is 2016 the worst year in human history?

Read a book by Rui Tavares recently that suggested the Lisbon earthquake provoked a sea change in Portugal (and consequently Europe at large) away from viewing natural disasters as the wrath of God against sinners and towards urban planning/prevention strategies.

Voting on Monday, after Austria’s presidential election and Italy’s constitutional referendum.

very tempted to vote 1200 BC for the bronze age collapse but went with spanish conquest of americas/smallpox. not just death but close to a total civilizational extinction, enormous impact on world history. mongol conquests, black death, 1917, 1943 all heavy on doom but there's been more of a sense of recovery.

1864 is a bit of a dark horse, as it also has the end of the American Civil War, and the Paraguayan War didn't really get devastating until later. But it's the year where North America, South America, Europe (Second Dano/Prussian War) and China (Taiping Rebellion) are tearing themselves apart. Wordwide violence for some weird reason.

Personally speaking It's been the worst year of my life, hands down, so yeah 2016

no ilx comps this year, so deffo 2016

2003 - sufjan stevens begins his 50 states project

44 BC was great cos it finally gave stabbing victims a clever dying repartee

Pretty much the beginning of the end in 1440. All downhill from then.

Voted 30 Years War, mostly to remind myself to finish reading that book.

no ilx comps this year, so deffo 2016

― ^ 諷刺 (ken c), Saturday, December 3, 2016 1:25 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

had the idea of an ilx comp of 'the worst songs we can think of'

"Sack" lol

Back, Sack, and Crack of Rome.

thinking of Khia now for some reason

stunning lack of non-western history here - write in vote for 210 BC, the burying of the scholars

upon further reflection i am changing my vote to 200,000 B.C., when homo sapiens sapiens evolved from archaic humans

it's sad, ppl in 1346 never even got to hear Bowie and Prince

ppl rly bad at reading thread title questions

um I factored in human history

it's sad, ppl in 1346 never even got to hear Bowie and Prince

― lettered and hapful (symsymsym), Saturday, December 3, 2016 10:06 AM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so great. we are blessed to have been alive during the reign of Bowie and Prince.

and also, not the plague.

the death count for plagues since 1346 has to be somewhere in the hundreds of millions

http://dailypicksandflicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/how-very-interesting-come-closer-and-tell-me-more-tiger.jpg

1945: hiroshima, nagasaki

this was on the original list but it got deleted and when i reconstituted it i forgot to add it

stunning lack of non-western history here - write in vote for 210 BC, the burying of the scholars

stunning lack? i made sure to include a lot of non-western history.

xxp Up to 500 million from small pox in the 20th century alone.

i did not like this year very much! but i'm lucky i had a great thanksgiving

voted the midnight of the century

2009 - GAPDY

a scholarly friend told me at the British Museum last week that the Alexandria Library thing is mythical/exaggerated

i'm sure it's exaggerated, it's just the perfect fairy tale of regret for bibliophiles and people who hate Christianity

it wouldn't be right if this poll threw up a winner that wasn't caused by humans themselves tbf.

― Le Bateau Ivre

Yeah, I kind of feel like my opinion of "the worst year in human history" falls more toward the revelation of how awful humans are/can be, rather than natural disasters befalling them.

would consider adding 1941 as well for Operation Barbarossa. you could honestly make a case for every year of WW2.

just remembered that as well as some 80s pop stars dying 2016 was the year the Premier League was stolen by a gang of mercenary drug abusers who cheated their way past the noble corinthians who normally contest the title so maybe throw that in the scales

kin right mate

without being too callous about it's humungous death toll, the Taiping Rebellion sounds fucking epic and the Hong Xiuquan backstory is very compelling. Deffo need a good book on this one.

The Crusades were fucking stupid and vile and went on for yonks too and, er, remain current.

After considering the Black Death plumped for 1943.

ppl be fighting other ppl for money or cos different can we be getting over this pls

a scholarly friend told me at the British Museum last week that the Alexandria Library thing is mythical/exaggerated

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius)

a lot of stuff here is exaggerated. nobody even knows for sure _when_ the library was destroyed! (they could have looked it up in a library, but...)

the "burying of the scholars" is dubious in kind of the same way. that's the thing with ancient history- you have a serious lack of reliable sources.

The disasters in communist countries have a sickening irony about them -- alleged "worker's movements" rooted in a political tradition derived from hegel and the enlightenment leading to wholesale extermination of communities -- that make them harder to grasp than the holocaust, which emerged out of an ethno-nationalist movement that, from the start, would have seemed sinister from my own perspective. The disaster of global communism also seems to have crushed any energy human beings might have had for collective action, especially on a global scale, which is a shame as climate change is on the verge of swallowing our fragile civilization if nuclear war doesn't get to us first.

Still voted for the Holocaust.

i don't see why the failure of communism would be any more permanent than the failure of fascism was.

Idk if we need communism, just an understanding that the prerogatives of profit shouldnt outweigh that of survival. That and kill all rich people.

note to future communists: avoid mass collectivisation plans unless you have an amazing food distribution system and shitloads of grain in reserve

and an actual will not to let masses of your population starve to death.

That Platt book on the Taiping Rebellion looks a good un. Could anyone advance a better option?

it's funny to imagine someone in the siege of leningrad or whatever being like "1941 is just the worst!"

"oh god not Paderewski too fuck 1941 man will this year never end"

http://www.biography.com/people/groups/died-1941

this shits on your 2016 celeb death list btw fucking babies

that was angrier than it need be sorry, just found out James Joyce and Jelly Roll Morton have died, had a bit of an Amanda Palmer moment

"Another bombardment? This is definitely the darkest timeline."

read about the Great Leap Forward the other day. 55 million dead, wow that 20th century was evil

not if those 55 million were stood in the way of a beautiful future

I'm dying to get hold of that new Tan Hecheng Cultural Revolution book, but £18.20 for an epub download is more than I'll pay.

2017 thus far featuring less celebrity death but more dystopia

Alan Colmes rip
Fuck you 2017

no

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive

That’s a woke kid’s dream come true

should i run this again with 2020

definitely

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

We're still in April!

rank the past five years in order of terribleness

i'll start

5. 2019 - came out
4. 2017 - moved, got new job, bought house
3. 2020 - ehhhh.
2. 2018 - severe depression (recurrent), treated with tms but overall unpleasant
1. 2016 - dad died, lost job, also it was 2016

or, like, just go on speculating what was really worse, the black death or the an lushan rebellion. not sure i have much of a horse in that race.

Smallpox very likely killed more than 50% of the population of the western hemisphere within a few decades of its arrival. The black death killed nearly half of Europe's population. As bad as this year is shaping up for those of us living through it, covid-19 isn't even close to the head of that class.

Governments around the world in those named single years didn’t respond to massive climate crisis events by relaxing or waiving checks on fossil fuel extraction.