The worst event was the development in nature that led to the appearance of what we now call The Modern Human. It still goes on destroying this planet and shall most probably lead to destruction of the planet itself.
Salaam. A
Not to downplay the enormity of the destruction of the American civilizations, flonks, but this website does not strike me as being a very rigorously researched one.
The wipeout of American civilizations wasn’t one “event,” it was many events. Portraying a historical process that took about 350-400 years as one “event” is exactly like portraying 400 years of European history as one event. It’s as if someone was saying that the Seven Years’ War, the Protestant Reformation, the Second Zulu War and the Holocaust were the same occurrence.
The worst event was when life evolved the capacity for pain and suffering.
Well, if you think about it a little more, all things die or come to an end or change form. Humans are a natural development, and if Humans do indeed manage to destroy the planet (which I think is a little egotistical, considering that the Earth has survived much worse than we can muster) isn’t that just part of the natural progression of the cosmic rush to inevitible entropy? 
:eek:
It hasn’t happened yet, but the worst event in human history will be my death.
I gotta go with Malthus on this folks. The most insightfull and brilliant answer bar none. Since it is all a matter of perspective. (I know there was no subject in that last sentence, call it poetic license. Besides, you can infer the subject from the context)
The Flu pandemic of 1918. Killed nigh on to 30 million people. And that’s on top of the deaths in WW1.
Well, if we look at it from a subjective stance then its gotta be wht day my wife left. Sad, sad day.
If we’re just looking at the sheer terror caused by the event then I would have to go with the day disco was born.
Probably going to get flamed here, but to my mind the 1918 revolution in Russia and the rise of communism should rank up there. In and of itself, there was a fairly modest body count (1 million by some estimates) but it gave rise to a hell of a lot more pain and misery from there on. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Tito, etc etc ad nausium. The effects are STILL being felt world wide from the thing.
As to Flocks 90 million, I don’t have a cite but I thought the estimate of native American’s before Columbus was something like 25 million…so it would be some kind of trick if 90 million perished, no? Certainly though I would agree that, from a human misery and body count perspective the conquest of the Americas by Europe ranks up there…but no way does it come close to what the Communists did to the world in shear body count and human suffering.
-XT
Thats flonks, not flocks btw. Sigh…
-XT
I have been trying not to think about my ex all day, you really bummed me out .
About your second premise: Disco was great, I would have happily left a Deep Purple show to go to a Discoteque. Disco meant great (in the past)Blow(an illegal drug in the US)(disaproved by the surgeon General) (bad for you) (bad for your health)(not recommended for anyone)(I hope that satisfies the Terms of use)great women, great times. So what if the music sucked, Disco sure had fanfreakintastic fringe benefits.
Well, if nobody is willing to accept the extermination of 90 to 96 percent of all species on earth and instead selfishly focus on one of the few survivors which happened to be our ancestors, how about this one?
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is almost universally accepted to be the event most responsible for the start of the First World War, which in turn contributed to the spread of the influenza empidemic of 1918, the spread of Communism and the resulting tragedies which continue to this day in places like North Korea, the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the creation of the state of Israel and persisting unrest in the Middle East, and of course the Cold War in which both sides contributed materially to the detriment of humanity by encouraging totalitarian leadership in third world nations around the globe.
Somewhere I read that one in twenty humans who ever lived are alive today. If that’s true, I’m willing to bet that at least one in a hundred of all humans who are dead today can trace their demise to that nearly bungled assassination attempt on June 28, 1914.
One can argue that this was but one possible event which could have touched off the powder keg of Europe, but that incident was the event which set the entire avalanche rolling downhill.
Y’know, Aldebaran, your posts are a lot more amusing when I picture them being read by Homestar Runner’s Strong Sad.
Otherwise, nearly everything you say can be put into one of two categories:
- Straw-man leading to flame wars.
- Snarky defense of your indefensible opinions, which you relay as fact.
Do not forget that for want a horse shoe a kingdom was lost.
Why start at the assination of the Arch Duke, why not go back to the signing of the secret treaties that sucked Europe into the fiasco. Or why not go back to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, due to bad weather. Or how about the division of Charlemagnes Empire, or the Great Schism, or the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Or even the assination of Julius Ceasar, or the division of the Roman Empire between Constantinople and Rome, or the Mongol Invasion, or the Huns, or Hannibal?Why start with a measly Duke? In other words ,Whats your point? You can pick any arbitrary point in the history of human kind, it is all one long chain of cause and effect that proceeds in accordance with the temporal laws of the universe.
“My friend quickly countered that the Holocaust was not the worst event in history, the Inquistion was.”
Pfft! Compared to 20th Century atrocities, the Inquisition was strictly bush league: the actual number of deaths linked to the Inquisition is in fact rather small. See historian Edward Peters’s book Inquisition for more information.
I would like to cast my hat in with BrotherCadfael and say that the events that destroy knowledge and history are the most tragic.
Other good examples:
China: c. 200BC Europe: c. 500AD Central America: c. 1500AD
I’m with Reeder here. Unless I want to be egotistical, then I’m going to steal Malthus’s answer.
I’m with Sofa King. From 1914-1945 you had war, disease, hyperinflation, hyperspeculation, Great Depression, more war, and of course the Holocaust. And it really did all start with that damned assassination.
Taking as the arbitrary criteria number of threads started in Cafe Society, I’d say the worst event in history was the cancellation of Firefly.
Seriously, though, and setting aside pre-human events, I’d go with the decision of the Great Powers to go to war in 1914. IMO the horrifying toll of war, revolution and conomic depression that followed, right through to the mid-fifties, might have been a only a small fraction of the final total if WWI had not occurred.
Hey, you want to hate yourself, Mr. Modern Human, go right ahead, but don’t drag the rest of us into it. I realize you are all about hyperbole, but it would take a lot more than human technological activity or overpopulation to destroy the planet. Destruction of human habitat to the point that the species dies out earlier than it might have otherwise, maybe. Destruction of the ability of the planet to support life, absolutely impossible (by humans, at present).
The publishing of the Communist Manifesto, which led to the rise of Communism, and the death of 100s of millions of people in the countries that adopted that system. So, I’m with XT, except going back in time a bit.
Since the OP said “history”, I think we can rule out anything that happened more than ~4,000 yrs ago. That would be pre-history.
As for the Natve Americans population pre-Columbus, I’ve seen lots of differing estimates. It used to be 3M, but more recent numbers put it at perhaps 10M. This site gives a pretty good breakdown. And keep in mind that while the Amerinda were nearly wiped out in what is now the US, most of the Central Americans living today are descendents of the natives living there. Although the Spanish did there share of slaughtering, they were more concerned with converting the “Red Man” to Christianity, while the English settlers in North America were more likely to see the Indians as pests to be eliminated.