Recent investigations have shed light on the disaster, which claimed a record number of lives in one day. This event, which occurred thousands of years ago, turned out to be the most destructive in history in terms of death toll.
We are talking about an earthquake that hit the Chinese province of Shaanxi on January 23, 1556. This natural disaster was caused by the activity of the Weinan and Huashan faults. The earthquake is estimated to have killed around 830,000 people.
Although the exact death toll is still unknown, experts believe that a significant proportion of the victims died directly during the destruction, when buildings, cave houses and mountain slopes collapsed. The remaining victims died in the following days and weeks due to illness and food shortages.
With a magnitude of between 8 and 8.3, this earthquake, although not the strongest in the history of the planet, is still the deadliest in terms of number of victims. For comparison, the 1976 earthquake in the Chinese city of Tangshan, which became the second in number of victims, claimed the lives of about 655 thousand people.
Considering that the world population in 1556 was less than 500 million, the death of 830 thousand people was a colossal loss. This makes January 23, 1556 the most tragic day in history in terms of the number of deaths in one day.
Other tragic events, such as the bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 as part of Operation Meetinghouse, led to the deaths of approximately 100,000 people in one night. And the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki claimed approximately 66 and 39 thousand lives, respectively.
Also worth mentioning is the Yangtze River flood in 1931, considered one of the largest natural disasters. Although the exact number of victims is debatable, some sources suggest that more than 2 million people died within a few months.
Today, with more than 8 billion people living on the planet, about 170 thousand people die every day. However, massive tragedies such as the aforementioned events continue to remain in the memory of humanity due to their incredible scale.
Furthermore, scientists believe that artificial intelligence can destroy humanity. Intelligent programs may be interested in destroying humanity to avoid competition for resources or energy.
