You're welcome!

I guess Wikipedia classified it this way because ICBMs travel through space on the way to their destination, but I can understand the perspective that this is too much of a stretch to count as space.

The source (Wikipedia) categorizes the "Nedelin catastrophe" that way since a rocket exploded before launch and up to 300 people died. I go into more detail in this comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11ij5le/comment/jaypfgq

The structure was the Banqiao Dam in 1975 and the upper end of the death count estimate was 240,000 which includes subsequent diseases and hunger-related deaths.

Yes, the structure was the Banqiao Dam and the upper end of the death count estimate was 240,000 which includes subsequent diseases and hunger-related deaths. I followed the source's classification as a structural collapse.

The source categorizes tsunamis, earthquakes, and floods separately and I followed that categorization.

Correct. However, I've just realized thanks to the link from u/denisrennes that the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure article gives an upper estimate of 240,000 deaths while the List of Accidents and Disasters by Death Toll page listed a single 171,000 figure. I use the past tense here because I just edited the page with a correction.

Regardless, the visualization rounds all figures (as stated in the image and my top-level comment) so both 171,000 and 240,000 would result in the same 2 squares being shown.

u/tremynci is correct: the source (listed in the visualization and my top-level comment) has the 1957 Mayak nuclear waste storage tank explosion as the all-time deadliest nuclear disaster with 200-6,000 deaths. I took the high end of this estimate (also mentioned in the visualization and my top-level comment).

Chernobyl is listed by the source as having a high end estimate of "4000+" with the note:

>Far higher death toll estimates have been made, but are disputed.

I took the Mayak disaster rather than going with disputed figures.

Thanks! I used Draw.io.

Thanks for the idea for comparing against smoking! I just may create a comparison for that in the future. :)

Depicting the exponential growth was definitely the hardest challenge of this visualization for me. I didn't want to just use a logarithmic bar/column chart because I find them boring and that people don't really understand them visually, so I opted to try something less conventional. I remembered this style of chart from somewhere and tried to at least hint at the increasing values (besides the explicit legend) with a red gradient and increasingly larger { brackets on the left. Any tips for how I could show this better? I'm pretty new to data visualization and am looking to learn.

The source is cited in the visualization and my top-level comment. The all-time deadliest crash was the Tenerife airport disaster when two 747s collided on a runway killing 583 people, which I rounded up to 600 as stated in the visualization and my top-level comment.

This is an interesting idea! Perhaps I'll make another post about war, but I wanted to keep this one focused on unintentional accidents and disasters rather than mixing in intentional actions like war and terrorism.

u/iiSpook is correct about why 9/11 doesn't count as a disaster according to the source's categorization. Per the top of the source page:

>Purposeful disasters, such as terrorist attacks, are omitted; those events can be found at List of battles and other violent events by death toll.

Hi! Thanks for sharing! In case you're wondering, the source lists the 2017–18 South African listeriosis outbreak as the deadliest of all time with 218 deaths, which I rounded down to 200.

The source categorizes them separately and I followed that categorization. The deadliest earthquake was the 1976 Tanghan earthquake and it does mention that some coal mines flooded but doesn't say how many deaths this accounted for out of the total figure of 655,000. The 2011 Japan earthquake caused 19,759 deaths but also doesn't break down deaths due to flooding. I'm sure there's an overlap between them, but I don't have the data to show that it would make a big enough difference to change the all-time deadliest in each category.

Yes, it's for the deadliest Maritime accident. The source lists the SS Kiangya as the deadliest with an upper estimate of 3920 deaths which I used and then rounded up (see explanation in the viz and my top-level comment) to 4000. I don't think the intentional sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff would count as an accident because the top of the page says:

>Purposeful disasters, such as terrorist attacks, are omitted; those events can be found at List of battles and other violent events by death toll.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Per the source, it actually was the failure of Banqiao Dam in 1975 and includes deaths due to subsequent diseases and hunger in addition to the initial flood. I can see the perspective that it should be categorized as a flood since it did include one, but the cause was a structural collapse and I put it in the visualization as one because the source (Wikipedia) categorized it that way.

The source (Wikipedia) categorizes the "Nedelin catastrophe" that way since a rocket exploded before launch and up to 300 people died. I go into more detail in this comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11ij5le/comment/jaypfgq

The source (Wikipedia) categorizes the "Nedelin catastrophe" that way since a rocket exploded before launch and up to 300 people died. I go into more detail in this comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11ij5le/comment/jaypfgq

The source (cited in my first comment here) lists the "Nedelin catastrophe" of 1960 as the deadliest in the "space" category with a range of 54-300 deaths. As noted in the visualization and my first comment here, I rounded up to the maximum deaths in cases where a range like this were given.

I can see a perspective where this doesn't count as a space accident/disaster because it occurred on the ground before the rocket was launched, but the source categorizes it that way. All the other accidents/disasters in the list also occurred on the ground or in the air below space except for one: Soyuz 11 where three people died due to depressurization in space. I just decided to go with the source's categorization since they all took place as part of spaceflight operations.

I agree that comparing single events to the summation of all events over a time period can be misleading, but I don't think that's the case with this post because I called that difference out in four places: the post title, the all-red title text of the visualization, bold text in a box around the traffic deaths, and my first comment here.

The other comparisons you mention are of course valid, but I think this kind of comparison is valid too provided the different time scales are prominently called out.

TIL a typhoon, hurricane and cyclone are the same thing! I was just going off the sources cited in the visualization and my first post which draw a distinction between them. Sorry for any confusion.

Design:

I wanted to put annual traffic deaths into the context of other accidents and disasters. For example, the all-time worst aviation disaster caused 583 deaths which is a little less than 3.8 hours of average global traffic deaths. The range of values is huge and I didn't want to simply use a logarithmic scale on a bar chart, so I used this style which I've seen elsewhere on the sub a few times. If anyone knows what this kind of visualization is called, please let me know.

Notes:

All death counts rounded to nearest square.

When sources state a range, the maximum deaths are used.

Tools:

Draw.io

Sources:

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241565684

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_avalanches_by_death_toll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_costly_or_deadly_hailstorms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_disasters_by_death_toll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pacific_hurricanes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornadoes_causing_100_or_more_deaths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foodborne_illness_outbreaks_by_death_toll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanic_eruptions_by_death_toll