Comments on: Where Wars Kill People

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:45:15 +0000

“The true weapons of mass destruction are the huge stockpiles of conventional weapons that are produced and the huge armies maintained. They end up depriving ordinary people — who have do dogs in any battle — of the basics of a human existence. It is heartbreaking to see the poverty in third world countries and realize that if these countries were to divert some of the resources devoted to war for development, the world would not be in such a sorry state.”

This isn’t fair. Stockpiling weapons and maintaining armies is necessary for maintaining security and for preventing war. Look at Iraq, for example. Disbanding its army led to a complete breakdown in security and tens of thousands of people died. Militias formed to restore security but they fought among themselves. Only as the central government has slowly been able to rebuild its security forces and build alliances among the factions has violence fallen.

By: Gabe

Gabe — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:59:24 +0000

I think a key point is that it’s plotting deaths as a percentage of the population. (Explicitly stated if you click on the map)

By: ColoZ

ColoZ — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:41:58 +0000

Is this map supposed to show the location of the deaths, or the dead’s nationalities? If it’s the former, it would explain why the US doesn’t show up at all, despite something like 100,000 US deaths since WW2. Somehow that doesn’t seem like the right way to plot it, though.

By: Dmitry

Dmitry — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:46:59 +0000

The map of world’s influences after the end of the present financial crisis

By: spyder

spyder — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:36:48 +0000

A subtle message in this particular cartogram is found in the questions of JJ and Zodia. If one is aware of African continental history over the last 60 years, one would have some way to identify the major revolutions and independence movements that lead to massive bloodshed of millions. Central and South America have likewise been engaged in long struggles of disappearing relations and outright slaughter of swaths of population in the name of control of resources and cognitive liberty.

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:21:14 +0000

One major signature is that some of the bigger nations in this map are those which the US has been in a war with: Korea, Vietnam, and I think Iraq shows up there — though the Iraq-Iran war contributed a lot to that one.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: JRG

JRG — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:21:04 +0000

JJ — Latin America has suffered through countless civil wars over the last 60 years; “military dictatorships to their own civilians” sounds like the government just rounding people up and shooting them, and is a vast oversimplification. Deaths from these conflicts are rightly called “war deaths” for the most part; when competing rural militias, or rural militias and government troops, are killing both each other and civilians supposedly sympathetic to the other side, it’s every bit as much a war as the Viet Cong versus the US Army and ARVN. Deaths in Latin America since WWII include something like 200,000 in Guatemala, 200,000 in Colombia, and 100,000 in Peru — and those are just the ones I can think of right off. By comparison the US has lost about a hundred thousand people in all post-WWII conflicts put together.

This ties to something the map is probably trying to get across: for all the talk in the Western world about the cost of war, most of us haven’t really internalized the impacts that these conflicts, especially ones that raged for decades, really had on their respective countries.

By: JJ

JJ — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 04:28:33 +0000

Mmmm, nice concept, dubious implementation…How come South America with a population in the same order of magnitude than the US still appears in the map in spite of no big significant war ( yes there was the Malvinas/Falklands, and small and extremely short wars between Peru-Ecuador) and US does not appear after Korea, Vietnam!!, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Serbia. Maybe they are counting the deaths caused by the several military dictatorships to their own citizens, but no matter how atrocious they were, those were not wars per se. And yes I know US always did most of the killing, but even so, they suffered casualties.

By: Atanu Dey

Atanu Dey — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 03:30:45 +0000

What Mr Crowell said in #1. I could not agree more.

The true weapons of mass destruction are the huge stockpiles of conventional weapons that are produced and the huge armies maintained. They end up depriving ordinary people — who have do dogs in any battle — of the basics of a human existence. It is heartbreaking to see the poverty in third world countries and realize that if these countries were to divert some of the resources devoted to war for development, the world would not be in such a sorry state.

Here endth my bleeding heart rant.

By: Sili

Sili — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:41:10 +0000

Zodia,

Go look at the regular map for reference.

Re Antarctica, I like those elliptical projection they use for the CMB.

By: Ijon Tichy

Ijon Tichy — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:54:03 +0000

This site has many more cartograms:

http://www.worldmapper.org

By: brad

brad — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:17:02 +0000

Was there some massive Antarctic war I don’t know about? I know the projection enhances
things, but still, zero shouldn’t get projected to anything…

By: Zodia

Zodia — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:28:17 +0000

Look at Africa, how are we supposed to know which color refers to which country?! I dislike this ambiguity!

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:06:47 +0000

What this does not tell you is that by far the largest numbers of deaths are not actual combat deaths or even civilians killed as so called “collateral damage.” A far number of people die just from the opportunity loss because so much of the world’s resources and capital are devoted to war and preparations for war. The largest number of casualties occur because this activity curtails food production, education, healthcare and productive forms of economic activity.

Lawrence B. Crowell