Killing Masses of Humans: Disease, Drought, Famine and Climate Change Can Result in End of Civilizations

The apocalypse already happened

People who believe an apocalypse — either nuclear, environmental, or religious — is coming in the future should study history to learn that it already happened in the 1300s through the 1500s, when Europe lost half its population, Asia lost 25 million to the plague and North America lost 90 percent of its Indigenous population to smallpox. It is hard to imagine a more devastating apocalypse than that.

One could also argue that an apocalypse happened in the 20th century: more than 875,000 died in World War I; between 70 and 85 million died in WWII; an additional 19 to 28 million died in war-related disease and famine; more than 35 million died in 20th century genocides. 

From the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 to Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 is generally considered the European Middle Ages. Many scientists also believe this was the period of the little ice age.

At least 50 percent of children died before the age of five, and child marriages were not uncommon. Human lives were generally short and full of misery, dying before age 40.

Plagues and climate change in Europe created social anxiety, and sparked hunts for witches who had cast spells or curses on a community. This was one way humans tried to explain the fearful things that were happening to them — crop failures, famine, war, disease, the Protestant Reformation, the Little Ice Age, the condemnation of Catholicism, and the closing of nunneries. If sorcery, a curse, or witchcraft could explain these terrifying events, then you’d have someone to blame.

Origins of Witch Hunts? Are We Still Ferreting Out and Persecuting Witches?

One of the large questions of history, Green asks, is whether “war leads to instability,” or “instability leads to war.” The answer is