On this day in 1556, the deadliest earthquake on record struck Shaanxi Province, China, killing around 830,000 people. Given that it was the 16th century, virtually no one outside the Ming Dynasty knew that such a disaster had occurred. It goes to show how much technology and mass media have given us an amplified sense that the world is more catastrophic and violent than ever before.

Indeed, the various wars between the Romans and Germanic tribes resulted in over 15 million deaths across three centuries; the Mongol conquests of the 13th and 14th centuries killed 30-50 million people; the conflict between the Qing and Ming dynasties claimed 25 million lives; the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs had a similar death toll.

All these unfathomably awful things happened with scarcely anyone outside the respective regions knowing anything about them. Imagine if wars of these scale happened now, in light of how upsetting comparatively smaller conflicts like the Syrian Civil War or the ISIS insurgency are. How would the world react to something on the scale of Shaanxi? (I suspect we would be too numb to be moved, due in no small part to the over-exposure and amplification mentioned earlier.)

What are your thoughts?