About 500,000 have died in Syria so far, but that’s just the warm up act.
It's not just a "warm up act", but rather a continuation of a war between Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims that has been going on now for over 1,400 years. What makes this period in the age old Muslim war with one another a pending international disaster is that the Russians have entered the war on the side of Shiite (Iran) and the U.S. has sided with the Sunni (Saudi Arabia).
The open warfare is now taking place in Syria, but make no mistake about it, the war is between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia to determine which will be dominate in the Middle East.
The question is how far will Russia and the U.S. be drawn into this war before one or the other realizes they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by engaging in this war. The U.S. is in this war on the side of the Saudis simply because our recent Presidents have been bought and paid for by the Saudis, but why are the Russians there on Iran's side? Could their aim be to destroy the Saudi oil fields and remove Saudi oil from the international market leaving Russia with the world's largest developed oil resources?
We do indeed live in interesting times.