The United Nations estimates that since 2011, 220,000 people have been killed in the Syrian
Civil War, and a million have been injured.
It has been the deadliest conflict to emerge from the Arab Spring.
But in the past decade, the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing insurgency has resulted in
about half a million deaths by 2013.
So, how do these compare to the deadliest wars of all time?
Well, despite the incredibly high modern day death tolls, wars have actually gotten less
and less deadly over time.
Early methods of warfare were incredibly brutal and direct; fighting from trenches, or attacking
each other on foot caused a huge number of casualties.
The First World War was one of the last to see trench fighting, and one of the first
to use advancing technology like tanks.
The results were devastating: over 17 million people were killed in Europe between 1914
and 1918.
Worse yet, World War One occurred during the worst flu epidemic ever, which infected about
half a billion people worldwide.
Roughly 20 years later, World War II broke out.
This was the peak for warfare deaths, and due to its intensity was the single deadliest
conflict in modern history.
An estimated 50 to 85 million people died, which, at the high end, was roughly 1 death
for every thirty people alive on earth.
An estimated 27 million Soviet civilians and soldiers died, many from famine and disease,
but many other killed by the government.
Additionally, the Japanese invasion of China during the war led to 14 million deaths.
This is all on top of the most well known victims of the Holocaust: roughly six million
Jews, 200,000 mentally and physically disabled, and 200,000 Roma people.
The only other rival to World War Two’s death toll doesn’t necessarily fall under
the definition of a war.
It might be more accurate to call it a “conquest”.
The spread of the Mongol empire during the 13th century covered roughly a fifth of the
entire earth’s landmass.
The Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, were able to capture so much territory by completely
destroying nearly everyone and everything they came in contact with.
Estimates of the Mongol death toll reach as high as 40 million, with many regions, like
China, seeing dramatic population losses.
By numbers alone, twentieth century wars were the bloodiest in history.
In just 100 years, 108 million people died from war.
Throughout human history, estimates vary wildly, but some believe as many as a billion people
have died in total during wars.
Luckily, the nature of warfare has become much more focused and localized.
Technology like drones make it considerably easier to minimize collateral damage, and
advances in medicine make it easier to keep people alive.
Although inventions like nuclear weapons may make modern warfare less safe, in fact, the
opposite is true.
Some weapons are completely off-limits in war.
Learn which ones they are in our video.
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