So... I’ve been trying to find supporting arguments for my intuition that even though death rate is far lower than Spanish Flu (2%) and European Black Death (25-30%), the civilizational damage is comparable. I’ve found a pretty good one...
I call it memetic whole-life r/K theory. Civilizations pursue one of 2 strategies:
r-civilizations treat life as cheap and are robust to a lot of death at all life stages and sustain it with high birth rate
K-civilizations great life as expensive and fight hard for every life
We did overoptimize over the last 100 years.
Our strategy aims for more variance - both up and down.
So every opportunity is magnified and so is every disaster.
Which could mean that we are more vulnerable to natural disasters than in Middle Ages.
Not despite our progress, but because of it.
( density, reliance on infra, etc )