15 Deadliest Wars in World History: by confirmed death count

Jul 15, 2016 1:25 AM

15. Second Congo War

2.5-5.4M deaths: Central Africa 1998-2003

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War

14. Thirty Years War

3-11.5M deaths: Europe 1618-1648

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

13. Napoleonic Wars

3.5-6M deaths: Europe 1803-1815

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars

12. Russian Civil War

5-9M deaths: Russia 1917-1922

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War

11. Chinese Civil War

8M deaths: China 1927-1949

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

10. Conquests of Tamerlane

8-20M: Eurasia 1370-1405

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur

9. Dungan Revolt

8-20.7M: China 1862-1877

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungan_Revolt_(1862%E2%80%9377)

8. Conquest of the Americas

8.4-137.75M deaths: Americas 1492–1691

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_colonization_of_the_Americas

7. An Lushan Rebellion

13-36M deaths: China 755-763

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Lushan_Rebellion

6. World War 1

20M deaths: World Wide 1914-1918

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

5. Taiping Rebellion

20-100M deaths: China 1850-1864

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

4. Qing Dynasty Conquest of Ming Dynasty

25M deaths: China 1616-1662

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_conquest_of_the_Ming

3. Three Kingdoms War

36-40M deaths: China 184-280

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms

2. Mongol Conquests

40-70M deaths: Eurasia 1206-1324

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests

1. World War 2

40-60M deaths: Worldwide 1939-1945

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

Sidenote--The Second Sino-Japanses War accounted for 25M of the deaths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War

Humans are lovely.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Conquest of America wasn't a war. That's just ignorant to believe it was.

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

Now rank them by the percentage of world population.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Those WW2 numbers are highly under estimated.The soviets themselves lost almost 50 mil people. Colonization one does not belong. Not 1 War.

9 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

None of these lists ever talk about the Seven Years War which was arguably the true first World War.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

China's really good at killing itself.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

The fact that you didn't list the skeleton war proves this list is bunk.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

me at first image without reading title; wow, that's a lot of dead people for a 15 second war.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Death variance is highly questionable

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

my roommate says you're a portland timbers fan from your username and that is awesome

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

read it as "15 Second Congo War" and wondered how so many people could die in such a short time :/

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I've played enough dynasty warriors to know the three kingdoms war.

9 years ago | Likes 27 Dislikes 0

三国杀

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

I have played a lot of those, that's why I picked the picture I did for the three kingdoms war. DW7 gets the story the best

9 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

LUI BUI

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Funny how we were never taught about Africa's wars at all. Just the 'white men came' part

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

15 Deadliest Wars in World History: by confirmed death count...gives estimates...WHY

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Human population control is a messy business.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I'd really like to see these ranked with time factored in. WWI should be #2 with casualties/year.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

It's hard to imagine a war with as many death counts as WWII happened barely a life time ago.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

How can a margin of 80m deaths be called "confirmed" ? Seems like wild speculation to me.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

I'm gonna get downvoted but I'd like to add that most of those death from the "conquest of America" can be attributed to disease most of /2

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

The Spanish and other Euroes didn't know much about at the time. A lot of it was unintentional but still, that doesn't make it better.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic" - Joseph Stalin

9 years ago | Likes 19 Dislikes 2

could have been his motto

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

He would know, the bastard.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

"If you kill a man, you're a murderer. If you kill many, a conqueror. Kill them all and become a god." - Age of Empires 2

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

You are forgetting black Friday.

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

Think how big of a population China would have now if those wars never happened.

9 years ago | Likes 13 Dislikes 1

Larger population likely would have resulted in more fold shortages and epidemics at some point.

9 years ago | Likes 6 Dislikes 0

Vietnam was 800,00-3.8M

9 years ago | Likes 7 Dislikes 0

Do we have a body count for the War on Drugs? Really curious to see if anyone has those numbers.

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 3

Downvotes? Really? It's a legit question.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Good point. They'll probably say it was just a police action like Vietnam. ;)

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

2nd: 40-70 M , 1st: 40-60 M.....something seeems off, but i can't put my finger on it....

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

I'd say that's because of how much longer the conquests were. 6 years compared to 118.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Wow the 30 years war lasted thirty years, like at the beginning they set a time limit, after 30 years, whoever has the best K/D wins

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Was more of an 80 years war for the dutch though.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

China knows how to war

9 years ago | Likes 123 Dislikes 1

One of the reasons being the way their historic wars were fought (untrained, conscripted masses)

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

also, the Art of War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

In the Three Kingdoms wars the Wu kingdom royalty famed themselves in being descendants of Sun Tzu

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

China has 6 out of 15 with significant contribution in at least 2 other wars and is till the second most populace country in the world.ಠ_ಠ

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

The Taiping Rebellion is also speculated as to why China is so anti-religion.

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

They also have always had a ton of people for most of their history

9 years ago | Likes 43 Dislikes 0

Yeah I was about to say how do they still outnumber us? Sooo many have died

9 years ago | Likes 8 Dislikes 0

They tend to have a couple hundred years between their wars filled with relative peace. Europeans generally only had a few decades at most.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

What's a few dozen million people when you have a billion?

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Brazillion*

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Is that more or less than bazilliongazillionmillion?

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Just so we're clear, the 100mil high count for #8 includes the massive outbreaks of smallpox and other plagues the Europeans had carried -->

9 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 1

with them, and for which the Native Americans had no resistance or immunity. Furthermore, the colonization was a process lasting 400 -->

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

years. It wasn't a war, so much as a series of expansions under the misguided doctrine of manifest destiny.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 0

Many Natives died of European diseases without ever seeing or hearing about any Europeans. Fucking scary to think about.

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 0

You should do one in proportion to total population size. King Phillips war is one not many Americans know about

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

I thought about that, that would be pretty interesting

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

Nor many Europeans either.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

King Phillips war didn't happen in Europe though

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

True, but Europeans were involved.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

RE: Conquest of Americas. If your "Confirmed death count" has a 130 million margin of error, I don't know if "confirmed" is the right word.

9 years ago | Likes 455 Dislikes 11

Re: like, most of these.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 2

There will never really be a confirmed either. Archaeologists are still divided on this. It's near impossable b/c most Natives didn't write

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 0

Neither was it a single war or effort, the timespan count is ridiculous, and most scholars point to disease being the real culler there.

9 years ago | Likes 3 Dislikes 1

Had the same concern.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Lmao

9 years ago | Likes 2 Dislikes 4

I think a death count somewhere between 0 and infinite is pretty much confirmed.

9 years ago | Likes 22 Dislikes 1

Confirmed as in the lower end. There is a lot of variance in some of these wars

9 years ago | Likes 59 Dislikes 6

but its not a war. there were many small wars against tribes and such. Might as well just call ww1/ww2 and everything in between the same

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

Fair enough sir.

9 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 2

war.

9 years ago | Likes 1 Dislikes 0

And 200 years is quite the time span for a 'war'

9 years ago | Likes 107 Dislikes 1

More like genocide, but yeah

9 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 1

You've never played Civilization, I see

9 years ago | Likes 33 Dislikes 1

But a war none the less.

9 years ago | Likes 9 Dislikes 6

Not really though, no.

9 years ago | Likes 4 Dislikes 1

More a series of wars than a war. It's not even the same polities unless you decide to lump all the locals together as generic "natives."

9 years ago | Likes 5 Dislikes 0