My grandfather who fought in World War I (1914-1918) and came back injured but alive was one of the lucky ones. The total loss of soldiers in that war was between nine and 11 million and the death toll among civilians was between 6 and 13 million. It is disheartening to find as you examine the incredible death count from wars that the numbers have huge margins of error. In war time the loss of a human life doesn’t even get recorded accurately. But even the vague upper and lower limits that are estimated blow the mind.
If the loss of life in World War I was not horrific enough it was followed by World War II (1939-1945) in which the loss of life was even higher. In World War II between 21 and 25 million military personnel died but the death count among civilians was a shocking 50 and 55 million.
I wanted to look at deaths in wars from roughly the year 2000 and the table looks like this.
I find it disturbing that,
a. We no longer have accurate figures for deaths from war (huge margins of error)
b. We no longer get robust reliable reporting on atrocities from war zones allowing more injustices to be perpetuated (often reporters are not allowed in)
c. Wars can last decades and break out again and again
d. Civil wars are particularly bloody in terms of deaths
e. The fact that rushing to make war rarely solves any problems long term seems never to be recognised by any side
f. Some countries in particular, like Sudan, are plagued with conflict again and again. The UN has described it as “one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history”
However, horrifying the loss of life has been in these regional wars, another world war (World War 3) would be several orders of magnitude larger than anything ever encountered before in history. We have become so efficient in killing each other that it is genuinely hard to get your head around the figures! A Princeton simulation called "Plan A" calculated that a nuclear war between the United States and Russia could result in 91.5 million casualties in the first few hours!
Consider human ignorance and inconsistency. A man who kills another man is punished by execution, but a military genius who kills one hundred thousand of his fellow creatures is immortalized as a hero.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá
