In the fall of 1347, 12 ships arrived at the Italian port of Messina carrying desirable
trade goods from the Black Sea region, as well as another, much less desirable cargo
- the Bubonic Plague.
Onlookers were horrified to find that most of the sailors on board these ships were dead,
and the rest were gravely ill, covered in disgusting black boils that were oozing blood
and puss.
Authorities quickly banished the ships from port, but it was too late - the incredibly
contagious disease quickly ripped through the city, and eventually, throughout all of
Europe.
All across the continents, people were struck with horrible symptoms - first, painfully
swollen lymph nodes and grotesque boils, quickly followed by fever and chills, vomiting and
diarrhea, and debilitating aches and pains.
Perhaps mercifully, death would quickly follow the onset of symptoms for most people who
caught the dreaded disease.
People in the 14th century had no clue about how diseases spread, making containing the
plague next to impossible.
It was commonly believed at the time that you could catch the disease through your eyes
by looking at a person as they died, leading many to abandon sick family members to die
a horrible, lonely death.
Treatments were equally barbaric and ineffective - bloodletting, boil lancing, the burning
of herbs and vinegar baths were used to attempt to treat the sick, with little success.
As the death toll mounted and the bodies began to pile up - literally - huge pits were dug
to bury the dead.
One Italian historian wrote that layers of bodies were stacked on top of each other in
these mass graves “just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese.”
It was also commonly believed that the plague was a divine punishment from god, so many
tried to earn back his favor by killing heretics - thousands of Jews were massacred as the
plague raged throughout Europe.
Flagellants were also a common sight - groups of people would travel from town to town,
where they would perform gruesome and public acts of penance, such as beating themselves
with a leather whip tipped with pieces of sharp metal.
The worst of the outbreak eventually subsided, likely due to a lack of new victims.
Within a 5 year period, the Black Death claimed the lives of an estimated 20 million Europeans
- up to 1 third of the population.
The plague never really went away, though authorities learned important lessons that
would help contain future outbreaks.
Sailors arriving at Italian ports were subjected to a new precautionary measure - a period
of 40 days of isolation on board their ship before they would be allowed into port.
This was known as a quarantino, and it is the origin of the term quarantine that we
are all too familiar with today.
Although no outbreak has ever been as terrible as the Black Death of the 14th century, there
are still an estimated 1,000 cases of Bubonic Plague around the world each year.
Plagues may be terrifyingly effective at killing humans, but we don’t need the help of mother
nature to destroy one another.
Humans had been fighting each other since the dawn of time - war itself was nothing
new, but this particular war was unlike any that had come before it.
New military technologies and strategies led to unprecedented death and carnage, and forever
changed the face of war during this worst time to be alive.
World War 1 began when the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, plunging
all of Europe into war in 1914.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire - the Central Powers - faced
off against the Allies - Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United
States.
The violence began almost immediately, with German forces marching through Belgium and
into France, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake.
Once the Germans came face to face with Allied forces in France, both sides dug in - literally.
They each built mazes of long, narrow trenches that marked the landscape like a jagged scar
along the Western Front, and hunkered down to fight brutal, bloody trench warfare.
Life in the trenches was miserable.
Soldiers on the front lines would spend weeks at a time in the trenches, constantly crouching
to avoid enemy fire, and battling the ever present threat of death.
The trenches were often filled with mud and infested with rats, which would scurry over
soldiers as they tried desperately to catch some sleep in their tiny dugouts.
Soldiers battled the elements, as well as ailments like trench foot, an infection that
would cause the tissue of the foot to die and could result in amputation, or Trench
mouth, a painful infection of the gums.
Wearing uncomfortable gas masks made it nearly impossible for soldiers to breathe, and they
provided only marginal protection against the latest in war technology - chemical weapons
like mustard and phosgene gas, which burned the eyes, nose, mouth and lungs, and could
cause a painful, suffocating death at high enough doses.
As bad as conditions were in the trenches, it definitely beat being ordered “over the
top”.
Trench warfare involved sending waves of soldiers, armed with rifles and bayonets, over the walls
of the trench and into the dangerous no-man’s land between the lines.
As they rushed towards the enemy’s trenches, jumping from crater to crater and dodging
barbed wire, they would face the risk of being mowed down by machine gun fire, or being blown
to bits by an artillery shell.
If by some miracle they managed to survive the meat grinder of No-Man’s Land make it
to the other side’s trenches, they’d be forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat, where
it was either kill or be killed.
Trench warfare was incredibly brutal and deadly, producing astoundingly high numbers of casualties
- as many as 300,000 men lost their lives at the 1916 Battle of the Somme alone.
By the time the war ended with Germany’s surrender in 1918, World War 1 had claimed
the lives of at least 16 million soldiers and civilians, and left a further 21 million
injured.
Millions of men would spend the rest of their lives dealing with the long-term effects of
exposure to gas, like severe burns, light sensitivity and breathing difficulties.
Thousands others would have limbs amputated, and countless numbers of veterans would struggle
with shell shock, or PTSD.
An estimated 1 in 10 soldiers who saw action in World War 1 was killed, and the hardest
hit were France and Germany, who had each sent up to 80 % of their 18-49 year old men
into war.
To add insult to injury, just as the war was winding down, the Spanish Flu outbreak erupted
in 1918.
The deadly and extremely contagious flu virus spread quickly through the front, the hospitals
and military supply lines, eventually spreading through the entire globe and killing anywhere
between 20 and 50 million more people who had just lived through a brutal war.
Between the unprecedented carnage of war and the deadly destruction of a global pandemic,
1918 was definitely one of the worst times to be alive.
As if living through the unimaginable carnage of World War 1 and the Spanish flu wasn’t
bad enough, before long many survivors would be forced to live through yet another of the
worst times to be alive...
Less than a generation after the end of World War 1 - the war that was meant to be “the
war to end all wars” - fighting once again engulfed Europe in 1939.
As the Nazis ravaged Europe, the U.S. faced increasing pressure to join the war on the
side of the Allies - Great Britain and France.
They held off, until 1941, when Japanese pilots bombed the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii.
The U.S. joined the war, and the Allies managed to turn the tide of war in their favor, forcing
the Nazis to surrender in May 1945.
But even after the end of the war in Europe, Germany’s ally Japan refused to back down.
All throughout the war, the U.S. had been in a heated arms race against Nazi scientists
to develop the world’s first atomic bomb, and on July 16, 1945, American scientists
secretely tested the product of their work in the New Mexican desert.
With the world’s first functional nuclear bomb in their hands, and Japan still refusing
to surrender, the U.S. decided to use their next test to teach Japan a lesson, and exact
some revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Just after 11 A.M. on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber flew low over the Japanese city
of Hiroshima.
As it passed over the dense center of the city, the plane unleashed it’s deadly payload
- a 9,000 pound uranium-235 atomic bomb named Little Boy, which was delivered by parachute.
It detonated 2,000 feet over the city with the force of 15 kilotons of TNT.
The resulting blast was so powerful that everything within 5 square miles of the epicenter was
completely vaporized.
Outside the zone of total destruction, shockwaves toppled buildings and started raging fires,
and thousands were crushed or burned to death.
In total, the blast immediately killed at least 80,000 innocent Japanese citizens, and
many more would later die agonizing deaths due to radiation exposure.
When the Japanese Emperor still refused to surrender in the face of such unprecedented
killing power and cruelty, the U.S. doubled down - 3 days later, another bomb was dropped
on the city of Nagasaki.
Fat Man, a plutonium bomb, instantly killed another 40,000 people decimated the city,
and left thousands more suffering from the deadly effects of radiation exposure.
Over the coming days and weeks, 10s of thousands more died from acute radiation poisoning - as
the radiation destroyed their digestive tract and bone marrow, they would experience intense
nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, blistering and peeling skin, and ultimately an agonizing
death as their blood cells died and their internal organs hemorrhaged.
The bombings left lasting, long-term impacts, too, including permanent disfigurements, an
increased risk of reproductive issues, birth defects and cancer for those exposed.
The bombings would mark the first and only time that nuclear weapons have been used in
war - and hopefully it stays that way.
Marking the dawn of the threat of nuclear annihilation, there’s no doubt that 1945
was one of the worst times to be alive.
There is plenty of history to choose from when it comes to choosing the worst time to
be alive in Europe or Asia, but surely this has got to be the worst time to be alive in
America...right?
Actually, there have definitely been worse times to be alive here, too…
Christopher Columbus arrived in the Bahamas in 1492 and undoubtedly changed the continent
- and the fate of its native peoples - forever.
Columbus’ discovery set off a tide of European exploration of the New World, and made it
one of the worst times to be alive for the people who had called North America home for
centuries.
Violence between settlers and locals was not uncommon, and the locals were frequently outmatched
against advanced European weaponry like steel swords and guns - brutal massacres of entire
tribes were tragically frequent.
Settlers also brought with them deadly diseases, which the locals had no immunity against,
and widespread outbreaks decimated local populations, at times killing up to 90% of those infected.
As more and more Europeans arrived to settle in the New World, native populations were
unceremoniously - and often violently - kicked off of their traditional lands, a terrible
trend that continued for centuries after the first Europeans arrived.
These are just a few of the many contenders for the worst time to be alive in human history.
There are plenty of other options - like London in 1666, with yet another plague that killed
up to 1 in 5 Londoners and the Great Fire of London that destroyed 80% of the city.
Or consider how terrible it would have been to be alive in France in 1793, during the
chaos and violence of the French Revolution, or in Russia in the 1930s, at the height of
Stalin’s Great Purge and widespread famines.
Looking even further back, it would have been terrible to live through the fall of Rome
in 476, witnessing the once mighty empire crumble and seeing the city sacked by barbarians.
The year 536 AD might have been the worst time to be alive, as a volcanic eruption created
a great cloud of ash and dust that blocked out the sun for a full 18 months.
If you thought this video was fascinating, be sure and check out our other videos, like
this one called “What If A Kamikaze Pilot Survived?”, or perhaps you’ll like this
other video instead.