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.
00:34History records him as a brutal butcher.
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.
01:37Under 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.
02:32Under 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.
02:59Some factions of the government attempted to cover up this tragedy.
03:02But 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.
03:44By 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.
04:05The government says this is to prevent more bloodshed.
04:09But 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.
04:43Which 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.
05:09We 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 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.
07:17The 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.
07:33What 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, but found its way westward in Europe
08:04through busy trade routes, tearing 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,
08:14unleashed devastation of unimaginable proportions.
08:17Between 1346 and 1353,
08:19it 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.
08:32With 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
08:55with the horrors of death and decay.
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09:12The Holocaust.
09:13From 1933,
09:15when 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,
09:22what started as propaganda and discrimination
09:24spiraled into something even darker,
09:27a ruthless and systematic mass murder.
09:29During World War II,
09:30Nazi Germany invaded and conquered much of Europe,
09:33which gave Hitler the chance to impose his racist plans
09:37on European Jews.
09:39Millions of Jewish men, women, and children
09:41were either herded into ghettos
09:43or executed in multiple death camps.
09:45By 1945,
09:46an estimated 6 million Jews had been killed,
09:49alongside millions of other victims
09:51deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime.
09:53The deaths of millions
09:54were caused by starvation and disease.
09:57They claimed they were purifying the world,
09:59but in reality,
10:00they carried out a barbaric genocide,
10:02what became known as the Holocaust.
10:03To this day,
10:04the 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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