Top 11 Deadliest Natural Disasters in

History
Deadly disasters

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Violent natural disasters have been a fact of human life since the
beginning of the species, but the death counts of the most ancient of
these disasters are lost to history. The Mediterranean island of Stroggli,
for example, is believed to have been completely wiped out by a volcanic
eruption and ensuing tsunami that eradicated the entire Minoan
civilization around 1500 B.C. How many lives were lost? We'll never know.
For other disasters, historians can at least make estimates. The following
11 disasters are the deadliest for which reasonably accurate death tolls
exist. The lesson? While the chaos of a natural disaster can mean exact
numbers are hard to come by, earthquakes and floods are the disasters
most likely to kill large swaths of the population.

1138 Aleppo earthquake - maybe

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On Oct. 11, 1138, the ground under the Syrian city began to shake. The
city sits on the confluence of the Arabian and African plates, making it
prone to temblors, but this one was particularly nasty. The magnitude of
the quake is lost to time, but contemporary chroniclers reported that the
city's citadel collapsed and houses crumbled across Aleppo. The death toll
of this quake is typically put at about 230,000, but that estimate comes
from the 15th century, and the historian may have been conflating the
Aleppo quake with another one in Georgia, according to a 2004 paper in
the Annals of Geophysics.
2010 Haiti quake

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If Aleppo's death toll is mistaken, the earthquake that hit Haiti on Jan. 12,
2010, may be a contender for the top 10 deadliest disasters. Even in a
modern mass disaster, though, estimating the death toll is a tricky
business.

In the year after the quake, the government of Haiti estimated that the
magnitude-7.0 quake and its aftermath killed 230,000 people; in January
2011, officials revised the figure to 316,000. Those figures are highly
disputed, however. A 2010 study published in the journal Medicine,
Conflict and Survival put the number at around 160,000 deaths. A 2011
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) draft report from
2011 claimed even lower numbers — between 46,000 and 85,000.
The disparities reflect the difficulty of counting deaths even in the modern
era, not to mention the political wrangling that goes on over "official"
numbers. Many critics of Haiti's estimates argue that the government
revised the death toll up in order to secure further international aid. On
the other side of the argument, according to the Columbia Journalism
Review, were those who accused USAID of leaking the report to discredit
the Haitian government.
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami

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A magnitude-9.3 temblor struck undersea off the west coast of Sumatra
on Dec. 26, 2004, creating a massive tsunami that killed people in 14
separate countries. The overall death toll is estimated at between 230,000
and 280,000 people. In some places, especially hardest-hit Indonesia, the
tsunami wave reached 98 feet (30 meters) in height. Indonesia had the
highest death toll of any country, with 126,473 confirmed dead and
93,943 missing, according to official government figures. Sri Lanka
followed, with a total of 36,594 dead or missing.

1920 Haiyuan earthquake

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On Dec. 16, 1920, a strong earthquake hit Haiyuan Country in central
China. According to a 2010 study presented at a conference in honor of
the quake's 90th anniversary, 273,400 people died in the quake, most
buried in landslides caused by the ground shaking.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the quake was probably a
magnitude 7.8 and was felt all the way from the Yellow Sea to Qinghai
Province on the Tibetan plateau. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) records show that the quake destroyed four cities
and buried multiple towns and villages.

1976 Tangshan earthquake

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At 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976, the Chinese city of Tangshan and its
surroundings were rocked by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake. Tangshan, an
industrial city, had a population of about a million people, and the official
death toll was a staggering 255,000. Another 700,000 people were
injured, according to "The Great Tangshan Earthquake of 1976: An
Anatomy of Disaster" (Pergamon Press, 1988). Many of Tangshan's
buildings were completely destroyed, according to that history, and
150,000 people got new residences in the six years following the quake.
526 Antioch earthquake

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As with all historical quakes, precise death tolls for the Antioch
earthquake of A.D. 526 are hard to come by. But contemporary chronicler
John Malalas wrote at the time that about 250,000 people died when the
temblor hit the Byzantine city in May of that year. Malalas attributed the
disaster to the wrath of God and reported that fires destroyed everything
in Antioch that the earthquake itself did not.

According to a 2007 paper in The Medieval History Journal, the death toll
was higher than it would have been at other times of the year because the
city was full of tourists celebrating Ascension Day. 
1839 India cyclone/1881 Haiphong typhoon

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The Coringa cyclone of 1839 hit the port city of Coringa on Nov. 25,
whipping up a storm surge of 40 feet (12 meters), according to the NOAA
Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory Hurricane Research
Division. About 20,000 ships and vessels were destroyed, along with the
lives of an estimated 300,000 people.
Also vying for the No. 5 spot on the list by death toll is an 1881 typhoon
that hit Haiphong, Vietnam, on Oct. 8. That storm is also estimated to
have killed about 300,00 people.

The 1970 Bhola cyclone

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Another storm that wiped out tens of thousands of lives was the Bhola
cyclone of Nov. 12, 1970. This storm struck what is now Bangladesh (then
East Pakistan), pushing up a 20-foot storm surge that funneled right over
the low terrain bordering the Bay of Bengal, causing widespread
flooding. A 1971 report from the National Hurricane Center and the
Pakistan Meteorological Department acknowledged the challenge of
accurately estimating the death toll, especially due to the influx of
seasonal workers who were in the area for the rice harvest. However,
most estimates place the loss of life from the Bhola cyclone at 300,000 at
the low end, ranging up to 500,000.
1556 Shaanxi earthquake

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The deadliest earthquake in history hit China's Shaanxi province on Jan.
23, 1556. Known as the Jiajing Great Earthquake after the emperor whose
reign it occurred in, the temblor reduced a 621-square-mile (1,000 square
kilometers) swath of the country to rubble, according to the Science
Museums of China. An estimated 830,000 people died as their homes
collapsed and fires raged after the quake. The exact magnitude of the
quake is lost to history, but modern-day geophysicists estimate it at
around magnitude 8.
The 1887 Yellow River Flood

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The Yellow River (Huang He) in China was precariously situated far above
most of the land around it in the late 1880s, thanks to a series of dikes
built to contain the river as it flowed through the farmland of central
China. Over time, these dikes had silted up, gradually lifting the river in
elevation. When heavy rains swelled the river in September 1887, it
spilled over these dikes into the surrounding low-lying land, inundating
5,000 square miles (12,949 square kilometers), according to
"Encyclopedia of Disasters: Environmental Catastrophes and Human
Tragedies" (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008).
The estimated death toll of the flood is 900,000.

The Central China Floods of 1931

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The deadliest natural disaster in history is likely the Central China floods
of 1931. In July and August of that year, the Yangtze River overtopped its
banks as the spring melt mingled with heavy rains. (The Yellow River and
other large waterways also reached high levels.) According to "The Nature
of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood" (Cambridge University
Press, 2018), the flood inundated almost 70,000 square miles (180,000
square km) and turned the Yangzi into what looked like a giant lake or
ocean.

Estimates of the overall death toll vary. Contemporary government

numbers put the number of dead at around 2 million, but others, including
NOAA, say it may have been as many as 3.7 million people.
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