10. Asian influenza
Period: 1957~1958
Death toll: 1-4 million
In February 1957, the H2n2 strain A was found in Guizhou, which was the first large influenza virus encountered since the founding of New China, which was extremely contagious and also known as "Asian influenza", and had two outbreaks in China. It then spread around the world, and the outbreak continued until 1958. In 1959, the Asian flu was basically extinct, but by 1968, h2n2 had mutated to h3n2, leading to an outbreak of the "Hong Kong flu" between 1968 and 1969, again killing about 1 million to 4 million people worldwide. Because the inland warning of the flu was not very sufficient at that time, the flu broke out again in 1970.
9. Russian typhus
Period: 1918~1922
Death toll: 2-3 million
Russian typhus is considered a rare disease that occurs mainly in unhygienic and overcrowded environments, so its outbreaks usually occur during periods of war and natural disasters. People infected with typhus will experience symptoms such as fever, headache, shortness of breath, rash, nausea, and a series of serious complications. In World War I, typhus killed 3 million people. The mortality rate of this disease has reached 10% to 40% among infected people, and many medical staff have died as a result.
8. Mexican smallpox
Time: 1519-1520
Deaths: 5-8 million
Along with the "Great Discovery of Navigation", Spanish colonists entered the territory of the Aztec Empire and fought with the locals. A captured black African slave sailor is rumored to have spread the smallpox virus to the Aztec army, which then spread throughout Mexico. As a result, an unprecedented smallpox plague broke out rapidly, one person after another fell, one tribe after another disappeared, and also affected the decline of the Aztec Empire to some extent.
7. The Great Plague of Antony
Time: 165~180 AD
Death toll: 5-10 million
The Great Plague of Antony, also known as the "Plague of Galen", was first endemic in the Crusades of the Roman Empire in 164, and then soldiers from the Near East returned to the Roman Empire, and the plague was also brought back to the territory, and Rome soon became a plague-ravaged place. The plague, which broke out simultaneously in various forms such as typhoid fever, smallpox, and measles, was collectively known as the "Anthony plague" and lasted for nearly 15 years. The death toll for the entire empire was about 5 million, and even Marco Orillo and his brother Lucius Verus, the two co-rulers of the empire at that time, were also infected with the plague and died in Huangquan.
6. Kokolizli epidemic
Period: 1545-1578
Death toll: 7-17.5 million
The Kokolizli epidemic is a general term for the epidemic outbreak that occurred in the 16th century in the Colony of New Spain in South America, which is today's Mexican region, and is known locally as "Kokoli ztli", which means "plague" in the Nahuatl language. This outbreak contains a variety of epidemics, the main symptoms of which are high fever and ear and nose bleeding. There were two waves, the first between 1545 and 1548, which killed 80 percent of the Mexican population at the time, and the second wave between 1576 and 1578, which killed about 50 percent of the Mexican population. The Kokoliczli epidemic, which led to a sharp decline in Mexico's population, is the worst epidemic in Mexican history.
5. Third plague pandemic
Period: 1855~1960
Death toll: 10 to 15 million
The plague, which originated in Yunnan, China, in the Xianfeng year of the Qing Dynasty, spread to Hong Kong and other places in the 1980s, causing the Plague in Hong Kong, which spread to more than 60 countries and regions in the world and caused the deaths of 10-15 million people worldwide. This is the third plague pandemic in human history, which spread more rapidly than the previous two, and the time front is also very long, and it is estimated that it did not really end until the middle of the 20th century.
4. AIDS epidemic
Time: 1981 to present
Death toll: 32 million
AIDS is a disease caused by human immunodeficiency virus infection. HIV targets the body's immune system, and without any therapeutic intervention, the immune system of hiv-infected people will gradually be destroyed by HIV until almost all immunity is lost. According to current research, most scientists know that HIV first appeared in the 1920s in The Congo Kinshasa, Africa, and was transmitted to humans through chimpanzees in West Africa, thus spreading and becoming a global pandemic. The first case of HIV infection was confirmed in the United States in 1981. To date, the number of deaths due to AIDS has exceeded 32 million, making it one of the most deadly epidemics in human history.
3. Spanish flu
Period: 1918~1919
Death toll: 20 million to 100 million
The Spanish flu of 1918-1919 infected about 500 million people worldwide and was the deadliest infectious disease in human history. There were three waves of this global pandemic, of which the second wave occurred in the autumn of 1918, the longest, the largest and the highest mortality rate, and the mortality rate in the middle of the year is much higher than in the past. The number of people knocked down by the epidemic far exceeds the total number of casualties of the First World War that lasted 52 months. A Sydney newspaper did not hesitate to refer to the flu as the "plague of doomsday", and some researchers believe that the reduction in the war-ready population caused by the pandemic was one of the reasons for the early end of the First World War.
2. Justinian Plague
Time: 541~542 AD
Death toll: 25 million to 100 million
The scourge, known as the "Plague of Justinian", spread from the Byzantine Empire to the western part of the Mediterranean world, and almost all ancient cities throughout Europe were subsequently plagued by this plague. Prokoby, the most famous historian of the Justinian dynasty, faithfully recorded the situation in his book The Book of War: "From this point the plague spread in different directions, reaching all the ends of the human world, as if to fear that there was a hidden corner of the earth that could escape its clutches." At the peak of the epidemic, the daily death toll was around 10,000, losing a third of the population in total. People with the disease have bloody eyes and swollen faces that spread to the larynx, in which case the patient dies quickly; others develop inguinal lymphatic swelling, followed by a high fever that kills even healthy people within two to three days. The most widely accepted version of the specific disease of the plague is plague.
1. The Black Death
Years: 1347-1352
Death toll: 75 million to 200 million
From 1347 to 1351, a plague of unprecedented proportions broke out in Europe, the "Black Death". The plague swept across Europe, and it is estimated that about 30 to 60 percent of the population of medieval Europe died. One of the symptoms of the Black Death is that the patient's skin will turn black due to subcutaneous bleeding, and "black" also means melancholy and sadness, which is why the epidemic is called the "Black Death". The Outbreak of the Black Death in the mid-to-late 14th century also had a major impact on the development direction of European civilization, and Western scholars believe that it marked the end of the Middle Ages, prompting the despotic status of the Catholic Church to be broken, and exerting an important influence on the Renaissance, the Reformation and even the Enlightenment.