A Richter Scale of Catastrophes

From 100,000BC to the present

How does Covid-19 stack up against catastrophes of the past?

In the old days there were far fewer people. To be fair, we need a per-capita disaster scale. Another way to look at this is the percentage of the human race wiped out. For no particular reason I prefer a Richter-style scale. Complete human extinction would be 10. A tenth of the race wiped out is 9. This has happened more than once. One hundredth is 8. One thousandth gone is 7. And so forth, done to one billionth of the race passing away in a calamity is one. Today that’s eight people. It may not be much on a global scale, but for them it’s a tragedy.

A level 6 disaster is a hundred times worse than a level 4. Level 7 is a thousand times worse, and so forth. Now that we’ve got our scale we rate some famous mass deaths.

 Calamities
        1.8       Hindenburg Zeppelin
        2.1       Mount St. Helens Eruption
        3          Train Wreck, Plane Crash
        3.0       Bay of Pigs
        3.9       RMS Titanic
Disasters
        4.4      Chernobyl Meltdown
        5.3      Afghanistan/USA War
        5.4      Krakatau Eruption
        5.7      2004 Tsunami
        6.0      Hiroshima & Nagasaki
        6.2      Tangshan Earthquake
        6.6      Korean War
        6.6      Viet Nam War
        6.7      USA Civil War
        6.9      COVID-19  
Catastrophes
        7         French Revolution
        7.3      1595 Japan Invasion of Korea
        7.6      Russian Civil War
        7.6      One Hundred Years War
        7.7      AIDS Epidemic
        7.8      1876 North China Drought
        7.8      Great Leap Forward Famine
        7.9      Thirty Years War
        8.1      1917 Influenza
        8.1      World War One
        8.2      Great Quing Famine(est.)
        8.5      World War Two
        8.5      Taiping Rebellion
        8.5      Ghenghiz Khan
        8.9      Lushan Rebellion
Cataclysms
        9.2      Three Kingdoms War 
                   (China, 200AD)
        9.4      Black Death
        9.8      Toba Eruption 74000 BC*
Apocalypse
        10       Chicxulub Dinosaur Extinction Meteor

*According to DNA evidence, some believe the cataclysmic Lake Toba eruption cooled the Earth to such a degree that worldwide population was reduced from an estimated one million to ten thousand people. This is controversial.