Hate to break it to you. You better sit down, you're not going to like this. Death's by natural disasters are dropping like a rock, especially when you look back to this century. Currently, your best chance to get messed with is by an earthquake. Also, more people die from extreme cold than extreme warm temps. Worse still more people are impacted by Hurricanes because more people live along coastal areas. Check ourtLomborg's read below. He's not a climate denier. Just puts things into reasonable prospective and suggests some smart solutions, many of which aren't getting airplay.
Total Deaths by Natural Disaster in the Last Decade (2010-2019)
In the past decade, approximately 60,000 people per year died from natural disasters. This represents 0.1% of total deaths worldwide.
The chart below breaks down the total deaths by type of natural disaster in the last decade.
Historically, droughts and floods were the most fatal natural disasters.
However, deaths from these events are relatively low now compared to earthquakes, which are by far the most deadly natural disaster in modern times. Over the past decade, earthquakes have killed 267,480 people worldwide, followed by extreme temperatures, which killed 74,244.
The chart above shows a sharp decline in deaths from natural disasters over the last 100 years.
In the 1920s, the world averaged over 500,000 deaths from natural disasters per year. These were caused by several outlier events: for example, a Tokyo earthquake in 1923 killed over 146,000 people, and drought and famine killed 3 million people in China between 1928 and 1930.
In the 1930s, the number dropped below the 500,000 deaths per year average, but a number of events still put their thumb on the scale. In 1931, floods in China killed over 3.7 million people, and in 1935, an earthquake killed up to 60,000 people in Pakistan, and so on.
But luckily over time, the decadal average has dropped to fewer than 100,000 deaths per year. And if we consider the rate of population growth, then the decline over the past century has been even more dramatic.
Our awareness of natural disasters has increased dramatically along with global access to real-time information, and thankfully, these occurrences are less deadly than they once were.