The 20 Worst Events in Human History

It’s hard not to feel compassion for the dinosaurs when you imagine that enormous asteroid crashing into Earth and bringing their reign to a premature end. This catastrophe triggered a nuclear winter and led to the extinction of about 75% of all species. In a way, it was the worst day ever for life on Earth, a day that shifted the course of evolution toward mammals—and ultimately toward us.

Not only did everyone suddenly find themselves penniless for an entire decade, but you couldn’t even check your phone to see how your stocks were doing. In those difficult times, your entire fortune could vanish overnight. We’ve learned a thing or two about how banks work so we don’t repeat that mistake.

Don’t mess around with unstable reactors, unless you want to fry your employees and create a no-go zone for thousands of years. The radiation caused an entire region of Europe to fear its own clouds. It was a real economic and social nightmare.

Even though it wasn’t a war, this plague was undoubtedly a microscopic invasion that succeeded in decimating a large portion of the world’s population. In the 14th century, life was a real gamble every time you stepped outside or spoke to a neighbor. The social upheavals that followed actually helped bring an end to feudalism, proving that even a tragedy of such vast proportions can have surprisingly positive repercussions.

About 74,000 years ago, a volcano in Indonesia erupted with such ferocity that it nearly led to the extinction of the human species. The sky remained dark for years, and the sudden drop in temperatures caused a genetic bottleneck, traces of which can still be found in our DNA today. We are fortunate that our ancestors were resilient enough to survive that volcanic winter without any modern equipment.

In 1952, in London, fog mixed with pollution created a yellow haze that killed thousands of people and lingered for several days. You could actually see the smog in the air, so much so that it was impossible to breathe without noticing it. This event had such a striking visual impact that it completely revolutionized traffic regulations.

As if the drought weren’t enough, we decided to farm the prairie land improperly, causing dust storms that blew at 160 km/h. For years, the topsoil blew away across the Great Plains while farmers watched helplessly as their land disappeared. No one wants to repeat that mistake, which is why we regulate our agricultural operations.

A single fungus managed to destroy an entire country’s main source of food, leading to a decade of famine and mass migration. Millions of people were forced to leave their homes simply to find something to eat, which explains why there is such a large Irish diaspora in the United States today. This serves as a grim reminder of what happens when an entire society depends on a single crop.

Say goodbye to air travel aboard those large, luxurious zeppelins, which literally caught fire in front of a room full of journalists. This disaster was so shocking that people lost all confidence in them and stopped using airships within a few months. Fortunately, we invented the airplane shortly thereafter.

An offshore oil rig exploded, causing the largest oil spill in history. Millions of barrels of oil spilled into the ocean until the leak was finally contained. Not only did this disaster make headlines on the evening news, but it also affected hundreds of kilometers of coastline and ocean.

The world was recovering from World War I, but that was when this terrible flu emerged, claiming more lives than the war itself. From 1918 to 1920, the Spanish flu spread faster than newspapers could print about it and infected the entire world. Healthcare professionals still rely on the lessons learned from that pandemic today.

In 1815, Mount Tambora erupted and literally caused global temperatures to drop for an entire year. Frost was observed in New York in the middle of summer, and crop yields were poor. It was precisely in the wake of these events that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein during the “Year Without a Summer.”

In 1666, a small fire that started in a bakery quickly spread and ravaged the wooden heart of one of the world’s largest cities. When the flames were finally extinguished, most of the medieval city had disappeared, leaving thousands of people homeless. The silver lining of this tragedy was the city’s complete reconstruction, with wider streets and buildings made of brick rather than flammable wood.

This disaster, which occurred in China in 1976, was one of the deadliest earthquakes ever recorded, leveling an entire industrial city in a matter of seconds. Since it occurred in the middle of the night, most people were caught completely off guard while they were sleeping. It sparked a global push for stricter building codes to ensure that buildings could actually withstand seismic activity.

A pesticide factory released gases into the atmosphere, poisoning thousands of people, because local residents had never been warned. This incident occurred in India and continues to affect the residents of Bhopal to this day. Safety standards have been revised for international companies operating in developing countries.

Known as the “Great Extinction,” this event wiped out approximately 96% of all marine life and 70% of land animals long before the emergence of humans. Massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia likely triggered an uncontrollable greenhouse effect that baked the planet from the inside out. Life on Earth had to practically start from scratch after this massive environmental collapse.

An undersea earthquake triggered a series of massive waves that struck the coasts of several countries with almost no warning. It was a terrifying demonstration of the ocean’s power that caught both tourists and residents off guard. In the wake of this tragedy, the international community mobilized to establish a much more effective early-warning system for the entire Indian Ocean region.

Literally, all the civilizations of the Mediterranean collapsed all at once around 1200 B.C. The unthinkable happened, and all the progress we had made came to a halt. It would take humanity hundreds of years to reach that level of technological progress again.

Believe it or not, there was a time when oxygen was actually a deadly poison for almost all living things on Earth. Tiny bacteria began producing it as a byproduct, which eventually wiped out existing life forms and transformed the atmosphere forever. While this was a catastrophe for the organisms of that era, it is nevertheless the sole reason we have enough air to breathe today.

An oil tanker spilled millions of liters of crude oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska, a region that is, so to speak, someone’s backyard. The oil-covered beaches and wildlife sparked a public outcry, visible even from space. It was in the wake of this oil spill that double-hulled ships were developed.