Fat Tailed Distributions for Deaths in Conflicts and Disasters

Abstract

We study the statistics of human deaths from wars and similar man-made conflicts as well as natural disasters. The probability distribution of number of people killed in natural disasters as well as man-made situations show power law decay for the largest sizes, with similar exponent values. Comparisons with natural disasters, when event sizes are measured in terms of physical quantities (e.g., energy released in earthquake, volume of rainfall, land area affected in forest fires, etc.) also show striking resemblances. The universal patterns in their statistics suggest that some subtle similarities in their mechanisms and dynamics might be responsible.