The intensity and scale of major wars had risen in fits and starts for 500 years from the wide-scale introduction of firearms and artillery in the 1400s, until the death toll from battles and wars peaked in World War II at tens of millions of military and civilian deaths. And then from a post-war peak of more than 500,000 deaths in 1950, battle deaths in 2016 were 84 percent lower despite a tripling in the world population.124
