What is the greatest human disaster?

It is the disasters that occurs in America. It is the disaster that occur where the big western medias are. That is how I see it really.

Look at Beslan hostage situation. I can tell you that is like orse than the Twin Towers in some ways or maybe even equivalent because it was just school children.

WTC tragedy as much as it is big was way over dramatized. I remember some stations were even playing dramatic music while giving their report in it.

If you're asking what our opinion of the greatest human disaster is, my vote is for the 1994 Rwandan genocide (a word I have recently called over-used... but I think not in this instance).

It "only" killed about 1.000.000 people in 100 days, or 10.000 people a day which is pretty easy to beat in terms of sheer death-toll. The reasons why I think it's one of the most horrific events in human history would be that it was mainly accomplished with machetes and bats with nails through them by civilians, not firearms by soldiers as in the Nazi genocides, it had no rational foundation, it was just some very poor people looking for someone to lash out at, and because it so frequently involved social fratricide. Teachers killed their students and vice versa, employees killed their bosses and vice versa, Catholic priests killed their congregation and vice versa. The idea of a total and insanely arbitrary social breakdown resulting in the murder of 1 in every 8 citizens of the country (if you don't think it was arbitrary then please read Jared Diamond's "Collapse". The Hutu vs. Tutsi explanation is a red herring propagated by the ruling party that instigated the genocide. It was mostly a massacre of poor against rich, and conservative against liberal). Beat that, you misery-whores!

Alternately, if this thread is just intended as another naive, ignorant, superficial, and short-sighted experiment in bashing the United States, please fuck off, you stupid and insecure chickenshit conformist.

>>1
Of course we're going to report on stuff that goes down in america; it's our backyard. 

So shut up.

Actually, the US doesn't seem to care when natural disasters or human massacre occcurs in other countries, even when the death toll dwarfs 9/11.  Look at Hurricane Katrina, we pay a lot more attention to its effect on the US than foreign damage or other devastating hurricanes/floods that aren't in the US.     

What is this, a tragedy piss contest? How is one tragedy any different from another? You're talking in the grand scale, but who does the grand scale matter to? Everyone but the tragedees. Is getting turned to dust by the explosion of a plane THAT bad? Is the eradication of a religious group THAT bad? Are these really personal tragedies, did they really devastate any one human person on a personal level?

Dying is something new, babies being killed is something new, people losing their homes to floods or drowning is something new? Wars, abortion, The Great Flood? We accept all THOSE readily, don't we?

It is also a bit ironic that temporary tragedies are usually the    ones most often percieved as horrible, not the ones which have taken place since the dawn of man like animal torture, political injustice, racism, poverty, or starvation.

The greatest tragedies are not the ones of 20 million people, but the woman in the alley that gets raped after work by her husband's friend. A tragedy is judged by the situation, not the scale. See: literature.

>> 8

Next time you want to enter our tragedy pissing contest, you don't have to spend so long working up to it. Interesting choice of entry though... I still think I beat you though because there were thousands of women raped after work by their husband's friends in the Rwandan genocide.

Best luck next time.

By the way, obviously we agree with you, which you would know except you're presumably illiterate. If we didn't agree with you, then we'd merely be trying to make a purely factual statement of who died the most and when. All I'm saying is, I wish you'd read at least two of the posts in a thread before replying to it with your boring, conventional, self-help-book "wisdom".

which you would know except you're presumably illiterate.

Man, if you're going to flame the guy, at least don't pull pure shit out of your ass. He's clearly not illiterate.

>> 10

 1. a. Of persons: Ignorant of letters or literature; without book-learning or education; unlettered, unlearned; spec. (in reference to census returns, voting by ballot papers, etc.) unable to read, i.e. totally illiterate. Also, more generally, characterized by ignorance or lack of learning or subtlety (in any sphere of activity).

source: OED.com

To call someone illiterate isn't to specify that they cannot read, only that they do not read. The previous poster was clearly unread, and you, apparently, need to peruse a dictionary sometime.

wow when did they change the definition? roffles.
<Inst#cspell>

>>11
Oh, look, I can do that too! http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=illiterate

I'll stick with the defacto usage, thanks. When people say someone is illiterate, they usually mean the person can't read. Debating dictionary meaning is for lawyers, especially when different dictionaries say different things.

What a jackass.

>> 13

The Oxford English Dictionary is the source of record for anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the English language. That's why it can stand to charge for a service most render for free.

>>When people say someone is illiterate, they usually mean the
>>person can't read.

The fact that a belief is commonly shared is no metric by which its veracity may be measured, as I'm sure you'd agree. Or perhaps you believe in guardian angels and creationism?

Furthermore, I don't care what any dictionary says but the Oxford English Dictionary. There's a reason why it can charge for a service which most render for free: it is, without exception, the most accurate canon of the English language ever compiled. Ignorance of your own language is certainly no excuse, and definitely no argument.

tu stultus es

Okay, dude, so what exactly did you mean when you said "except you're presumably illiterate"?

I don't see a "they do not read" in that definition of yours. What I see is that either they can't read, or are unlearned.

Run for the hills.  We've got an OCD grammer Nazi in our midst.

Greatest human disaster was when we came out of the trees and started walking upright. The world was doomed from that moment on.

>> 15

>> characterized by ignorance or lack of learning or subtlety
>> (in any sphere of activity).

I really think that covers it. The poster demonstrated no reading comprehension because either he didn't realize that every previous poster had already agreed with his point that human tragedy is relative, not mathematical, or because he chose not to read the posts before contributing.

>> 16

>> grammer Nazi

You mean gramm_a_r Nazi... genius. :P

>>18
I read every post in the thread twice over before starting mine, so eat shit. None of the other posts had any relevancy whatsoever to what I said other than the fact that they addressed the thread question.

If you can't argue against an idea, might as well try to downplay its existence, right?

>> 19

Most of you are imbeciles who keep suggesting that attacking one statement in an argument is irrelevant, suggesting that instead one should always confront an argument as a whole. This is so stupid it's sub-g.w.

Allow me to explain something clearly and concisely: if one premise in an argument is wrong, then the conclusion is invalid. This is one of the fundaments of logic, and either you agree with it, and therefore must defend every premise (or concede to having commited an error), or you must instead accede to making non-logical statements, in which case you might as well be talking about unicorns and faerie dust.

if one premise in an argument is wrong, then the conclusion is invalid.

What if it's disjunctive, or contains implication?

Not all arguments are purely conjunctive.

BTW, if you're going to explain something concisely, it helps if you don't tack superfluous words onto the sentence. E.g.: concisely.

oh and clarifying before I leave for NO then Missi, reparations are only available when the nation/government is feeling KIND enough to give them to you, out of its own generosity or under threat of action from a currently stronger nation allied with the minority. We could actually refuse if we wanted but a good amount of trade would be lost. Therefore it's easier to pay off whingers than go through legal hassles that result in temporary UN embargoes. It's mere weighing of convenience, nothing more.

>> 21

Note I said I was explaining the concept clearly... as in, not in detail... practice your reading comprehension...

>> 22

Note I said I was explaining the concept concisely... I didn't claim the post was concise, which I think I did. I always tend to verbosity unless otherwise indicated... practice your reading comprehension.

edit:
>> which I think I did.

should have come before

>> I didn't claim the post was concise.

My error.

practice your reading comprehension

So says the person who apparently misread >>21.

>> 27

How did I misread you? In what sense is "if one premise in an argument is wrong, then the conclusion is invalid." not clear and concise? I never claimed it was canonical or complete, did I?

What? Reread >>21 word for word. Where does it say anything about concise?

>>1 >>5 >>6
Please pardon my late arrival to the party, but it's not that America == teh suxx0rs, it's that American media == teh suxx0rs.  The media takes every opportunity it can to bash the American way of life by hyping American tragedies and burying more severe tragedies overseas.  As an example, Martha Stewart gets more negative press coverage than Saddam Hussein.  Hussein killed millions of Iraqis and Iranians by direct order, yet all Stewart did was tell a little lie about bad stock advice.

>>30
She never was convicted of insider trading; she was found guilty of obstruction of justice.

biggest human disaster would be World war 2 , 50millon lives lost, not to mention the ones not counted.

Black Plague in the 14th Century.  137 million victims.  Imagine blackened, walking corpses moaning in agony in the streets, rotting dead flesh falling off in clumps.  And if you came in contact with them, your chance of survival was only about 10%.

Or the fall of Rome.  The possibly greatest empire in the history of earth fell to inbreeding and religious nonsence.  Had it not fallen, the 500 years of instability in europe would have been replaced by 500 years of science and achievement.  Imagine if Christopher Columbus hadn't discovered America, but instead been the first man to walk on the moon.

walking corpses moaning in agony in the streets, rotting dead flesh falling off in clumps.

Don't forget to bring the body armor and shotgun.

>>33

I'm not sure how well accepted it is that religious nonsense and inbreeding were the cause of the fall of Rome. There'd been lots of both ever since the beginning of the Roman empire; or are you just suggesting that Christian religious nonsense was especially toxic, and the polytheistic sort was well-thought-out? I'm not a theology expert but I don't particularly think that worshipping a dysfunctional family that lives on top of a mountain, the pater familias of whom whips lightning bolts at you when he's drunk and morphs into a bull when he feels like getting his japanese-hello on is any less bizarre than worshipping some dead jew carpenter.

Also, where do you get the idea that Rome had any interest in science? Can you name a single scientific achievement that the Romans themselves made? Because I can't think of one. Not one. The Romans stole from the Greeks; the Greeks were smart. Did you know that the official language of the Roman empire was not Latin, but Greek? The reason for that is because they had to avoid translating the works of Archimedes and Hippocrates and etc., because _none of them understand them enough to put them into their own words_.

Tthe Romans were excellent civil engineers... while the Greeks were fucking *physicists*.

>>35

p.s., I forgot Euclid. Those wop-bastards rode Euclid's corpse for every thing it was worth.

>excellent civil engineers

that's what you call a really smart ditch digger, amirite?!?!1`1`11111elven!~!~!

The greatest human disaster (that is, something done to humans) is death.  It's killed billions of people and has been going on for a few thousand years now (further if you believe in evolution).  The Black Plague is a close second methinks.

Also, even though it is sad, I think that the destruction and loss of life that hurricane Katrina left behind was overemphasized.  If you were to become completely gullible and only watch/hear/read American media, you'd think hurricane Katrina was the storm of the millenia or something.

The greatest human disaster (that is, something done to humans) is 4chan. 

>>39
fchan comes first dude. UNLESS YOU'RE SOME KIND OF COMMIE FURRY SYMPATHIZER!!!SPLTTHSPTHIZURE#$*&^&^%!!!!!

What you need is like simultaneious major disasters occuring all at the same time period. A hurricane here. A terrorist bombing here. A great famine there. Another genocide occcuring over there.
Then you can really see how bias some medias can be.

Unfortunately all such things starting all at the same time might be highly unlikely?

>>1
>>41

Actually some scientist's believe there have been several episodes of near human extinction. As to what caused them it is unclear. However the limited study of human gene pools seems to suggest that at certain points in time, the human geneome was lessened by a lack of new contributors.

>>42
Or maybe something like Genghis Khan happened

George Bush may be in line as one of the greatest human disasters.
Oh, my bad, this was meant as "humankind," not just a person.

>>44
Shut up.

>>45
Way to bump a five year old thread.

These old threads are pretty interesting. Oh how I yearn for the good old days when the internet was still serious business.

Cool story, bro.