The Five Deadliest Outbreaks and
Pandemics in History
“Outbreak” is a relative word. A modern
outbreak could be a virus that kills a
couple hundred thousand (such as the
recent swine flu), or simply an infected
shipment of food that left dozens sick.
However, a look back through history
reveals outbreaks so expansive—so
deadly—that they essentially changed the
course of history. Below are the five
deadliest outbreaks and pandemics in
history.
Ask yourself—are we prepared as a
nation for the next big outbreak?
(Image source: WikiCommons)
1. The Black Death
A plague so devastating that simply saying
“The Plague” will immediately pull it to the
front of your mind, in the middle of the
14th century—from 1347 to 1351—the
Black Death remade the landscape of
Europe and the world. In a time when the
global population was an estimated 450
million, at least 75 million are believed to
have perished throughout the pandemic,
with some estimates as high as 200
million. As much as half of Europe may
have died in a span of only four years. The
plague’s name comes from the black skin
spots on the sailors who travelled the Silk
Road and docked in a Sicilian port,
bringing with them from their Asian
voyage the devastating disease, now
known to be bubonic plague.
(Image source: WikiCommons)
2. 1918 Spanish Flu
Approximately 90 years before the 2009
swine flu pandemic killed more than
200,000 people, reports of an especially
dangerous form of influenza began to
appear around the world. Kansas was the
site of the first U.S. case, in March 1918.
Appearing in multiple countries around
the world, the disease spread quickly,
ushered along even faster due to the close
living quarters of troops fighting in World
War I. This first instance of an H1N1
pandemic would be dubbed The Spanish
Flu (despite the fact that it didn’t actually
come from Spain). It burned out quickly
and suddenly, by 1919, with the
explanation still unknown today. But it left
the global population decimated—with a
mortality rate as high as one in five and an
estimated one-third of the world
population afflicted, as many as 50 million
people are believed to have died.
Approximately 25 million of those deaths
came in the first 25 weeks of the
outbreak.
(Image source: WikiCommons)
3. HIV/AIDS
This is a pandemic we’re still battling. And
while medicine has made great strides,
making HIV in many ways a chronic
condition that can be managed in many
countries, the end of the pandemic still
seems to be a long way away. Originating
in Cameroon and first recognized as a
disease in 1981, the earliest documented
case is believed to be in 1959 in the
Congo. As of 2011 at least 60 million
people had been infected by AIDS and 25
million had died. Today its impact varies
widely across the world—while in 2008
an estimated 1.2 million Americans had
HIV, Sub-Saharan Africa alone was home
to 22.9 million cases, with one in five
adults infected. About 35.3 million people
were believed to have HIV in 2012.
4. The Plague of Justinian
In the year 541, rats on Egyptian grain
boats brought a pestilence to the Easter
Roman Empire that would ultimately leave
approximately 25 million people dead. The
Plague of Justinian quickly tore through
the empire. Even the emperor himself—
Justinian I, for whom the plague was
named—contracted the disease. While he
lived, many didn’t, with modern scholars
estimating that at one point as many as
5,000 people died per day in
Constantinople, the empire’s capital. By its
end, about 40 percent of the city’s
population was dead—so many and so
quickly that bodies were left in piles—
joined by about one-fourth of the eastern
Mediterranean. Modern experts believe the
outbreak to be the first recorded case of
the bubonic plague.
(Image source: WikiCommons)
5. The Antonine Plague
Named for Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus, who ruled during the
outbreak along with co-regent Lucius
Verus, the outbreak began in 165 and
lasted until 180. An estimated five million
people died from what is now thought to
have been smallpox. It’s believed to have
begun in the Mesopotamian city of
Seleucia (in modern-day Iraq) and spread
to Rome by soldiers returning from the
city’s siege. At one point during the
extended pandemic an estimated 2,000
Romans died each day. This isn’t a plague
that discriminated—both emperors
mentioned above are believed to be
among its victims.
Honorable mention:
Cholera
There’s no one outbreak of cholera to
point to t

Cholera
There’s no one outbreak of cholera to
point to that’s on the level of any of the
above five pandemics. However, since first
spreading from Calcutta along the Ganges
Delta in 1817, it has killed millions. The
World Health Organization estimates that
each year that passes sees between 3 and
5 million new cholera cases, killing as
many as 120,000 people. Untreated, it can
kill in a matter of hours.
Dr. John Snow
Cholera is also notable for the role a
specific outbreak played in the
development of modern epidemiology.
English physician John Snow published his
“ On the Mode of Communication of
Cholera” in 1849, updating it in 1855 with
lessons he’d learned the year before.
During the 1854 Broad Street cholera
outbreak in the Soho district of London,
Snow had—based on his theory that
cholera was transmitted by exposure to
contaminated water—used extensive
interviews and intricately plotted maps to
trace the source of the outbreak to a
single water pump. Disabling the pump
ended the outbreak almost immediately, in
a poignant example of an early, effective
public health intervention.
The above named pandemic were worse than ebola yet our grand parents survived that is why they gave birth to us. I still carry their survival gene.
Sourcewww.rwjf.org/en/blogs/new-public-health/2013/12/the_five_deadliesto.html