125 years of the world's disasters, natural and man-made, and what the data says
about the link between technology and staying alive. Built on
EM-DAT via Our World in Data
plus a hand-curated event catalog.
01 · The raw record
Deaths from natural disasters, year by year
Every year since 1900, on a log scale: a flood year in the 1930s killed
a thousand times more people than a bad year does now. Hover for the breakdown; the spikes are named.
Global deaths from natural disasters per year, 1900-2025
Log scale. Source: EM-DAT via Our World in Data.
Table view
02 · The technology link
Deaths collapsed as warning technology arrived
Adjusted for population, dying in a disaster is about 46× less likely than in the
1920s. The diamonds under the bars are the technologies and institutions that did it. Hover each one.
Meanwhile the number of recorded disasters went up, not down.
Disaster deaths per 100,000 people, decade average
Deaths ÷ world population, per year, averaged by decade. Diamonds: warning & safety milestones.
Table view (rate + milestones)
Disasters recorded per year
More satellites, sensors and reporting, and a warming climate, mean far more events enter the record. More disasters seen, fewer people dead.
Table view
03 · What kills, by era
The killers changed
Early-century mega-deaths came from floods and droughts: famine-scale events that modern
logistics and forecasting ended. Earthquakes never went away, and extreme temperature is the one that's growing.
Average annual deaths by disaster type, per decade
Stacked; hover a bar for the full breakdown.
Table view
04 · Event explorer
Major disasters, one by one
A curated catalog of the century's major disasters: natural, man-made, and the messy
in-between (dam failures in storms, policy famines, neglected defenses). Log scale; every dot is an event.
Hover or tab to a dot for the story.
Deaths per event vs. year
Death tolls are best estimates. Many are disputed; ranges noted per event. Curated from public records (Wikipedia, EM-DAT, NOAA).
Table view: filtered events
05 · The satellite view
What the satellites are watching
Every open event in NASA's EONET tracker, no basemap needed; the disasters draw the
continents themselves. This is what "we see more disasters than ever" looks like: one agency's satellite
feed logs thousands of events a year, most of which would never have entered a 1950s record.