List of anthropogenic disasters by death toll

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This is a list of events that have caused a measurable drop in the total human population. The list covers the name of the event, location and the start and end of each event. Some events may belong in more than one category. In addition, some of the listed events overlap each other, and in some cases the death toll from a smaller event is included in the one for the larger event or time period of which it was part.

There is often large uncertainty about the death tolls. The tables are initially sorted by the geometric mean, meaning the square root of the product of the lowest and highest estimate, of the cumulative number of deaths, for example, ${\displaystyle {\sqrt {500\cdot 2000}}=1000}$ for a lowest estimate of 500 and highest of 2000 dead since the start of the war or disaster.