- 7 weeks ago
Humanity has witnessed periods of unimaginable darkness throughout history. Join us as we look back at the most devastating chapters of our past, from ancient conquests to modern atrocities. Our countdown includes the Holocaust, the Black Death, the atomic bombings, and more! Which tragedy do you think had the most profound impact? Let us know in the comments below!
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00:00A mushroom cloud appeared.
00:04People who saw this in Hiroshima are nearly all dead by now.
00:09Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 of the bleakest chapters of humanity's past.
00:13Scipio ordered that all houses should be burned, and this brought new horrors.
00:19The Mongol Conquest.
00:21Imagine living in 13th to 14th century Eurasia when the Mongol army swept with a storm of destruction that reshaped continents.
00:27Led by Genghis Khan and his descendants, the armies thundered across Asia, toppling kingdoms and wiping out entire cities.
00:37Populations were slaughtered, and scholars estimate tens of millions lost their lives, a scale of bloodshed rarely matched in history.
00:44For over 160 years, people lived in fear of sudden strikes, never knowing if their homes would be next.
00:49Only children and potential concubines were spared, taken as slaves.
00:54And had the Mongols pushed further west, deeper into Europe, the tragedy would have been even more devastating.
00:59For those who lived through it, this wasn't just war.
01:01It was one of the darkest nightmares you wouldn't wish on your enemies.
01:05Execute those whom custom has condemned to death.
01:09Siege of Carthage.
01:10In 149 BCE, Rome unleashed its full force against Carthage in what was known as the Third Punic War.
01:16For three years, Carthage was besieged on land and sea by Roman legions.
01:20For Carthaginians, their greatest threat came in the person of Scipio Aemilianus, the ruthless and relentless Roman commander.
01:26Scipio was in a position to deliver the final blow to the city.
01:30And when it came, it brought with it the most brutal and bloody street fighting recorded in ancient history.
01:36Under Scipio, in 146 BCE, Carthage finally fell and their defeat was nothing short of brutal.
01:42Roman soldiers marched across the city, slaughtering anyone they found, setting homes ablaze and unleashing hell.
01:48For ten days, the fires raged.
01:51When the inferno subsided, Carthage had been wiped from the political map of the world.
01:56Survivors didn't escape the horror.
01:58They were bound and sold into slavery while their city was left in ruins.
02:01A Roman decree forbade anyone from rebuilding the city, marking one of the bleakest moments in ancient history.
02:06It was also to be excised from the geographical map, too.
02:10Great Chinese Famine
02:11Between 1959 and 1961, the people of China faced one of their darkest times as they were struck with a deadly famine.
02:18While natural disasters like floods and droughts may have played a role, the real blow came from governmental policies.
02:23Intended to take China into the promised land of the socialist paradise in less than 15 years.
02:30It was the Great Leap Forward.
02:31Under Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, China was meant to transform overnight from a farming nation into a modern communist powerhouse.
02:39But instead, it turned disastrous.
02:41Farms were collectivized, harvests mismanaged, and the officials inflated food production reports.
02:46The country sank into economic chaos, which caused an unprecedented famine.
02:51The result was mass starvation.
02:52Entire villages wasted away, and in just three years, an estimated 15 to 55 million people died.
02:58Some factions of the government attempted to cover up this tragedy, but for countless families, this man-made nightmare scarred the nation forever.
03:05I prefer not to think about it, because I feel pain when people talk about it.
03:10The Rwandan Massacre
03:11April 1994 will forever be remembered by Rwandans as the start of a bitter genocide.
03:16For the next 100 days, Hutu militias carried out a wave of violence, slaughtering Tutsis and even moderate Hutus who opposed the killings.
03:23Neighbors killed neighbors, and some husbands even killed their Tutsi wives, saying they will be killed if they refused.
03:31Armed with machetes and guns, the Hutu militia raided villages, tore families apart, and subjected women to horrific sexual violence.
03:38By the time the killings stopped, the death toll was staggering.
03:47Between 500,000 to 800,000 people had been wiped out.
03:50What made it even more chilling?
03:52The world stood by, offering little to no intervention as the horror unfolded.
03:55Although Rwanda is going through reconciliation and healing today, those haunting 100 days still reshaped its history.
04:01It is now illegal to talk about ethnicity in Rwanda. The government says this is to prevent more bloodshed, but some say it also prevents true reconciliation.
04:12Trail of tears
04:13You wake up one morning to find your family's land, your farms, your rivers, even your ancestors' graves all suddenly taken from you.
04:19That was the cruel reality for the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole between 1830 and 1850.
04:25The U.S. government eyed their resource-rich ground and forcefully uprooted entire nations from their ancestral lands.
04:31They were marched west of the Mississippi to what they called Indian Territory.
04:35The journey became known as the Trail of Tears, and for good reason.
04:38Up to a third of the 15,000 Cherokee who were forced to make the journey died on the way, which is one reason that journey came to be known as the Trail of Tears.
04:48Diseases spread, food ran out, and tens of thousands died of exhaustion along the way.
04:53For the Native Americans who survived, the pain was immeasurable.
04:56They'd lost their culture and history, forever ripped from the soil that shaped their identity.
05:00We've lived with that pain for a long time.
05:03Yeah.
05:03September 11th.
05:04Just an ordinary Tuesday morning turned out to be America's darkest day in modern history.
05:08We believe that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
05:13On September 11th, 2001, out of nowhere, 19 terrorists hijacked four planes and shattered U.S. skies, targeting symbols of its power.
05:21Two planes crashed into New York's Twin Towers, one struck the Pentagon, and the fourth plane headed for Washington was brought down in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.
05:29The scope of this disaster is impossible to comprehend.
05:33Behind this gruesome attack was Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, framing it as retaliation against the U.S. foreign policy.
05:40By day's end, nearly 3,000 lives were lost and thousands more injured.
05:44In response, America launched a global war on terror, sparking conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,
05:49and ushering in a decade defined by bloodshed, fear, and uncertainty.
05:52Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.
05:58Spanish Flu
05:59You survive World War I thinking the worst is finally over.
06:02Then comes an enemy far deadlier than any battlefield, the Spanish Flu.
06:06That was the reality in 1918 when the mysterious virus erupted suddenly and swept across the globe.
06:11Those soldiers were then sent overseas in the spring of 1918,
06:15carrying flu microbes that would spread faster than the war itself.
06:18With soldiers and civilians constantly on the move, it spread like wildfire,
06:22infecting nearly a third of the global population,
06:25striking in multiple waves and with no treatments or real medical knowledge available.
06:29The world was defenseless.
06:31In the U.S., some people were even afraid that reporting the flu might violate the Sedition Act of 1918.
06:36Within two years, tens of millions were dead, far more than the lives claimed in the war itself.
06:41Despite attempts to censor reports on the virus, the devastation exposed a brutal truth.
06:45Humanities fragile and nations can easily be brought to their knees.
06:48The Spanish Flu killed at least 50 million people,
06:52and some believe the number may be closer to 100 million.
06:56Atomic Attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
06:58In August 1945, World War II neared its end, but Japan was holding on.
07:02Then came a turning point that shook the world.
07:04The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6th,
07:07and three days later, they dropped another in Nagasaki.
07:10The effects were catastrophic.
07:19Tens of thousands killed instantly, and thousands more perishing later from burns and radiation.
07:23Children, families, entire generations were erased in moments,
07:26and even survivors carried unbearable sickness and grief.
07:29Ladders, railings, even people left their outlines on stone and metal.
07:34What made this more haunting?
07:35The casualties were mostly innocent civilians,
07:37marking the only time nuclear weapons were ever used in war.
07:40While some argue the bombings forced Japan's surrender,
07:42others maintain it was atrocious.
07:44Either way, the world vowed to never let such horror unfold again.
07:48Although no one has used a nuclear weapon since,
07:51arguments continue as to the morality of dropping the bomb.
07:55The Black Death
07:55In the mid-14th century, Europe was struck with a nightmare.
07:59The Black Death, also known as the Plague.
08:01It likely began in Central Asia,
08:02but found its way westward in Europe through busy trade routes,
08:05tearing up the entire continent.
08:07Death followed within a week.
08:08From a pneumonia-like flooding of the lungs.
08:12The plague carried by fleas and rats unleashed devastation of unimaginable proportions.
08:17Between 1346 and 1353, it killed an estimated 25 to 50 million people,
08:22nearly half of Europe's entire population.
08:24The disease wiped out about a third of Europe's population,
08:28earning itself the moniker, the Black Death.
08:31With its brutal symptoms and high mortality rate,
08:34it erased entire towns,
08:36making it one of the most fatal pandemics in history.
08:38Though the plague resurfaced in later centuries,
08:40these occurrences did not match this scale.
08:42The Black Death left a shock that shattered medieval society,
08:46weakening feudalism and reshaping Europe's future forever.
08:48There was an extraordinary flourishing of macabre art.
08:52Pictures in which people were encouraged to engage with the horrors of death and decay.
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09:10The Holocaust.
09:13From 1933, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party seized power,
09:17they pushed a twisted ideology,
09:18casting Jews as enemies of the state and an inferior race.
09:21By 1941, what started as propaganda and discrimination spiraled into something even darker,
09:26a ruthless and systematic mass murder.
09:29During World War II, Nazi Germany invaded and conquered much of Europe,
09:33which gave Hitler the chance to impose his racist plans on European Jews.
09:38Millions of Jewish men, women, and children were either herded into ghettos
09:43or executed in multiple death camps.
09:45By 1945, an estimated 6 million Jews had been killed,
09:49alongside millions of other victims deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime.
09:53The deaths of millions were caused by starvation and disease.
09:57They claimed they were purifying the world,
09:59but in reality, they carried out a barbaric genocide,
10:02what became known as the Holocaust.
10:03To this day, the world stares back at this horror,
10:06forever reminded of the dangers of unchecked hatred.
10:09I need to take a deep breath.
10:11The brutality and cold-bloodedness,
10:13the extent of the crimes committed here,
10:15is unbelievable.
10:17Which of these periods in history was the bleakest?
10:19Do let us know in the comments section.
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