When was the first biological warfare of mankind?

In 1918, the world experienced two events that led to massive population deaths: one was World War I and the other was the Spanish Pandemic.

Spanish Pandemic Flu Newspaper 1918

World War I, as it is best known, was an unjust war fought by the Great Powers in order to redistribute their colonies. World War I began in 1914 and ended in 1918, involving more than 30 countries and 65 million troops.

World War I not only devastated the economies of various countries, but also caused more than 10 million deaths and 20 million injuries, making it one of the wars with the largest number of participating countries and the largest number of casualties in the history of mankind, second only to World War II.

World War I

However, in the face of the Spanish Flu, the destructive power and casualties of World War I are far from comparable. In the past, few people knew about the Spanish Flu, but his lethality was unprecedented. The Spanish Flu lasted for three years, infecting one billion people worldwide and killing about 50 million, making it the deadliest disaster in history.

How many people died in various countries as a result of the 1918 Spanish pandemic? Because it was at the end of World War I, when European countries were still in the euphoria of victory, and all countries intentionally hid their deaths from the public, we can estimate the number of deaths by looking at the deaths in Asia, which was less affected by the pandemic.

During the Spanish influenza pandemic

As Asia's population was the largest and most concentrated, the number of people infected and killed in Asia was the highest, conservatively estimated at more than 20 million people, with the largest number of deaths, 13.88 million, in British India, which was also the country hardest hit by the Spanish influenza pandemic.

China had a population of more than 400 million at the time, and about 3 million people lost their lives, a small percentage but the second highest total number of deaths in Asia. When the Spanish pandemic landed in China, the first to be hit was Guangzhou, and the worst was Chongqing, where about half the population went down with the flu, and another 800,000 or so were infected and killed in Taiwan Province. China named the flu the "bone pain disease" or "five-day plague".

Japan during the Spanish pandemic

In addition to China and India, about 900,000-2.4 million people died in Iran, about 1.9 million in Indonesia, and about 400,000 in Japan, for a conservative total of more than 20 million people in Asian countries.

In Europe, the first to publicize is Spain, according to statistics, Spain, the country about 8 million people infected with influenza, and even the king has been infected, so European countries are blamed for the outbreak of influenza from Spain, and thus the flu named "Spanish pandemic flu".

Medical workers on the streets of Spain during the Great Influenza

The Spanish Flu **** experienced three waves, the first wave of deaths from the spring of 1918 was relatively small, and could only be regarded as a common cold, so countries did not pay much attention to it. The second wave in the fall of 1918 was the most deadly, killing about 30 million people worldwide, and the third wave from the winter of 1919 to the spring of 1920 was between one and two, killing about 10 million people.

During the Spanish Pandemic

So where exactly did the Spanish Pandemic spread from? Europe first thought it was an outbreak in Spain, hence the name "Spanish Flu", but it wasn't, because other countries underreported it, and Spain was the most honest and the first to report it on a large scale.

Additionally, there are many European and American experts who believe that the root cause of the flu was in China. They believe that the flu first broke out in 1917 in Guangdong and Guangxi, and that it was later carried by 140,000 Chinese laborers who went to Europe to fight in the war, which is obviously even more ridiculous. There has been a tradition in Europe that any pandemic virus that cannot be cured will eventually be pushed back to the Chinese, such as the syphilis that ravaged Europe in the 16th century, when European countries shifted the blame to each other and finally dumped the black pot on the Chinese, with sinister intentions.

Influenza ravaged Europe

In fact, the Spanish influenza initially originated in the U.S. military camps in Texas, and by 1917, 14 U.S. military camps appeared in this influenza, and since then the influenza through the U.S. military to France, and then swept through Europe.

U.S. military camps where the Spanish flu first broke out

The U.S., which was the site of the outbreak, was even sicker than China, where about 28 percent of the nation's population was infected with the Spanish flu in 1918, resulting in between 500,000 and 670,000 deaths. In the first year of the flu outbreak alone, the life expectancy of the U.S. population plummeted by 12 years. In fact, a number of catastrophic viruses that have led to major population deaths have initially broken out from the U.S., such as the one that came closest to us 17 years ago, which first appeared in the U.S. as well.

U.S. police wearing masks on patrol in 1918

The Spanish pandemic that caused the most deaths was in the summer and fall of 1918, about the same time World War I ended. It wasn't a coincidence, either, because the countries really couldn't fight anymore at that time, and there were no troops available. The Spanish pandemic was different from any other time the virus had been present, in that it was not the old and children with the weakest resistance who were infected and died the most, but instead it was the strongest young people who died in the highest proportion, with the highest percentage of the population aged between 20 and 40 years old.

The flu virus under the microscope

So there are some who suspect that the Spanish pandemic was most likely a man-made release of the virus, perhaps the first biological warfare in the history of mankind, however, this conspiracy theory in the end, we do not know, he will forever submerged in history.