Err…that seems a bit high (well over 1 billion people in a day).
For comparison, the total population of Japan in 1945 was 71 million people.
In 1951, the global population (ever one on the planet) was about twice that.
I don’t believe fictional accounts are included.
That’s the consequence of a small denominator.
That’s a pretty meaningless calculation. It could be surpassed by two people dying within a fraction of a nanosecond of each other.
It’s the consequence of an inane metric.
If a bullet kills 1 person in a millisecond, is that equivalent to 86.4 million deaths/day?
Hey it wasn’t my idea
True. And that brings up an interesting point.
Humans did not yet exist in any form when Chicuxlub hit. But it pretty well did for all of terrestrial multi-cellular life. Had humans been present, they’d have been wiped out to the last person, or very very close.
But although the meteor’s transit from the top of the atmosphere to its abrupt stoppage in the mantle was the work of a few 10ths of seconds, the task of utterly upending the biosphere and destroying much of terrestrial life took weeks and months. Although probably not even a full year.
How to score something like that?
Is is very likely the flood exceeds Dec 26 2004, possibly by a large margin. While assumptions of birth and death rates are speculative this article suggests between 5 and 17bn people died in the flood.
Ignoring mythology, I suspect the deadliest percentagewise was probably in 1918 during the Spanish Flu/WWI. Unfortunately, I doubt the information exists to pin down the most deadly day of the flu, which was probably more deadly than the war. But the total population of the world was less than 2 billion at the time, so the denominator was fairly small compared to more recent epidemics.
I’ve actually heard estimates that a major portion of the terrestrial death toll was, in fact, in the first day. The biggest killer was the wildfires starting everywhere all at once, from ejecta re-entering the atmosphere.
[Moderating]
OK, the joking was funny while it lasted, but let’s not have any more biblical stuff in this thread.
I’d say if they are all more-or-less comparable within the margins of uncertainty, you’d then need to look for which one happened at the time that statistically is, absent disasters, the deadliest day of the year. Statistically, that’s Jan 1st, and then following that, Christmas and other holidays.
So the 2004 tsunami gets my vote, as it’s the one closest to that holiday season (so lots of people dying of the traditional post-Xmas heart attacks would be going then, as well as it being peak flu season)
The furth back in history you go the less information is available.
The Black Death is estimated to have killed 25 to 50 million over 7 years so an average of 10000 to 20000 per day. I have no idea how much more deadly than average the height of the epidemic was and there would be fluctuations between days it is possible dat day eaxceed 104,000 but we will never know.
Going into pre history the information is even less and there is even speculation what catastropic events have happened during the existance of the human race.
It’s true that January 1st is the day of the year with the highest number of recorded deaths. I wonder, however, whether that isn’t at least partially due to merely clerical reasons. If a person is missing for an extended period and then assumed and declared dead, authorities will issue a death certificate without knowing the exact date of death. They will put an arbitrarily determined date on the certificate, and I suppose January 1st is often chosen for this purpose.
I would think that would represent a very tiny fraction of the total. How many people do you think get declared dead that way in a year?
If what you said was a significant factor, Jan 1 would be a noticeable outlier. But it’s not, it’s just the statistical peak of a wave (as seen in data from Britain and the US, but I’m pretty sure the same holds elsewhere)
The mystery of the most fatal week of the year - BBC News
New Year's Day: Why 1 January is the deadliest day of the year | The Independent | The Independent
Christmas and New Year as risk factors for death - ScienceDirect
I would have a hard time using “event” to describe something that has neither a distinct ending or beginning. Forms of the Spanish Flu are still circulating and still kill people, but I don’t think it’s correct to characterize it as an ongoing event.
As for the case of a meteor strike that upends ecosystems over months and years, that’s certainly an event, but obviously it doesn’t make sense to construct a one-day death toll out of an entirely new geological era. At any rate that would be pre-historical, so outside the OP.
What is a “calendar day” for the purposes of this question? I ask this because of things like time zones, the International Date Line, daylight saving time, rotation of the Earth, etc.
Oh ffs. How about in the local time zone where the major event happened? Or any 24 hour period. Do you know of something specifically where we need the distinction?
The date in the location of the death. So more than 24 hours worldwide, but not more than 24 in any particular location.
So maybe we wait until April 21, 2051 before we answer this question.