Coronavirus pandemic, Australian bushfire, Kobe and Gigi Bryant pass away, the UK finalizes Brexit, India is hit by 2 cyclones and 3 earthquakes, Bollywood beloveds pass away, communal riots in Delhi, locust attack…...the list of unfortunate events that have stacked up in 2020 is endless.
Is 2020 really the worst year ever, as they say, it?
In our lifetime 2020 is unprecedented. Several people died, while others have lost their homes and families, and even more lost their livelihood!
As I’m writing this, the count of the COVID-19 cases has crossed a 12 Lakh mark worldwide and the damage it has caused, especially to the poor, seems irreparable.
However, mankind has seen alot worse than this and you might feel a little optimistic about where we are today after you are done reading!
Hang in there, and go through a few points in history that make 2020 pale in comparison!
You might quite well end up believing that 2020 is not the worst year…..yet!
Chalisa Famine
The Chalisa famine of 1783-84 was the worst famine in India and the world. The genesis of this famine lay in a volcanic eruption very far away in Iceland.
In 1783, the Laki volcanic region erupted thousands of miles away in Iceland.
Huge volumes of ash and other volcanic particles were spewed into the atmosphere and the effects of these were felt the world over. However, for some strange reasons, it was felt even more in India which was already reeling from an unusually cold winter due to El Nino.
The fallout of the Icelandic volcanoes caused large parts of the Northern Hemisphere to not experience a real summer in 1783 due to the presence of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. The following year was unbearably hot in India!
The atmosphere also impacted the weather in other areas. India’s monsoon was severely hit by the climatic changes. It was really hot, there was no rain and most of India’s rivers and lakes dried up contributing to the drought of 1783-84, which led to Chalisa Famine.
Close to 1 crore 1 lakh people died during this period. According to some estimates, 1 in 3 villages were completely wiped out.
What’s even worse is that it took India almost 2 years for its climate to return to normal.
The year without a summer (1816)
Two centuries ago, in 1816 Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted and millions of tons of dust, ash and sulfur dioxide were led out into the atmosphere, temporarily changing the world's climate and dropping global temperatures by as much as 3 degrees.
The effects of this were felt the world over. 1816 became the year without a summer, leading to failed crops and near-famine conditions.
It’s gone down in history as ‘the year without a summer’. But to millions of people at the time, it appeared like the world was coming to an end. The skies were filled with volcanic ash all over the world, leading to misery and starvation.
The world over, snow fell in June and became below freezing temperature in July.
The skies remained almost permanently dark, crops failed and that led to starvation, death and unrest all over.
Due to the terrible weather and the permanently dark skies, diseases started to spread all over and what’s even worst is that people panicked because religious leaders started forecasting “the end of the world”.
The worst year to be alive
536 AD, one of the deadliest periods that we have ever experienced, can come as a surprise to you as once again it was caused by a volcano!
In school, we were taught that if a volcano ever erupts, the villages and the towns around it would burn but this volcano caused a catastrophe so bad that scientists in Harvard have officially name sit “the worst time in history”.
"It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
Not one but 3 gigantic volcanic eruptions took place that covered the northern hemisphere into darkness, day and night for 18 months.
Dark clouds of sulphur and bismuth blocked out the sun and cooled the planet down as temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years.
A foreboding cloud of black ash blocks out the sun from Europe to Asia. With dipping temperatures, coincides bubonic plague in 541 that struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire.
This is how it was from 536AD to 547 AD.
Snow fell all over the world and we experienced the coldest decade in the last 2300 years. By now you know what happens after; crops fail, people die, the plague spreads across the planet and an estimated 5 crore died. That was one-quarter of the world’s population at that time. What this must have done to the economies, you can imagine.
Moreover, even if you made it through the hell that was 536, a whole decade of misery was in store. It’s believed that there were other large volcanic eruptions in 540, plus the bubonic plague that broke out in 541. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged the world into economic stagnation that lasted until 640.
This is a humbling thought! Wars started by rulers and viruses made by humans are not any way close to the deadly force of mother nature when she decides to cause destruction.
Even when it comes to pandemics, here are some numbers that will put COVID-19 deaths into perspective.
Black death - 20 crores Smallpox - 5.6 crores
Spanish flu - 5 crore
Plague of Justinian - 4 crore
COVID - 195,63,261
Would you still like to believe that 2020, where we are sitting and discussing TikTok being banned in India, is the worst year ever?
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