GHMUN

Map of Mass Death in Human History

Region

1 million 10 million 50 million ● War ● Mass killing ● Epidemic ● Natural disaster Pinch the map with two fingers to zoom in and separate overlapping circles. Each marker is one representative point among the main theater, the place of origin and where damage was concentrated. Events that spanned several continents, such as world wars or pandemics, are also shown as a single point.

Ranked by deaths

Bars show the estimated midpoint; the number on the right is the estimated range

Timeline by era

Each horizontal line is the span of an event, and the vertical axis is deaths (log scale). The horizontal scale is compressed before 1800. Use the slider below to zoom in on a period.

Event descriptions

The descriptions that open when you click a circle on the map, gathered in one place. Click a title to expand it.

How to read it. Death tolls differ greatly from scholar to scholar. The low and high estimates are often several times apart, and ancient and medieval figures (the Three Kingdoms period, the An Lushan Rebellion, the Plague of Justinian and others) are estimated from population decline, so they may be larger than the real numbers. Many estimates include deaths from famine and disease caused by wars and disasters.

Overlaps and exclusions. Massacres during a war (the Holocaust, the Nanjing Massacre, the National Guard Alliance massacres in Korea and others) overlap with the figure for that war, so adding up all the deaths would count some twice. Famines have mixed causes in policy, war and climate, so they are treated as a separate category and left out (the Great Leap Forward famine, the Holodomor, the Bengal famine and others). Endemic diseases that are always present, such as malaria and tuberculosis, are also left out. For events still under way, the figures are provisional estimates as of 2026.

Sources. Wikipedia List of wars by death toll, List of epidemics, List of natural disasters by death toll, Genocides in history, and the estimate ranges cited in each article, compiled here. This is for comparing scale, not for precise research.

About Atlas of Mass Death

What it is

Map of Mass Death in Human History compares 116 events with estimated deaths of 100,000 or more, using a world map, a ranking and a timeline. The events are 72 wars (civil wars included), 16 massacres and genocides, 14 epidemics and 13 natural disasters, running from the Punic Wars in the 3rd century BCE to wars still under way in 2026. A separate "By battle" tab lists 44 individual battles and sieges, such as Stalingrad, Verdun and the Chosin Reservoir.

How to use it

The size of a circle shows the midpoint of the estimate, and the color shows the type of event. Click a circle to open a panel with the background of the event and the basis for its estimate. Where circles overlap, the smaller one is drawn on top, so you can still pick a small event inside a large circle.
The type buttons and the region menu filter the map, the ranking and the timeline together. Choosing a region zooms the map to that region. Under the map, the era buttons (eight periods from BCE to after 2000, with the 20th century split at 1945) show only events that overlap that period, and "All" shows everything again. The number beside each button is the count of events.
On the timeline, the horizontal scale is compressed before 1800. Further down, "Event descriptions" lets you read the description of every event without the map. Clicking a row in the ranking shows that event on the map.
The vertical axis of the timeline is a log scale, so 100,000 and 100 million fit on one screen. Use the slider below it to zoom in on a period.
In the "By battle" tab, pick a "Parent war" to see only the battles that belong to one war.

Data and method

The figures are compiled from Wikipedia's lists of deaths in wars, epidemics, natural disasters and genocides, and from the estimate ranges cited in each event's own article. Each entry gives a low and a high figure, and circle size and rank use the midpoint of the two. For battles, deaths are rarely counted on their own, so they are compared by casualties: killed, wounded, captured and missing on both sides combined.

Limits and caveats

Estimates can differ by several times from one scholar to another. Ancient and medieval figures often come from declines in census counts, so they may be larger than the real numbers.
Massacres inside a war (the Holocaust, the Nanjing Massacre and others) overlap with the figure for that war, so the totals are not added up.
Famines and endemic diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are not included. The map places each event at a single representative point.
I checked the figures and descriptions of all 160 entries against their Wikipedia articles, but I did not check the original historical sources behind Wikipedia. Use the page to compare scale, and if you find a wrong value, please tell me through the contact page.