The worst years to be alive in the 21st century (so far)
At about 5:30 on the afternoon of December 30, 2019, a Wuhan eye doctor named Li Wenliang typed a quick message to some old classmates. Seven SARS cases, he wrote. All from the seafood market. He was just warning friends.
It didn’t stay small.
The century already had bad years. A tsunami. A bank that failed in the middle of the night. An earthquake on a Tuesday afternoon.
Six years follow, chosen for documented deaths and documented upheaval. The last one, 2026, isn’t over. Death tolls are estimates, and where sources disagree, we say so.
Who was Rick Rescorla?
Morgan Stanley’s head of security, working on the 44th floor of the South Tower. At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, he watched the first plane hit the North Tower. The building’s announcement said to stay put. He didn’t. He ordered everyone out.
He’d seen this coming. After the 1993 bombing, he was sure the attackers would return, so he drilled the company on evacuation. On the day, he reportedly sang “God Bless America” over a bullhorn to keep people moving. He’s credited with 2,687 lives.
Then he went back up for one more sweep. He was one of 13 Morgan Stanley employees and contractors who didn’t come out.
A geography lesson
Tilly Smith was 10, walking Mai Khao Beach in Phuket with her parents on December 26, 2004. The sea pulled back. The surface was frothing. She’d seen that exact footage in class two weeks earlier, when her teacher, Andrew Kearney, showed tsunami footage.
She told her parents. They told the hotel staff. About 100 people left the beach before the wave arrived.
The tsunami killed about 228,000 people in 14 countries. Tilly later said she’d probably be dead without that lesson, according to one account.
“No political will”
Henry Paulson, the Treasury Secretary, used those words on Monday, September 15, 2008, about another bank bailout, per one account. Lehman Brothers had already filed for bankruptcy at 1:45 that morning, listing about $639 billion in assets. By daylight, employees were carrying boxes out of headquarters.
The year had been bad already. Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar in May and killed about 138,000 people. The ruling junta held off foreign aid for roughly three weeks. Ten days later, the Sichuan earthquake killed about 87,000 more.
“Well over 100,000”
Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister, said that on the evening of January 12, 2010, hours after the quake, per the record. Nobody agrees on the final count. Estimates run from 100,000 to 316,000.
Haiti had no national building code. The UN lost 102 staff when its mission building collapsed, the worst single loss in its history.
Then, that October, cholera.
118,000 cases, 114 countries
That’s what the World Health Organization’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 11, 2020, when he called COVID-19 a pandemic.
By the end of the year, the WHO estimated the virus had killed at least 3 million people.
Li Wenliang wasn’t there to see it. He’d died on February 7. China’s state inquiry later cleared him, and Wuhan police apologized to his family.
Two quakes, 39 seconds apart
Venezuela, 6:04 p.m. on June 24. A 7.2, then a 7.5. Among the strongest to hit the country in over a century.
By early August, officials had confirmed more than 6,000 dead. The count later passed 6,500.
Rescuers kept finding people for days. One was a child named Klieber Morán, and interim President Delcy Rodríguez called the rescue a source of hope.
Meanwhile, a war between Iran and the United States and Israel, which began February 28, still hadn’t ended in mid-October. The Pentagon’s U.S. toll stood at 21 dead. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted, and a fuel crisis was listed among ongoing events.
The bottom line
The 2004 tsunami killed about 228,000 people, and Nargis killed about 138,000 four years later. The WHO estimates that in 2020 alone, the death toll was at least 3 million.
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