Welcome to the New Year: as ghastly as the old one. 2020, 2021 and perhaps now 2022, have all been bad. But…never mind. There is always magic to make life bearable! And a promise of a “happy 2023!” Plus, there have been worse events in world history!
Click to play the “Ask Savannah” video for January 2022
“Worse years than the past two?”
As a quick reminder let’s have a reflection of other shitty times to be alive. People often ask me if magic can provide them protection or provide them with a guaranteed better year. But I honestly say that in some scenarios, such as all of the scenarios below, there is no magic that will prevent a devastating outcome should you happen to be in that region during any of these times.
Perhaps it’s my quirky sense of humour, or dark personality, but I do find it somewhat comforting to know that some people have made it through worse times.
536 – A volcanic eruption, or possibly more than one, somewhere in the northern hemisphere would seem to have been the trigger. The eruption precipitated a decade-long “volcanic winter”, in which China suffered summer snows and average temperatures in Europe dropped by 2.5℃. Crops failed. People starved. Then they took up arms against each other. Many of the societies living in 530 simply could not survive the upheavals of the decades that followed.
541 bubonic plague arrived in Egypt and went on to kill around a third of the population of the Byzantine empire “claiming the lives of millions of people.” The outbreak continued to sweep throughout the Mediterranean world for another 225 years, finally disappearing in 750 CE. So cheer up. Covid-19 should be done pretty soon we think? It would be worse if we had to wait another 220 years for this current virus to end!
1347, when the Black Death began its long march across Eurasia. “Ole J Benedictow describes how he calculated that the Black Death killed 50 million people in the 14th century, or 60 per cent of Europe’s entire population.”
1330s, famine set in and ravished Yuan China. The famine that killed up to 45 million people remains a taboo subject in China.
1590s a similar famine devastated Europe, and the 1490s saw smallpox and influenza begin to work their way through the indigenous populations of the Americas (reciprocally, syphilis did the same amongst inhabitants of the Old World).
From 1492 to 1691 – The largest known man-made loss of human life ever was the European colonization of the Americas which saw the loss of an estimated 8.4 to 138 million NATIVE people. The death toll varies widely because the actual number of Native Americans pre-Columbus is not known, and will likely never be known.
From 1526 to 1867 – The Atlantic Slave Trade (People from a variety of countries on the continent of Africa, were shipped into both South and North America), was likely the most costly in human life of all long-distance global migrations. Slaves suffered a variety of miserable and often fatal maladies due to inhumane living and working conditions. The estimate of the number killed during the transatlantic slave trade varies anywhere between 6-150 million. The official UN estimate is 17 million (UN).
1914 – World War I, the death toll was around 40 million.
1939 – World War II is the most deathly event with an estimated dead toll of between 65 and 85 million people.
1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population.
1994 – The Rwandan genocide during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were slaughtered by armed militias.Estimated: 491,000–800,000 (Tutsi only) Up to 1,143,225 (All victims)
2004 – This was a VERY Scary time for me, as I was there in Bali on vacation with my 3 kids. The Tsunami waves triggered by a massive earthquake slammed into the coastlines of countries ringing the Indian Ocean. The death toll was enormous. Worldwide, it is estimated that about 250,000 people died that day in a matter of seven hours. Yes, a natural event – but such a huge loss of human life. Praise Lucifer, my children & I survived.
2020 to ? –Deaths 5.7 Million so far they say…..
Armella H. Cohen says…