Deadliest Natural Disasters of the 20th Century
Many people enjoy traveling to new places, but only a few are informed of the dangers associated with it. Whether these disasters were avoidable or not, it’s ideal to be informed and prepared in-case of an emergency.
My goal from this research study is to find the deadliest natural disasters in the 20th century and find patterns emerging within it. Which disaster is the deadliest and which country had the most occurrences of these disasters?
Growing up I’ve been an explorer and loved the idea of traveling and moving around the world. I have been interested in studying global and cultural history along with geography throughout my life. It is always a good idea to read and learn about the places you wish to visit. It’s also smart to be ready in case of an emergency when your life depends on it.
“We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn’t have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.” — Petra Nemcova
When I started this project I had a couple ideas to research but this topic caught my attention. These kinds of disasters may cause significant physical damage. Natural disasters have destroyed miles of cities and natural habitats. Due to the effects of global warming and consequential climate change, the rate of natural disasters in the world are increasing day by day. I myself have faced a natural disaster while in Yemen in 2012. It was a severe dust storm that lasted 3 days long. I can relate and empathize how painful these disasters can be, destroying each and everything coming in its way.
I started looking at different dataset repositories to find data related to traveling, nature, and the world itself. I stumbled upon djaunter.com (Dauntles Juanter) a travel website with quite a few helpful guides, educational facts and articles. They have data on the top 5 deadliest natural disasters and the data dates back to 1912. I started looking at the data and began analyzing and visualized several graphs. Doing this, I found some surprising results.
I found that tornadoes had the lowest average death toll but our recent years predominantly have had more hits. On the other hand, floods have had the highest death toll on average. In 1931, China was heavily flooded with one of the most lethal natural disasters in the 20th century. About 3.7 million people died. Not long after, another major flood in China arose in 1959 killing around 2 million people. After the top 2 destructive natural disasters in 1931 and 1959, another flood in 1939 had the 3rd highest casualty count of 500,000. While floods had the highest rate of death tolls, cyclones were the second deadliest disaster with the highest death toll of 300,000.
What shook me the most was when I visualized a pie chart, I noticed that certain disasters are more common in certain regions of the world than I expected. I noticed that Bangladesh had a big take on cyclones and thunderstorms while China had the lead on floods. Colombia had most of the volcanic eruptions with the max casualties being at 20,000. What was intriguing to me is the relationship between the geographical location and the type of natural disasters affecting that area.
In conclusion, my study entails data showing that floods and cyclones were the deadliest disasters. Luckily flood disasters have decreased while being less extreme. It also seems that tornadoes are starting to get on the rise while the cyclones seem to be maintaining its title as one of the deadliest disasters. Predominantly in Bangladesh, Myanmar and China.
It’s always good to keep up to date with these deadly natural disasters, In order to be prepared and safe while exploring new parts of the world.