Both of these are minor compared to Smallpox.

Smallpox is 10,000+ years old was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths during the 20th century alone. It killed between 20–60 percent of those infected and and over 80 percent of infected children. It caused lifetime issues for ~85% of the survivors including ~1/3 of all historical cases of blindness. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year.

Highlights include the epidemic of 735–737 is believed to have killed as much as one-third of the population. At least seven religious deities have been specifically dedicated to smallpox. By the mid-18th century smallpox was a major endemic disease everywhere in the world except in Australia and in several small islands. In Europe smallpox was a leading cause of death in the 18th century, killing an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five kings. Up to 10 percent of Swedish infants died of smallpox each year,[10] and the death rate of infants in Russia may have been even higher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smallpox

While there are good reasons to lament the many bad things going on in the world today, it's pretty fucking amazing that a disease that kills half a billion people is now described on Wikipedia as:

> Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor.

"Was".

unfortunately it's still around, just not in the wild.

Did not realize the depth of this. I guess I now understand why Europeans had decent immunity to it.. it was that or die.

Starting in the 18th century, people began inoculating themselves in large numbers. You'd do this with pus from a victim who had a mild case of it.

The Wikipedia article on variolation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation) is pretty interesting. Edward Jenner's development of Smallpox vaccination seemed much less revolutionary to me once I learned about Smallpox inoculation/variolation.

When you dig into the history of almost anything, you find a backstory that is missing from the popular story. To me, that makes it more interesting, but I'm a nerdy want-to-kknow-how-it-really-works guy.

Variolation was still risky with a significant risk of contracting the disease and thus death or even starting a new outbreak. So, the vaccine was still a rediculusly huge step forward.

Variolation was still risky with a ~1% risk of death and a significant chance of starting a new outbreak. So, the vaccine was still a rediculusly huge step forward.

So basically Variolation was MySpace, and Vaccination was Facebook?

Took an existing idea, cranked it up a notch, and sold it to the masses?

Great comment. It was truly an indiscriminate killer. I'm reminded of one of those kings -- the Sun King Louis XIV -- who made it to his elderly years. Then one day he has his kingly way with a 12 year old girl who happened to be carrying the disease.

Louis XIV died from a gangrene caused by a combination of gout and syphilis. Not from smallpox.

Ha, you are right. It was Louis XV.

It's been a while since I read French history.

How Louis XV got infected is unknown. There are several theories but not that one. The Parc-aux-Cerfs (place whet he was meeting girls brought there by Mme de Pompadour) was not in use for many years already (since Mme de Berry become his mistress).

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C Mann is a great book about the Americas before Columbus (who arrived in 1492). One of the things it covers (with evidence), is the disease outbreak which killed millions and millions of people.

He's a pop-sci author, so it's half a history book and half a science book ("We know this because of these historical documents, and then because of this scientific evidence)

Stories like this were one of the most interesting things I learned with home schooling. When you are bringing information to your kids to teach them about history, you want it to be accurate so, if you are like me, you try to find a number of sources about major events. And what I discovered was how these events are slanted, sometimes radically so, in service to a particular narrative.

Of the few things we found that were pretty universal, one was that a lot of people died from disease, before, during, and after people from Europe were visiting the American continents (both North and South), and upper class Europeans were often unashamedly racists and classists.

The origin of these appear to be the lack of understanding about diseases (transmission and virality) and our inability to proactively protect ourselves (vaccinate). And the history of feudal warlords favoring 'bloodlines' over individual competence. Often looking at events from the present, with the benefit if hindsight and greater knowledge, its easy to see how things could have been avoided and so it is easy to believe that they weren't avoided due to malice. And taking advantage of that, a number of historians have painted events to look like either malice of their enemies or heroism of their allies, rather than a dispassionate retelling of facts and figures.

Even today we see tragic events quickly contextualized into a conspiracy of shadowy groups with malicious agendas. when those re-contextualized accounts become the only surviving account, we lose a lot of perspective.

The Conquest of Mexico and New Spain, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32475/32475-h/32475-h.htm

That's the bees knees and the cat's pajamas when it comes to the downfall of the Aztec Empire at the hands of Cortes' small band of conquistadores (plus a few thousand Tlascalans and other enemies of the Empire), a first-hand account from one of the conquistadores.

It's all in there: the pious, self-mutilating Aztec priests who practiced human sacrifice, the strange way the Mexicans did warfare and their reaction to muskets and horses, La Noche Triste and Alvarado's Leap, Moctezuma's death at the hands of his captors, Dona Marina, and of course, the deadliest part of it all, the decimation of the Mexican population by smallpox carried by the Europeans.

It's been called the most beautiful story ever told (no link, sorry) and it is. Beautiful, but also tragic, brutal, horrifying, bloody and full of senseless killing and pointless death and destruction.

You might want to read it if you enjoyed New Revelations...

That and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created are great reads.

One of the main points of 1491 was the evidence of disease decimating the Americas even prior to the arrival of Cortes.

I am proud to be an American but ...

We used Germ Warfare to a whole new level vs Native Americans. (Germ warfare was used throughout history AKA throwing dead things into fortifications etc)

We are the only country to have used Nuclear Weapons

But in terms of killing nothing compares to Mosquitoes with them spreading malaria, dengue and yellow fever. Malaria kills 2,700,000 a year.

Biowarfare has a long history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biological_warfar...

Some believe that dead bodies infected with the black plague were catapulted over the walls in the siege of Kaffe.

Re nuclear weapons - the context matters. There were predictions of over 1M allied casualties for an invasion of the Japanese mainland and after the bitter fighting during previous campaigns it seems plausible. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-United-States-attack-Japan... has a great summary of the other factors (Total war, an unwillingness by the Japanese military to surrender, the context of nuclear vs conventional bombing, speculation about future conflicts).

You really should read the debate about the bombing:

- https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

- http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-05/hiroshima-bombing-did-...

Also, the poster above stated a simple fact: no other country has ever used nukes in anger. I don't think it's necessary to contextualize this simple statement.

I'm familiar with it. Personally I don't see any clear or compelling evidence that the bombings did not play a role in ending the war. It's not as if the Allied Commanders had direct access to the inner circle of Japanese leaders at the time. History is never as black and white as some may portray it - I don't doubt that there were many complex reasons for the decision to use the bombs and the decision made by the Japanese to surrender.

Personally, I also think it's a bit ridiculous to be ashamed of the fact that the US dropped two nuclear weapons as part of ending a global war. These were primitive weapons compared to what is available now. Were they any worse than the firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden? Any worse than the atrocities in Nanking? Worse than the Holocaust or actions of the Einsatzgruppen? What about the Katyn Forest? Comfort Women? The treatment of POWs? WW2 was full of horrible events that every nation could be ashamed of but let's not forget the context of the conflict and who the aggressors were.

I live in the US but I'm not taking credit for the smallpox thing. That was the doing of a few people at most, and I'm not one of them. I don't think it was even official policy, so my great grandfathers vote can't be implicated either.

I get very tired of the collective American guilt trip. I don't see how it does anyone any good.

Read "American Holocaust" The Conquest of the New World by David Stannard. You will have a different conception of that period of history. After reading it I was convinced there was an official policy of wiping out the native inhabitants, which was largely successful. The smallpox may have been accidental, but beyond that it was genocide, in both South and North America.

Tribes wiped each other out from time to time. Native tribes did at as well as pale tribes coming over in boats.

It's awful. I don't think people should do it anymore. But "native inhabitants" isn't a uniform group any more than "white men". And both groups have had their share of unsavory individuals.

They fought but not with the degree of murderous violence that Europeans had, and native Americans were immediately enslaved, called subhuman, savaged etc and were deliberately exterminated without trying to hide the fact. Like I said I thought it was an exaggeration but having read the book, it changed my perspective on history.

When the first European explorers arrived in South America, there was a massive and advanced civilisation there. Far greater and larger than I ever thought. Massive cities were destroyed, some of them engineering marvels. The enslavement and murder of native Americans continued there for centuries.

Not with the degree of murderous violence?

You are aware of what the Aztecs (for instance) did with enslaved tribes?

They may have been brutal but I think it was exceeded by the scale of the European brutality. Are you aware of what Europeans did with captured natives? Made them work in silver mines in horrendous conditions, bound together with irons around their necks. Then if one fell down a mountain the whole gang did.

Even if it was official policy, it would have been official policy of the British government. The United States did not exist at the time of the weaponization of smallpox at Fort Pitt. Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in-Chief in North America at the time, was never on the colonies' side during the Revolutionary War.

English government, not British. I think? Don't imagine Scotland and Wales had much say.

What collective American guilt trip

But it may give you a different perspective as to how to deal with the problems of native Americans and disadvantaged communities today.

I doubt it.

Seriously... this whole "you are a white man so you share blame for anything a white man ever did" is absolutely stupid.

How so? These things happened a long time ago. At some point, we need to stop blaming all of their woes on decades or century old treatment.

Most immigrants were used as essentially slave labor at some point. The Chinese, for instance, were used to build the railroads in the US. The Italians and Irish were also treated poorly for decades.

Nor does collective national pride do net good.

How about Japan.

Net good?

Or the collective not my issue I wasn't alive pass the buck.

So what I got a full deck of cards and you got less. It wasn't my system so deal with it and don't make me own my advantage.

It's possible to affect positive change without being burdened by personal or historical guilt.

Yeah that worked so well US certainly doesn't have people caring about our past and trying to kill us.

I mean, we're also trying to kill them. All this anger didn't come from nowhere.

If you want everyone to love you, be a kitten.

There isn't a country or a demographic in the world that isn't hated by someone.

Switzerland? New Zealand?

> Switzerland?

I'd wager that some people are pretty unhappy with their behavior during World War II.

> New Zealand?

I've got nothin'.

I fully own all of my advantages and make a conscious decision not to share any of them with you, because you're an asshole.

I get the feeling that this is was the attitude take by the people who did all those bad things in the first place. Maybe they would have explained it as 'what god gave them'.

But that's neither here nor there - it's either your system now, to try and make things more equitable for the next people to come along, or you are part of what's keeping the unjust system in place.

So, sure, there's no reason to feel guilty for whatever anyone did, whenever they did it, and however much DNA you share with them. But, what >you< do to fix it, well, that is your responsibility, and your guilt if you do not.

It's not my responsibility to "fix" things that can't be fixed like greed and hate and violence from centuries ago. I don't believe there is a governmental social program that can fix it either.

The only thing I can do is try my best to be a good and fair and kind person in the time I'm in now. I can't atone for what assholes centuries ago did even if I wanted to.

This collective blame assignment is the same kind of evil thinking that led to someone trying to wipe out a race in the first place.

Outside of the siege of Ft. Pitt (where most seem to consider the attempt ineffective), when else was germ warfare tried in the colonies/USA?

I don't think it's fair to group the nuclear attacks with smallpox warfare. They were done for extremely different reasons.

Don't blame the mosquitoes for that. They don't know they are killing the source they 'milk' for food.