Worst time to be alive in history

If someone asked you what the worst year in human history was, what would you guess? 1347 CE was pretty bad. That's the year the Black Death seriously hit Europe. Any of the years of the Holocaust, between 1941 and 1945. Or 1918, the year of the start of the flu pandemic that killed up to 100 million people.

As it turns out, the suckiest of all was a year most people have probably never even thought about: 536 CE.

"It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," Harvard University archaeologist and medieval historian Michael McCormick told Science Magazine. His team's new paper doesn't see signs of economic recovery until 640 CE.

536 was the 10th year of the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great, and nothing much was happening in the human sphere aside from regular boring skirmishes. No plagues (not yet, anyway), no unusually large genocides.

But something weird was happening in the sky: a mysterious, dusty fog appeared, blocking the Sun, causing temperatures to plunge and setting off years of around-the-world chaos - drought, crop failures, summertime snow in China, and widespread famine.

"And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius, "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed."

There's evidence to suggest that catastrophic volcanic eruptions are the culprit, not just in ice cores from Antarctica and tree rings from Greenland, but in the effects of later volcanic events, which also caused short-term global cooling and devastating famine.

Now a new, highly detailed ice core analysis of the Colle Gnifetti glacier on the border between Switzerland and Italy has yielded up new information about the century of woe into which the world was plunged.

Ice cores are a fantastic archaeological resource, since permanent ice deposits build up gradually, through annual snowfall. This means that you can find the ice deposit for any given year and look at what was happening in the atmosphere.

In the year 536 CE, volcanic ash and debris - called tephra - was mixed in with the ice layer, indicating a large volcanic event. Greenland and Antarctic ice cores showed evidence of a second eruption in 540 CE, which would have prolonged the misery. And then in 541, the Justinian Plague cropped up, and everything just went from bad to worse.

But in around 640 CE, the team noticed a sign of renewal in the ice: lead. Yeah, no, lead pollution isn't the best thing ever. It's what that lead pollution means: that humans had started mining and smelting silver from lead ore.

Worst time to be alive in history
A c.660 CE silver coin. (T. Abramson)

Then there was another spike in 660 CE, and another in 695 CE. Humans were minting silver coins.

"This unambiguously shows that, alongside any residual pool of Roman bullion and imported metal, new mining facilitated the production of the last post-Roman gold coins - debased with increasing amounts of silver - and the new silver coinages that replaced them," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"The high-resolution ice-core record offers a new and independent chronology for renewed silver production in the early medieval west."

In short, the economy was recovering - and it only took a hundred or so years. It's almost enough to make one terrified of volcanoes or something.

Interestingly, the ice core also shows a collapse in lead pollution in around 1349 to 1353. This coincides exactly with the chronology of the Black Death, and the researchers used it as a marker to determine that they were estimating the correct years for the volcanic markers and pollution spikes.

If you follow the news at all, you might think we’re living in the end times. But in reality, that could be further from the truth.

By many metrics, today is the best day ever to be alive. We’re not saying that there aren’t big problems in the world, but compared to history, we live in paradise.


The global life expectancy is higher than ever, while global poverty — although still a significant problem — is constantly pushing lower. Meanwhile, technology and medical science have advanced beyond our wildest dreams.

Let’s put things in comparison, shall we? Here are X times and places in human history when the living envied the dead.

Worst time to be alive in history

6) 1816 — Anywhere

In 1815, Mount Tambora in present-day Indonesia erupted in what was the most powerful volcanic eruption ever recorded. The eruption itself killed an estimated 12,000 people.

But the horror really kicked into gear the following year, dubbed the Year Without Summer. The gigantic ash cloud that Tambora belched into the sky devastated the global climate and led to global crop failures and famine.

In China and India, droughts, floods, and diseases killed potentially millions of people. In Europe, crops withered across the continent, leading to widespread starvation.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., a dry fog descended across large parts of the country. Temperatures plummeted and farmers reported their crops dying in the fields.

5) Early 16th Century — America

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived in America. And for the next 20 years, being an indigenous American wasn’t something to envy.

Not only did Columbus’ discovery mark the colonization of the Americas, which saw practically all indigenous cultures and civilizations repressed and wiped out. The conquistadors slaughtered and enslaved millions across the continents.

But violence wasn’t the largest killer. Europeans brought with them smallpox, a disease for which native Americans had no immunity or medicine.

Scientists estimate that just within one year, between 1520 and 1521, smallpox killed anywhere between 60-90% of all native Americans. The mountains of dead people only made it easier for the Spanish to subjugate the New World.

4) 1958-1962 — China

Chairman Mao launched his Great Leap Forward in 1958. The campaign was intended to modernize China’s agriculture and steel production, but it only ended up being a great leap toward hell on Earth.

The ruling Communist Party enacted mandatory agricultural collectivization policies and prohibited private farming. Fearful of failing their superiors’ goals, officials exaggerated farm yields to the point that there simply wasn’t enough food to go around.

These events triggered the Great Chinese Famine. We don’t know the exact death toll, and probably never will, but estimates range from 15 million to 55 million.

Some 2.5 million people were also executed for suspected anti-government activity. And anywhere between one to three million people couldn’t take the horror and ended their own lives.

3) Early 20th Century — Europe

We probably don’t need to tell you why being in Europe in the early 1900s sucked. There were these two little events called the World Wars.

Although horrible fighting took place globally, Europe bore the brunt of both WWI and WWII. Weapons technology had advanced significantly from the days of Napoleon, and the world’s nations gleefully employed their new toys against each other.

Machine guns, tanks, aerial bombardment, gas attacks, and the Holocaust — just to name a few — killed more than 120 million people over only three decades. And that’s not to count the wounded and displaced soldiers and civilians.

Meanwhile, the Spanish Flu pandemic broke out in 1918. By 1920, it had left potentially another 100 million dead.

2) The 1340s — Europe and Asia

We have three words for you. The Black Death.

This outbreak of the bubonic plague started in 1346. Over the next decade, it ravaged large parts of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, killing anywhere between 75 and 200 million people.

The plague left entire villages empty. Some medieval scholars estimate that the Black Death wiped out up to 60% of the population of Europe.

It wasn’t much better elsewhere. In the Middle East, a third of the population perished, while in Egypt 40% of the people died.

Of course, the survivors were desperate to figure out the cause of the disease, and vented their fury on anyone they could. Both peasant mobs and church authorities murdered thousands of Jews, Romani, and other minorities.

1) 536 — Anywhere

And here it is — the worst time ever to be a living human being. Probably not what you were expecting, is it?

But the century following 536 was a complete horror show pretty much wherever you happened to live. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland threw a massive ash cloud into the sky, much like during the Year Without Summer.

Global temperatures crashed, resulting in the coldest decade on record in the past 2,300 years. Crops failed everywhere from Europe to Latin America and China. With snow falling in the summer months, people couldn’t grow wheat or rice for several years.

And then, in 541, the Justinian Plague arrived in Pelusium, a Roman city in Egypt. We have no idea how many people it killed, but between 541 and 549, 5,000 people dropped dead in Constantinople every single day.

The famines and diseases resulted in massive political changes. The collapse of the Sassanid Empire, the weakening of the Byzantine, and rebellions in China directly resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of people.

What was the worst time in history to live?

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536.

What is considered the worst time in history?

Falling in the time known as the 'Dark Ages', the year 536 AD fully embraced this moniker as Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia were plunged into 24-hour darkness for 18 months. Summer temperatures plummeted between 1.5-2.5°C causing crops to fail and millions to starve to death.

What were the worst years to be alive?

Ten of the Most Terrible Years to Be Alive.
1346 – The Bubonic Plage. Or basically any year between 1347 and 1351. ... .
1918 – War and Spanish Flu. ... .
1945 – End of the War. ... .
536 – Massive Volcanic Eruptions. ... .
1816 – The Year Without a Summer. ... .
1630-31 – More Plague and Famine. ... .
1929 – The Great Depression. ... .
1520 – Carrying Diseases..

When was the darkest time in history?

But in 536 A.D., much of the world went dark for a full 18 months, as a mysterious fog rolled over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The fog blocked the sun during the day, causing temperatures to drop, crops to fail and people to die. It was, you might say, the literal Dark Age.