Talk:List of anthropogenic disasters by death toll

Mexican Revolution

I cannot believe the bloodiest war ever fought on the Western Hemisphere is not listed. It lasted between 1910-1920 and about 1 million people were killed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.19.202 (talk) 01:28, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Estimates of the numbers of deaths caused by the Mexican Revolution vary, as you can see here: [1]. Some go as low as "half a million", some as high as "2 million". But since the lowest estimate is under 1 million, I think it does not qualify to be on the list before other wars, which had a bigger death toll, are listed.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 18:20, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

The casualty estimates for the Iran–Iraq War vary between and 400,000 and 2,000,000, yet it is listed on the article. Therefore, I think the Mexican Revolution should be included as well.

Dirty War, and Conquest/Colonization of the Americas

Both of these are listed in teh genocides/alleged genocides section, but I have some doubts about the appropriateness of these.

Regarding the Dirty War, was that really genocide? Was in not just a particularly bloody political oppression?

Regarding the conquest of the Americas, I have no doubt that many genocides and potential genocides took place. But is it accurate to treat all these as one genocide? Given that neither the native Americans nor the European invaders were a single people, and the conquests took place over several centuries often with various shifting alliances. IMO, lumping all these together would be like combining the figures for the Mongles, Timurids, Huns, etc into one huge "genocide of settled peoples by Eurasian steppe nomads". Or, for a more recent and perhaps more comparable example, combining all the European invasions/colonizations of Africa into one. 62.172.108.23 (talk) 12:34, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

If it's called a genocide by a reliable source, it gets into the table. Re the Dirty War and so on, we used to have a separate section on mass killings that didn't fall into the category of genocide but one user repeatedly deleted the section and I got sick of arguing for its inclusion. Gatoclass (talk) 16:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Dirty War was classified by some as genocide, therefor it should be included.[2][3] See also genocides in history.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 14:46, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, if the Diry War classifies as a genocide, I think the period of the Colombian history known as "La Violencia" (1948-1962) would also classify, as both were cases of a government trying to get rid of the political opponents. Death estimates for the violence range between 200,000 and 300,000. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm#Violencia

You have a point there. La Violencia even has a larger death toll. However, what historians define it as genocide? I have trouble finding any. In case of Dirty War, we at least have indictments and binding verdicts defining it as genocide, though it remains a disputed matter.[4]. But even that gives it more credibility for defining it as genocide than a conflict that does not have anything defning it as such. We have Victoria Sanford, but she refers to a different La Violencia, in Guatemala.[5]. We must be careful about such things - we can not just label a conflict a genocide just like that. It has to be labeled by experts, historians, lawyers, not by us. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 12:06, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is a source referring to Colombia as a genocidal society.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.19.194 (talk • contribs) 21:26, 19 August 2010

All right, Irving Louis Horowitz places it as a "genocidal society". Any other author, to at least have two (as to not be only one author who thinks it is a genocide)?--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 17:23, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Here you go: Encyclopedia of Genocide.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.1.167 (talk • contribs) 00:12, 22 August 2010

Please sign you posts with 4 tildes ~~~~ it will automatically be changed into a user-id or ip-address and time stamp.

AFAICT neither of the given sources unequivocally call it a genocide. In the first source please quote a specific sentence (as I could not see it) and the second one cites a page containing a list of democides not genocides and list it as "La Violencia massacres", not specifically naming it a genocide. -- PBS (talk) 07:19, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok. I give up. I understand poor Colombian peasants may not be as good looking as Argentinians, nor is well connected as the Armenian diaspora, nor as fashionable for celebrity adoption as Rwandans. Anyway, for what's worth, the two books mentioned above ("Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder" and "Genocide Encyclopedia") both mention Colombia's La Violencia period, so I think it is fair to assume that their authors have at least implicitly accepted that what happened in Colombia between 1948 and 1960 is tantamount to genocide. I cannot find another word to describe security forces and the paramilitary units known as Chulavitas opening wombs, bayoneting fetuses, feeding children to dogs, cutting testicles an ears, raping women in front of their families, and killing men with trademark methods such as the "Colombian necktie", the "T-shirt cut" and the "vase cut."—Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.19.198 (talk • contribs) 18:53, 23 August 2010

Well, if it makes any difference to you, if what you described above really happened, then I also regard La Violencia as a genocidal act. Unfortunately, there are simply too few experts or publications that mention it as such. Yet it does not mean that the view may not change sometime in the future. Maybe someone like you or some historians will start publications that officially regard it at such and then it will be included in the list for the future generations.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 11:18, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Other human-made disasters

While I agree that what happend in the Congo was a human disaster, it is no up to us to define it as such, to do so without a source is OR. -- PBS (talk) 07:25, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I have given the section name a tweak. Gatoclass (talk) 08:37, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Talking about crimes from the "rubber boom" days, I think the attrocities committed by Julio Cesar Arana and his Peruvian Amazon Company against the Putumayo natives should also be included on the list. The case made all its way to England, where it was exposed by Sir Roger Casement to the House of Commons. Estimates of the dead toll varies between 10,000 and 30,000 huitoto and other Amazon natives. Here is an academic sourceand a good articledrawing comparisons with the Congo atrocities, which by the way Sir Roger Casement also investigated. Long life to Ireland!

Kamikaze, ritual suicide?

I think that classifying the Kamikaze pilots as "ritual suicide" is odd, given that it was part of an overall war strategy. In order words, they didn't commit suicide just for the sake of it (as one would expect in a ritual suicide) but as a way to produce as many enemy casualties as possible. Otherwise, we might need to add the Palestinian and Al-Qaeda suicide bombers as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.19.194 (talk) 00:38, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The table of casualties in 'Wars and armed conflicts'

I do not understand the first row in the table: "World War I + II, Jews exterminated >100 million white christians}}[1]". Further, the reference [1] is to some article about Hitler possibly being Jewish...?

Maybe one is simply meant to edit things which seem incorrect but this is my first activity on Wikipedia so I am treading carefully. SkinnyMonkey (talk) 21:12, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

You don't even need to try to understand it, it's nonsense. World War I and II are already in the table and there is no need to merge them together like the author did, they are not a part of one and the same conflict. Someone added it arbtritraly for his/her own point of view of the world. It's not even an event that's named in the table, it's just some several events glued together. I will remove it.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 07:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Crusades and Muslim conquests

The Crusades were a reaction to 400 years of Islamic conquests. Is there no best guess as to how many lives were lost in the 400 years of Muslim conquests leading up to the Crusades? I would have to imagine that the 400 years of conquests of the Persians, Byzantine Empire, Spain, France, Sicily, Southern Italy, etc...would have created a very high death toll, yet I have never seen any estimates anywhere as to what that death toll might be. I figured when I saw one for the Crusades, it would be appropriate to have one for what sparked the Crusades. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.106.223.36 (talk) 09:09, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

You probably mean this: Muslim conquests. The Crusades were terrible and deserve to be on the list. As for the Muslim conquests, I do not know of any death toll estimates, there for we can not give any just like that. --Justice and Arbitration (talk) 10:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that lumping the crusades into a single bunch is misleading, given that they consisted of separate campaigns, between different adversaries (the 4th crusade was even launched against Christians!) over a 200-year period. Otherwise, we would need to group WW1, the Russian Civil War, the Greek-Turkish War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, WW2, and the Chinese Revolution into a single war as well, as they were in one way or another consequence of Japanese-German imperialism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.87.19.222 (talk) 01:02, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Not really. If you read the intro of the crusades here on Wikipedia, it says: "The Crusades were a series of religiously sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Western Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291." Ergo, the general consensus is that it encompasses all the conflicts from 1095 to 1291.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 11:15, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Expulsion of Germans after WW2

The source for high estimate for German expulsion killings ([[6]]) actually talks about historians exaggerating number of killings for political reasons. Example: "Mit mehr als zwei Millionen, so behauptete der Historiker Ingo Haar, sei diese Zahl seit Jahrzehnten viel zu hoch angesetzt, aus politischen Gründen. Tatsächlich seien 500.000, vielleicht 600.000" - translated: "more than 2 milion as asserts historian Ingo Haar is highly exaggerated for political reasons. Actual number may be 500.000 perhaps 600.000". It's like when reliable sources are talking about existence of Holocaust-deniers they are not in any way backing denial of holocaust itself! -Meson 9:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.177.169.200 (talk)

All right, I will replace it with this source:[7].--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Deluge question

In the wars section, it is claimed that the death tol for Deluge is 3,000,000. But the source is only this[8], a Polish book that does not state any number on the given internet page. Is there anyone who can independently confirm that it is really written in that book?--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 18:15, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. harej 02:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

---

List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll → List of wars and disasters by death toll — This article was move in a bold move on the 4 September this year by Twinsda "moved List of wars and disasters by death toll", with AFAICT no discussion on the talk page, I think the old name is better: It is shorter and more likely to be searched for. -- PBS (talk) 02:00, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - as things stand, the proposed article title would be inaccurate - natural disasters are not included in the lists. I think it might arguably be more useful to expand the article so it did include them, then a much more generic name would be possible.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:22, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment Neither option reflects the content of the article. I think whether or not some of the content is anthropogenic is highly debatable, particularly the Famine and Other human made mass mortalities sections. --Labattblueboy (talk) 13:36, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support - the old title sounds better to me. Also, the term "disaster" doesn't necessarily mean "natural event". In the article disaster, it says: "A disaster is a perceived tragedy, being either a natural hazard or man-made catastrophe.".--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 12:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - not because I think the current article name is appropriate, because I don't. However, the old name is also inappropriate, because deliberate mass killings like genocide etc. are not "disasters", a word that implies accidental or unintentional causation. I have previously suggested the article be moved to "List of wars and manmade mass mortalities by death toll", or just "List of manmade mass mortalities by death toll", and I still think either of those would be a more appropriate name. Gatoclass (talk) 07:08, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

An Shi Rebellion

The list places the An Shi Rebellion as resulting in 33 million - 36 million deaths. As the article on this topic notes, however, this decline in the registered population did not necessarily result from actual deaths, but rather from a break-down in the census system. I am not aware of any more accurate estimates on the true number of deaths, and it's possible none are available. Still, I wonder if there is a way to reflect the controversy. Homunculus (duihua) 06:30, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The article notes it, but does not bring a source. If a source is available, I say write it inside the ref tag. --Muhandes (talk) 18:40, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

World population

I think this lists would had more meaning if it were included the percentage of the World's population that died because of each disaster, because even if the number of people that died in the Mongol Conquests and in WW2 are similar, in the last there were five times more people. At least some approximation to the world population at each time would give the perspective.

Done. It really gives a new perspective to the subject. Some smaller ones were less than 0,1% of the World's population, but some were big, like An Shi Rebellion, which apparently killed off 1/6 of human kind.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I have a couple problems with this. First, as noted in the section immediately above this one, the high-end estimate associated with the An Shi rebellion does not refer to deaths per se; the majority of the decline in the registered population at the time was instead caused by the break-down of the census system. But it seems that you used the high-end estimates (which, as the An Shi example illustrates, can be quite far from the true number) in accounting for the % of world population that was killed. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to provide the range? Also, what did you use to estimate the total world population at the time?

If you can answer or resolve these questions, that would be good, but I am somewhat unsettled by this idea for another reason. Citing the % of world population killed turns these disasters into little more than fascinating historical artifacts. The human suffering associated with large-scale disasters does not diminish as the total world population increases. Unsigned poster above wrote that the tables would have more "meaning" if this figure is included. Meaning to whom? In what sense? Certainly, when one loses a son or a brother to genocide, the "meaning" associated with that injustice is not conditional upon what fraction of the world population he represented. There is something perverse about this...Homunculus (duihua) 04:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I will provide a range for the An Shi Rebellion. But then again, its range is somewhere between 33 and 36 million killed, which isn't such a huge difference. I used World population estimates, which in itself gives a table of population estimates for almost every Century.

Obviously that human suffering is not bound by the percentage of the total World population killed - a Georgian who lost his brother in a relatively small war, like the 2008 South Ossetia War, is suffering equally as strong as lets say someone who lost his brother in the An Shi rebellion - yet it's interesting to have the percentage to give a perspective of how big the toll was.--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Adding 'massacres' or 'politicide'

The current section dealing with Genocides and alleged genocides includes a number of events that do not to meet the legal definition of genocide, as they did not constitute attempts to eradicate distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups; some were purges of political enemies, and others massacres that occurred in the context of war or rebellions. I would not want to remove items from the list, but perhaps we can consider adding politicide to the section title so as to be more inclusive of mass killings of opposition political groups. Homunculus (duihua) 03:57, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

And what exactly are these "events that do not to meet the legal definition of genocide"?--Justice and Arbitration (talk) 17:26, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent

Muslim conquest in the Indian subcontinent should be added. Population decrease of c. 80 million. — goethean ॐ 17:26, 15 February 2011 (UTC) Nevermind; apparently a disputed figure. — goethean ॐ 20:40, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Falun Gong as alleged genocide

Another editor recently added the persecution of Falun Gong to the list of genocides and alleged genocides. They were reverted, however, apparently on the grounds that the low-end estimate for deaths they provided (~3000) is not from a reliable source, but instead comes from Falun Gong organizations (the high-end estimate provided comes from Ethan Gutmann, who is considered something on an expert on the topic). I do not believe that deleting the entire row on Falun Gong was the appropriate course of action, so I restored it with another source, but was reverted again by the same editor, on the same grounds.

There are two questions at issue here, and I would like to solicit other opinion on how best to resolve them.

First, there is a question of whether Falun Gong should be included in the list at all. In my judgement it should; Falun Gong has been classified as a religion, and the Chinese government has openly stated that it is their goal to exterminate it—an objective they have carried out through torture and other forms of coercion. More importantly for our purposes, this opinion has been shared by legal authorities, including in a 2009 ruling in Argentina[9] and another in Spain[10].

The second question is in dealing with the death toll estimates. The high-end estimate strikes me as very high (but then, so do most of the high estimates in this article), but Ethan Gutmann is considered a reliable source on the topic of violence against Falun Gong, and his estimates were arrived at through original research and interviews. The low-end estimate, ironically, seems to be the subject of greater contention because it is provided by Falun Gong organizations. From what I can tell, it reflects the actual number of individuals whose deaths were reported, and each case is accompanied by a description of the circumstances surrounding the death. I could not find another source that confirms this estimate of 3,000, though several sources cite the estimate and ascribe it to Falun Gong sources.

If there is a better low-end estimate available, we should provide it, but even though I'm quite well versed in the relevant literature, I'm not aware of one; most observers simply seem very reluctant to produce a number. In 2008 Amnesty International reported that over 100 were killed[11], but that only for the one year of the reporting period.

Suggestions on how to resolve this would be welcome.Homunculus (duihua) 18:57, 18 February 2011 (UTC)