Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by asah 2951 days ago
Please consider orders of magnitude - we really do live in peaceful times.

Example: there's far fewer cold war deaths than from traffic accidents, let alone real wars.

WW2 killed 3% of all humanity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

The end of the Han dynasty killed a large percentage of all chinese people.

For perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing-road-users/road-safet...

1 comments

Hm – Consider this piece (you may or may not appreciate the political perspective): https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil...

In brief, it concludes that the US alone (there have been lots of conflicts without any manifest involvement of the US) has been involved since WWII in conflicts causing "the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people".

[Edit] You may also consider the ongoing war in Syria, which is not only exceeding WII in duration already, but also overshadows the total death count of the US in the WWII Pacific "theatre" (161,000 dead, including 111,914 in battle and 49,000 non-battle) by 500,000+ dead (last consensual figure was 470,000, issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research in 2016).