"Anyone know what the highest death toll for a natural disater was in the past 100 yrs?"
In that area when Krakatoa blew, in the 19th century, it killed about 30,000. I believe this one has made that catastrophe look small.
Like many, I have grown so accustomed to seeing death, etc. on the media, that I am somewhat calloused except when something hits "close to home" like our soldiers dying. However, when I saw the numerous pictures of parents mourning over the dead bodies of their children, it got to me. Can you imagine the death toll if something like this happened on one of our coastal areas?
Didn't Bangladesh have some floods in the 80's where hundreds of thousands died?
Krakatoa; The day the world exploded
The sound of the island's destruction was heard in Australia and India and on islands thousands of miles away. Most significant of all -- in view of today's new political climate -- the eruption helped to trigger in Java a wave of murderous anti-Western militancy among fundamentalist Muslims: one of the first outbreaks of Islamic-inspired killings anywhere.
1976 Tangshan, China 255,000 (official) probably 655,000 7.5 mag earthquake
1138 Aleppo, syria 230,000 mag 7.9 earthquake
More informationa at: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqsmosde.html