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> the last century was THE bloodiest century in recorded human history. There is none other comparable. All thanks to ...
Advanced weapons and transportation technologies.

Interesting way of looking at it, but I think your incorrect. It was murderous atheistic ideology that drove the twentieth century butcheries.

If the Crusades, the Islamic invasions of Europe, the various intra-European wars, etc. had had chemical weapons, tanks, bombs and AK-47's, they woulda used 'em.

I'm not willing to concede that point. It is certainly possible that they would have tried them or even used them, but we'll never know for certain, because those options were not available to the crusaders. If I recall correctly, the goal of the crusades was to retake the holy lands. It was not to wipe out the Muslims. As far as I know, there was no official concentration camps set up for Muslims or even Christians. I'm not saying it was a picnic by any means, but I don't think the comparisons can be fairly made.

Hel's belles, son, biowarfare has been used for as long as people have understood that "scary plague + dead bodies = danger." That's one of the ways in which the Black Death was introduced to Europe... plague corpses tossed over city walls via catapults. Killed a third of Europe.

From my understanding of the numbers, roughly 20 to 25 million people were wiped out during the Black Death. Terrible numbers to be sure but, the influenza epidemic of 1918 wiped out between an estimated 20 to 40 million worldwide.

Not even WWII or the Commie pogroms pulled that off.

Yes they did, and far worse. The last I heard (I'm not sure if this includes the numbers from the Holocaust) WWII killed over 52 million people. The Communists in the last century murdered well over 100 million people (this was not in war, this was in death camps/persecutions/forced labor, etc.). In sheer numbers alone, the twentieth century was the bloodiest century in recorded human history. Thanks to the atheistic governments of the fascists and communists, the science of murder was practiced to a very efficient level.

> It was murderous atheistic ideology that drove the twentieth century butcheries.

No, it was murderous theologies that drove the murders. The Nazis worshipped the Volk, the Aryan superman intelligently designed by God. The Commies worshipped the State, which was granted all the powers and myths normally associated with gods.

> If I recall correctly, the goal of the crusades was to retake the holy lands. It was not to wipe out the Muslims. As far as I know, there was no official concentration camps set up for Muslims or even Christians.

True. Concentration camps are a fairly new phenomenon (invented by the Brits for the Boer War, I *think*). prior to that, the armies simply raped all the women, killed all the men and children and burned the crops and poisone dthe wells. JUst as deadly, but more up-front about it.

> roughly 20 to 25 million people were wiped out during the Black Death. Terrible numbers to be sure but, the influenza epidemic of 1918 wiped out between an estimated 20 to 40 million worldwide.

Yep. This means that the Black Death was substantially worse than the flu... because the BD killed 1/3 to 1/2 of everybody in Europe, while the flu was, what, a percent or so?

> The last I heard (I'm not sure if this includes the numbers from the Holocaust) WWII killed over 52 million people. The Communists in the last century murdered well over 100 million people

WWII-era Europe, Russia, China, Japan and US, main combattants, had a population somewhere north of 2 billion, I believe. Thus 52M out of ~2B is "only" 3 percent or so. The 100M killed by the Commies is 100M out of probably 2B people (considering that that's the population of Russia, China, Cambodia and a few others over many decades), so that's still "only" 5%.

Bad numbers, to be sure... but wiping out 1/3 to 1/2 of everybody involved is *far* worse. Then you get things like smallpox in the New World (note: I don't buy the "it was intentional" bullcrap... the Europeans simply had diseases the Injuns didn't), and the death rates were so high that some peoples just plain disappeared.