I. Introduction
II. 70 largest (> 100,000 deaths) Disasters in History; (Including wars with > 250,000 deaths.)
III. Significant or recent disasters with fewer than 100,000 casualties. (in chronological order)
    1500 | 1700 | 1900 | 1950 | 1968 | 1970 | 1990 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | Ongoing
Other Links (More detail on earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorism, ...)
IV. Natural Disasters
V. Mass Extinctions

This page is a part time hobby of mine started because I couldn't find similar data elsewhere. It's based on information from encyclopedias, almanacs, media reports and articles and web pages. Many of the death toll statistics are estimates with varying accuracy. I am always finding new data which differs from the original sources, so I can't guarantee it's accuracy.

19th and 20th Century Deaths (Millions)

Type	Specific Occurrences Below *		Other Estimates (a)
	1800- 1899	1900- 2004
Pandemic	10 M	46 M	5-15M per year Disease and Starvation from Hunger and Poverty. (See: Food First) 2.6M/yr. AIDS
Famine(b)	51 M	32 M
Democide (Genocide, Rebellions, ...) *	7.5 M	80 M	180 M in last 200yrs. (d)
Wars	35 M	61 M	60 M Civilian and Military deaths in the 20th century according to Matthew Whites, Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century
Natural Disasters		21 M (Incl. Drought)	World: 250K/yr Drought 50%, Floods: 34%, Windstorms 6%, Earthquakes: 9%, Volcanoes: 0.5%, Landslides 0.3%, Avalanches 0.1% (Source: "The Vulnerable Become More Vulnerable" New York Times Week in Review, Jan. 2, 2005.) Other sources report fewer deaths with earthquakes exceeding floods. US: Heat: 32%, Flood: 22%, Lightning: 17%, Tornedo: 12%, Winter: 9%, Cold: 4%, Hurricane: 3%, Earthquake: 1% (See: US Weather Deaths)
Accidents		500 K	150K/yr Medical Mistakes, 100K/yr Auto Accidents. (c)
Terrorism (1972-2003)		12 K	11K (1980-99 per State Dept.)
Average Population	1.3 B	3.4 B

* Data collection in the 19th century was not as good, so numbers are probably undercounted. (a) Rates/yr. are current, not average over last 2 centuries.
(b) Famine can be caused by Drought, Floods (in the case of N. Korea in 1995), insects and politics (e.g. Ukraine starvation caused by Stalin in 1926-37). The various sources I used were not consistent in categorizing them. For example the 2005 famine in Niger was caused by a combination of drought and a locust invasion.
(c) Accidents in the US:
44-98,000 Medical Mistakes per yr. (Infections in hospitals is largest) (See: Dr. Mercola's page)
42,000 Motor Vehicle deaths (1/3 are alcahol related) (See Cause of Death Stats, Transportation Deaths)
(d) Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book Out of Control: "Global Turmoil on the Eve Of The Twenty-first Century" puts the total between 167 to 175 million people. Professor Rudolph J. Rummel in his book: "Death By Government" gives a total of over 258 million.

US Natural disaster deaths per year 1960-1996: (Src: unl.edu)
flash floods  129     tornadoes   76
lightning      89     hurricanes  31

This page includes all events with more than 100,000 casualties. It also includes significant (recent or historically significant to Americans) events with fewer casualties. Concentration of and increases in population (the world population in 2000 was 10 times what it was in 1600) has resulted in higher death tolls.

Other pages have more information for specific categories. Human against human conflicts (civil wars, genocide, terrorism, ...) details are on the Wars, Battles, Civil Violence & Empires page and the Terrorism and Terrorist Groups page. Matthew White lists "The 25 highest percentages of national populations killed during periods of mass brutality" at his Twentieth Century Atlas Site. There are also Earthquake, Hurricane, Volcano, Tornado and other disaster pages here.
Terrorism data can be found in the following places:
  Major world terrorist attacks: Terrorism page
  Civil Wars and regonal conflicts (e.g. N. Ireland), Arab-Israeli conflict: Wars page.

"Today, few serious students of the subject would put the number of Native Americans north of Mexico at less than 8,000,000 to 12,000,000, while one of the most well-regarded specialists puts the number at 18,000,000."
(Ed.: The population was down to 200-500,000 by the early 1900's.) "

3. Influenza Pandemics

Date	Strain	Deaths
		US	World
1918-19	H1N1 - Spanish Flu	500,000	21-50 M
1957-58	H2N2 - Asian Flu	60,000	1 M
1968-69	H3N2 - Hong Kong	40,000	750 K
1997-	H5N1, H9N2, H7N7, H7N2, H7N3 - Avian influenza (Bird Flu)	none	60

K=1,000, M=Million
Note 1: Some sources report up to 4 Million worldwide flu deaths in 1957-58
See Flu under health.

Natural Disasters with highest death toll since 1750 (M-Million, K-1,000) (excluding drought) Top
See Earthquakes and Volcanoes for dates prior to 1750.

1.	Flood	3.7 M	1931	Yangtze-Kiang River, China
2.	Flood	2 M	1959	N. China
3.	Flood	900K	1877	Huang He (Hwang Ho or Yellow) River N. China
4.	Flood	500K	1939	Honan province China 1
5.	Cyclone, Flood	300-500K	1970	Ganges Delta isles, Bangladesh
6.	Earthquake	255-655K	1976	Tanashan (Tianjin) Earthquake- E. China (8.2)
7.	Earthquake	300K	1850	Sichuan, China
8.	Earthquake, tsunami	225K+	2004	A 9.0 Earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a tsunami which spread over more than 10 countries in SE Asia and NE Africa. Sri Lanka, India, and Indonesia were worst hit. More information.
9.	Earthquake	200K	1927	Xining (Nanshan), China (magnitude 8.3)
10.	Earthquake, Landslide	200K	1920	Gansu (Kansu), China (magnitude 8.6)
11.	Earthquake	142K	1923	Shinsai or Great Quake, Kuato plain, Great Tokyo Fire Japan (8.3)
12.	Flood	142K	1935	Changiyang River, China
13.	Cyclone Flood	138K	1991	Bangladesh. Tropical cyclone
14.	Earthquake	110K	1948	Turkmenistan, Russa (magnitude 7.3)
15.	Volcano, Earthquake, Tsunami	100K	1883	Java (Krakatoa volcano)
16.	Flood	100K	1911	Yangtze River, China
17.	Volcano	92K	1815	Tambora Sumbawa, Indonesia
18.	Earthquake	83K	1908	Messina, Italy (7.5)
19.	Earthquake, Tsunami, Fire	77K	1755	Lisbon, Portugal (c. 8.7)
20.	Earthquake	70K	1932	Gansu, China (7.6)

Deaths 1900-2004
Drought	Floods	Earthquakes	Windstorms	Tsunamis	Volcanoes	Hurricanes
10M	7M	1.9M	1.2M	257K	96K	53K

(Source: "The Vulnerable Become More Vulnerable" New York Times Week in Review, Jan. 2, 2005)

Note: Some people include drought under natural disasters. The table above lists disasters that occur usually unexpectedly over a short period of time.

1. Columbia's China Floods page lists 500 K died in 1938 from floods on the Huang He River, The Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC) page Top 25 Natural Disasters in China lists 500 K died in 1939 in Honan Province from the US Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

US Natural disaster deaths per year 1960-1996: (Src: unl.edu)
flash floods  129     tornadoes   76
lightning      89     hurricanes  31

Little known outside the academic community, he suddenly received much attention when he wrote Death by Government (Transaction, 1994). In the book, Rudolph Rummel analyzed 8,193 estimates of government killings and reported that throughout history governments have killed more than 300 million people--with more than half, or 170 million, killed during the twentieth century. These numbers don't include war deaths!
See Freeman interview of Rudolph Rummel.

See:
At this site: Wars, Battles, Civil Violence, , Insurgencies, Rebels and Empires, Terrorism, Serial Killers, Mass Murderers (Schools, Workplace, Cults, Other), Gangs and Organized Crime, Homicides/Murder, Earthquakes, Hurricane Statistics, Volcanoes, Tsunamis, US Weather Fatalities Solar Flares & Sun Spots, Near-Earth Objects - Asteroids & Comets, US Death Rates (all causes), Cities with the highest murder rate

At Matthew White's Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century: 30 Worst Atrocities of the 20th Century, Minor Atrocities of the Twentieth Century, Ninteenth Century Death Tolls, Highest percentages of national populations killed.

Military History Data Analysis at onwar.com,

List of wars and disasters by death toll at Wikipedia.

At InfoPlease: Disasters , 2004, Worst US, Terrorist, Sports Disasters, Floods, Avalanches and Tidal Waves, Dartmouth Flood Observatory , ...

World's Deadliest Disasters
Disasters at factophile
Most Recent Natural Disasters Were Not the Century's Worst, USGS Says, At FactMonster: Disaster Digest, Sports Disasters
Severe US Weather Fatalities Lightning Tornado Flood from NOAA

Agencies:
National Risk Index for Natural Hazards (NRI) | FEMA.govOffice of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters' (CRED)
International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC-International Training Centre for Aerial Survey*)

Other: Disasters in the United States at Eastern Connecticut State, Tornado Stats at InfoPlease and NOAA, Floods, Fires, Avalanches at avalanche.org Disasters by Continent, Disasters at ThinkQuest, Catastrophe Costs at Insurance Services Office (ISO), Important natural disasters in Central America and the Caribbean since 1970, Serial Killers & Cults, Serial Killers 1970-2002
Cause of Death Stats
Transportation Deaths
Space disasters
U.S. Catastrophe Costs
California Disasters

Volcanoes
About 50-60 volcanoes erupt every year. About half are effusive (lava flows) and half are explosive.
See Volcanoes.

Definitions
From Freedom, Democracy, Peace; Power, Democide, and War at U. Hawaii

* Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.
Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language).
Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes.
Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government.

See also: War Casualties, US War Casualties,
Terrorist Organizations & attacks.

Democide, Genocide and Ethnocide - 1999 estimates
From Balkan Stats by Tony Snow.
persons killed in the Sudan over the past 15 years: 1,500,000
persons killed in Iraq due to sanctions: over 1,000,000
persons killed in Rwanda over the last five years: 500,000
persons killed in Chechnya: 80,000
people dying each day around the world because of lack of water, clothing, shelter, food or medicine: 100,000
________________________
Genocide in the 20th Century

• Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
• Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
• Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
• Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
• Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
• Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
• Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths

------------------------
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, by Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D
We live in a time of unparalleled instances of democide, genocide and ethnocide. The Holocaust, the genocides in Turkey, Cambodia (1975 - 1979), Tibet, & Bosnia, the disappearances in Argentina & Chile, the death squad killings in El Salvador, Stalin's purges, the killing of the Tutsi in Rwanda . . . . and the list goes on.

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Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic
More than two hundred thousands civilian Bosnian Muslims and Croats have been killed since the beginning of the war. atrocities allegedly carried out by Bosnian Serbs: massacre of over 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 ------------------------------ The Real Genocide in Yugoslavia from the Rockford Institute. Ustasha ("insurgent") movement, founded in 1929, was an anti-Serb and anti-Yugosla. In late spring of 1941 dozens of towns and villages throughout Croatia and Bosnia were subjected to terrorist operations in which Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were either murdered on the spot or led away to concentration camps. 350,000 victims by the end of July 1941