How has the death rate from war changed over the previous 2 millennia?

Question

I am interested in knowing whether the world has become a safer place? How have the death rates from conflict fluctuated throughout history? ie. from the time when record keeping makes it possible to make reasonable estimates.

Answer 1

Safety is a flexible term, many died but many, many more were wounded, for them the war was not safe at all, the following are only US military deaths and wounded, for civilian casualties follow the links, they're enormous.

Civil War
258,000 dead
More than 137,000 wounded

WW I
116,516 dead
204,002 wounded

WW2
407,300 Dead
671,846 Wounded

Korean War
36,574 dead
103,284 wounded

'Nam
58,209 dead
153,303 wounded
2,000 missing*
*Significant enough to mention

Gulf War
382 dead
467 wounded

Operation Iraqi Freedom
3,527 Dead
25,830 wounded

There are many reasons for the drastic drop in military deaths including improved tactics, Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops, C2 assets, technological advancement and ground and air superiority

Not only has technology lessened causalities we can now track the deaths a lot more precisely.
Prior to the Vietnam it was impossible to get accurate death tolls, Vietnam has a plus or minus inaccuracy of 500

Gulf War has a plus or minus accuracy 20

OIF is right on the money plus or minus 2

Answer 2

I can tell you that the percentage of "non battle casualties" has gone down. As medicine and nutrition have improved, along with "field sanitation", you have fewer losses to combat troops from things like "Trench Foot" or the Flu, as a percentage of the total.

I can also tell you that during the Civil War, almost any battle wound was going to result in death or amputation, but that's no longer the case.

However, I don't think that's going to answer whether or not the world is a "safer" place. It just means that battlefields are a lot more sanitary and there are better standards of medicine.

Answer 3

Modern warfare, in general is safer, as much sense as that does not seem to make.

I will expound. The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in US history. Most died of wounds and the resulting infection. Many died of venereal disease. If modern medicine were around in the civil war, well less would have died. I say less and not much less because the tactics were linier, at a time when technology was outpacing the tactics. The same can be said of World War I.

US soldier are extremely effective in their jobs, thanks to technology. If you are wounded, chances are you will live. As far as the comparison to Vietnam, well, 58,000 died in Vietnam, about 3500 in Iraq. 2500 died on D-Day. 25,000 dies in the Ardennes in 1944. So less soldiers are dieing. The object is still to kill the enemy, and we do that, but with a mind toward limiting collateral damage, which cannot have been said when whole cities were razed in World War II.

Answer 4

Let's see. Don't understand your question but in this war right now we've lost a few thousand compared to over 50,000 in Vietnam. And every war before that even more. People die less today because of advances in medicine and armor. And because the war in Iraq is not really a war. Our military in Iraq just acts like police. Fighting against gangs and civilians, not an army.

Answer 5

Roman foot soldiers had a 50/50 chance of dyeing every day, we all do.
No human survived at Ground Zero, it is estimated that many more died as a result of effects that bombing.
We have improved the loss to live ratio.

Answer 6

Less soldiers die from then wounds since medical technology has improved, thats probably the biggest change in death rates

Answer 7

There is no death toll in comparison.