu outbreak that hit the world in 1889 and 1890. And by "the world" I really mean it. This, even before the famous "Spanish Flu" (see below) was the first "worldwide" pandemic. People might say "Russian," but it spread far and wide, killing 1 million worldwide. Some of its victims around the globe included John L. O'Sullivan (American journalist and overall asshole famous for coining the term "manifest destiny" to promote stealing more land from Native Americans), a prince of Belgium (Baudouin), notable Russian mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya, Australian architect John George Knight, and Prince Albert "aka Eddy" of England (the eldest child of the man who would become King Edward VII, thus a potential heir to the throne, who was also batshit crazy, implicated in a homosexual scandal, and has been rumored by some in modern history to be a Jack the Ripper suspect). These names aren't the most famous figures in history, but are meant to show that yeah, this shit was worldwide.
8. Antonine Plague (165 to 180)
Also called "the Plague of Galen," this was an ancient pandemic in the Roman Empire that hit after troops returned home from expeditions to the east. Things got so bad that the plague might have even killed Roman Emperor Lucius Verus, who died in 169. At the time "food poisoning" was blamed, but it might have been this plague. He was actually co-Emperor with a guy named Marcus Aurelius. The same Marcus Aurelius from Gladiator, if that name sounds vaguely familiar even though you're not a history buff. His family name was "Antoninus," hence the name of the plague. For some time, it caused up to 2,000 deaths a day in Rome, and had a mortality rate of 25%. Chinese records also show that it broke out in Eastern Han. The end result? In the Roman Empire, it killed about FIVE MILLION PEOPLE, about 1/3 of the total population of the empire in some areas. So what the hell was this nasty plague? Like the sweating sickness, nobody knows for sure. However, descriptions of the plague indicate that it might have been our good old friend, SMALLPOX! If not that, it might have been measles.
7. Marburg Angola Outbreak (2004 to 2005)
You might not remember this one, but it was SCARY AS HELL. If you don't remember, it's probably just because you're racist and indifferent to the suffering of Africa. Just kidding (maybe). Seriously though, if you missed this one, it is because it "only" infected 252 people. Why would an outbreak of less than 300 people be ranked with these others, some of which killed millions? I'll tell you why! Of the 252 people infected, 227 died. Let's run those numbers! Yep! That's a 90% fatality rate. A few years earlier in an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it had a similar 83% case fatality rate. Marburg is scary. Marburg is like Ebola's NASTIER brother. It's a fellow Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (VHF), and is thus related to Ebola and Hantavirus. If this thing really does ever truly outbreak, we are FUCKED. The only saving grace? It has such a high mortality rate, it harms itself by killing its hosts before they can spread.
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| A fun little graphic about BURYING YOUR FAMILY! |
The fact that Marburg and Ebola are closely related is a good reason why they are ranked next to each other. Why is Ebola ranked higher? The answer should be pretty damn obvious, and there is a reason why Ebola is more famous than Marburg, despite the fact that Marburg is deadlier. This outbreak killed 11,323 people. You might recall chaos with airports panicking once they learned passengers passed through from Africa, bands on international travel to Western Africa, and even one person dying in the United States from this (still the only person to die in the US of Ebola). This one was especially nasty, and did horrible things to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. While Marburg is deadlier in theory, Ebola is deadlier in reality because its lesser mortality rate allows it to pass to others with greater ease. Not that it has a low mortality rate. The 2013-2016 outbreak still killed 40% of those who got it, which is horrible. And that "low" rate was thanks to massive quarantines, containment and control efforts, experimental treatments and testing, and trial vaccines. Other Ebola outbreaks before this had fatality rates of 90%. Should you be worried about Ebola? HELL YES. There is a reason why this virus is always on the edge of public awareness, and interests so many. From the late 1970s until the mid 1990s, there were barely any breakouts. Since the mid 90s, Ebola outbreaks have happened nearly every year. How recent was the last one? You're still living in it, buddy! A widespread Ebola epidemic has been hitting the Democratic Republic of the Congo since August of 2018, and continues to this day, with some bleeding (no horrible pun intended) into Uganda as well.
5. Plague of Justinian (541 to 542, with recurrences until 750)
The Roman Empire didn't really "fall" in the way many people thought it did, as it really split into two and a lot of it became the Byzantine Empire, located out of Constantinople. Well, between 541 and 542, Constantinople was completely fucked. As were a number of port cities all through the Mediterranean. At its height, 5,000 people might have died per day in the capital of the Byzantines. A number of historians believe the Plague of Justinian was one of the worst in history, killing somewhere between 25 and 50 million people during two centuries of recurrence. If that is right, and historians' guesses of the world population at the times is right, that means it would have killed between 13 to 26% of the world's population. That sounds a lot like a "test run" of the Black Plague, doesn't it? Well, it actually was exactly that. In 2013, scientists proved that Yersinia pestis was the cause of the Plague of Justinian, which is the very cause of the Black Plague.
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| Yep, this is the pic I'm going with. |
I'm just going to leave three question marks as the beginning point of this one, as it's really hard to define exactly when this global pandemic started. There is some evidence that AIDS outbreaks began in the 1920s, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. The first now recognized case of HIV was identified in the Belgian Congo in 1959. By the early 1970s, it was already worldwide, with cases breaking out in the United States, especially in homosexual communities. It wasn't until the 1980s that people really started to pay attention to HIV/AIDS in any concentrated way, and it was defined as we know it today. Whatever year you want to say that this began as a "pandemic," nobody can deny that it is one, as this monster has killed about 32 MILLION PEOPLE. The fact that antiretroviral therapy was introduced beginning in the mid-1990s helped to lower the expansion of, and number of deaths from, AIDS, though the numbers of deaths continued to rise globally until a peak in 2004. Since then, death rates have declined by 56%, though it is still a huge pandemic. A UN report in 2019 indicated that 37.9 million were still living with HIV, with 1.7 million new infections. In 2018, about 770,000 still died. And while rates are declining in many places in the world, including Africa, they are actually going UP in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. And to any stupid fucking moron who still thinks this is a "gay disease," in 2018, only 17% of new HIV infections came from men who have sex with men.
3. Smallpox and Cocoliztli Epidemics (1520 to 1576)
At first, I wanted to rank one thing that was simply called something like "The Colombian Exchange" or "Native American Contact," but those would stretch the definition of what a an actual epidemic, pandemic, or outbreak is, and instead lump a series of dozens and dozens of different, horrible outbreaks, into one. So instead, I will focus on what is probably the worst of the worst - the concurrent Smallpox and "Cocoliztli" Epidemics that ravaged central Mexico (Aztec and Mayan populations), recurring from 1520 to 1576. These outbreaks were absolutely devastating acts of genocide against the native populations, reducing the population from near 22 million to less than 2 million. That almost meets the literal definition of "decimation." We know about Smallpox for sure, and that hit first in 1520. Soon after came "Cocoliztli," which is a bit more of a mystery. They may have actually been a number of different diseases and viruses, causing high fevers and bleeding. Some theorize that salmonella could be to blame as well. The correct answer is likely that it was a number of different things, considering that the Europeans came over with a cocktail of dozens of different horrible diseases that would go on devastating native populations throughout the Americas until the late 1800's.
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| It's called "fashion." Look it up! |
2. Black Death (1331 to 1353)
Yeah, this is only #2. I'm sorry. This surprises me almost as much as it surprises you. The Black Death. The Black Plague. The Bubonic Plague. It has many names. I don't need to go on at great length about what this is. Most people know exactly what this was. From 1331 to 1353, Yersinia pestis ravaged Europe, Asia and North Africa. In the end, it's believed to have killed between 75 and 200 million. A world population of 475 million actually dropped to about 350 to 375 million after the plague. Estimates of the European population alone indicate that it wiped out 20 to 60% of the entire population. It's hard to know for sure. You might know some of the stories. People thought that it was caused by stuff like "bad air" under the prevalent "miasma theory" at the time. We all know now that it was rats and stinking fleas that spread it around, mixed in with a good dose shitty late Medieval hygiene. You've probably heard the stories about people catapulting plague victims over city walls to spread the disease. This shit was rough. 200 million people dead is ROUGH. The world would never be the same after it. It fundamentally changed western civilization, forever.
1. Spanish Flu (1918 to 1920)
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| Like regular flu, but in a tasty Paella |
1918 Influenza Pandemic (against, incorrectly and jingoistically called "Spanish Flu" by foreign states), is shit-in-pants scary to think about. Remember how everyone was scared a decade ago about the H1N1 Swine Flu? They had reason to. The Spanish Flu was also H1N1. The Spanish flu spread like wildfire, and infected 500 million people around the world, which was about 27% of the world population at the time. Most people say that it killed between 17 million and 50 million people, though some guess that number to be as high as 100 million. Lower estimates of the Black Plague are thought to have killed 75 million, compared to the probable 17 to 50 million people here. So why is Spanish Flu ranked as #1? Because unlike the Black Death, this outbreak truly was worldwide, not just a huge chunk of Eurasia. The aforementioned Russian Flu of 1889 to 1890 was a test run for the flu breaking out worldwide and killing people. The Spanish Flu, and deadly strains of the flu in general, are also insanely scary because people are often (just like they are today) like "oh, well, it's just the flu! Who cares?" You should. The Spanish Flu did not appear to be any deadlier than other strains of the flu around the time, but a shitty cocktail of worldwide malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene, all in the wake of the First World War, created a massive killing machine. This flu killed more people in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 24 years. Unlike the current COVID-19 pandemic, which inspires jokes about killing off the boomers, the Spanish Flu was actually really adept at killing younger, healthier people. In 1918–1919, 99% of pandemic influenza deaths in the U.S. occurred in people under 65, and nearly half in young adults 20 to 40 years old. The Spanish Flu is #1 because something like the Black Plague probably could never be as devastating or lethal as it was in the modern era, given modern medical knowledge and care. A deadlier-than-normal flu though? That could really fuck some shit up, even today.
Stay safe out there, people.
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