Statistics of Deadly Quarrels

CarlNorthcore writes "Brian Hayes published this paper in the Computing Science chapter of Jan-Feb's American Scientist. It provides a fascinating and [sadly] relevant statistical exploration of our world's deadly conflicts. Look out for the excellent "Web of Wars" diagram."

Comments

Web of Wars

[k_d3]

Geez. Now that I think about it, there have been a lot more deadly conflicts than they taught us at school. It's a real eye-opener. I wish I had this when I needed it. On another tangent -- isn't this what the web is for? The "Information Superhighway"? It's nice that I'm actually learning useful history online, rather than in some stuffy classroom.

Re:How To Stop Wars

[pmancini]

That is interesting. I am a big fan of Dunnigan. He is an impossible person to deal with in real life, so I hear, but he has a brilliant mind. His other related books make good reading as well. I especially liked his book on how the digital revolution has changed warfare over the years.

He and Keegan share a similar idea that is echoed in the article mentioned: "this respect, Richardson's data suggest that wars are like hurricanes or earthquakes: We can't know in advance when or where a specific event will strike, but we do know how many to expect in the long run. We can compute the number of victims; we just can't say who they'll be." Keegan in particular writes in "The Face of Battle" that war is very similar to natural disasters and lists the ways. A good read.

Finally, if one is interested in this sort of thing, Dunnigan and Austin Bay wrote "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Warfare" which makes predictions. The first book in the series was quite accurate 10 years later. The last update appears to be the 1996 third edition.

I didn't see anything about

[JeanBaptiste]

completely one sided wars, like Iraq v US (round 1)
wouldn't that be a high magnitude for Iraq and a low magnitude for the US?

and yes I do know that this study did not include that war... were there any completely one sided wars involved in the time frame studied?

Shouldn't this be scaled to the population?

[rebill]

One comment at the end of the article caught my attention:

We now have it in our power to have a magnitude-8 or -9 war. In the aftermath of such an event, no one would say that war is demographically irrelevant. After a war of magnitude 9.8, no one would say anything at all.

This points out a comparison problem within the original research - it does not take into account the population increases over time. For example, somewhere in the mid-1600s, London had a population of 600,000 people, while it currently has a population near 7,000,000. That is the difference between a magnitude-5.7 and a magnitude-6.8 event, using the given scale.

Would factoring in the population growth curve enhance or reduce the apparent randomness of the data?

Napoleon's march into Russia

[jcsehak]

There's a cool map of Nappy's march into Russia, which shows, visually, the losses suffered by the thickness of the line, among other things. Really beautifully rendered. Edward Tutfe (master of information design) is a big fan of it, understandably so.

what is the temperature coefficient of war ?

[phkamp]

The most intriguing finding so far is a dramatic, century-long lull in the 1700s.

This is actually a very interesting detail, the 1700s amongst other things had "the small ice-age" where temperatures in europe were significantly lower than normal.

Considered together with the traditional wisdom of "hot tempers" in southern climates, (the middle east being the poster boy), this points to the obvious solution to world peace: Move everybody to Mars where the temperature is lower than on this war-ridden planet.

Re:Safest place to live?

[defile]

I've never visited those countries, so I have no idea if I'm completely talking out of my ass, but you can easily make the United States look like a scary place.

• Massive electoral fraud. The current President used his family's influence to come to power. His father was, among other things, head of the CIA, who has had plenty of experience rigging elections.
• Millions of people are in prison over drugs, many rights are suspended simply on unfounded suspicion of drug involvement.
• The US on average takes military action against a nation at least once every 2 years, and has kept it up since 1990.
• Corporations seem to be able to buy legislation to suit their needs. Many of the largest scandals are closely linked to the administration: Enron, Savings & Loan, etc.
• One of the only "civilized" nations to still have a death penalty.
• Death penalty supporters claim that other nations don't have nearly as big a problem with murder as we do, which means we have a murder problem?
• One out of every eight people sentenced to death is eventually cleared of all charges. How many don't make it?
• The US has used and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. There's a pretty good chance the Anthrax mailer got his stuff from US labs (the whole story is actually much scarier, if true). Depleted uranium shells used in the Gulf War by coalition forces are causing cancer in Iraqi civilians even today.
• Law enforcement appears to be largely unaccountable. Still no straight answer on what down at Waco Texas and why specific other agencies were involved (such as the Delta Force), but the end result is an entire, seemingly harmless community of Christians is dead.
• Terrorist attacks against the nation take place on an almost yearly basis.
• No public healthcare, which most other "civilized" nations offer.
• More than 50% of the nation's budget is allocated to the military.

Ho hum. I get along here just fine, in spite of all of these.