The Spanish flu is one of the world’s most giant disasters and there is no way to tell the cost to people emotionally because such an enormous number of lives were lost. The Spanish flu killed more people worldwide than the first world war. All told the Spanish flu took anywhere from 20 million to 40 million lives all over the world. Never before or since has one single sickness killed so many people as the Spanish flu.

The Spanish flu hit just as people were getting used to the idea that peace was finally in the works. SO just as people were happy that their husbands and sons were finally coming home they would get the Spanish flu and die. Just as things seemed to be getting better all over the world they took yet another turn to the worse with the Spanish flu.

Spanish flu showed up all over the world and it was a far different flu than any in the past for more than one reason. Of course the sheer number of people that the Spanish flu killed was unusual but it was not just that. Another unusual aspect of the Spanish flu was who it killed. Most of those who died from the Spanish flu were between the ages of 20 and 40. This is odd because most flu’s will kill the very young and the very old because they tend to have less immunities to the flu. But the Spanish flu was completely different than anything that the world had ever seen before.

Over 28% of Americans were sickened by the Spanish flu and in the States the average life span was cut drastically. It is believed that the life span of an American after the Spanish flu hit was ten years less than it had been before. The Spanish flu is one of the worst things that have ever happened to the world, the entire world.

If you lived in America you were 20 times more likely to die if you were in your twenties than before the Spanish flu came to town. The Spanish flu killed quickly and it killed mercilessly. Those who caught the Spanish flu would die terrible deaths full of choking and not being able to get air. Some say that you could be felled by the Spanish flu within a few hours. Children even had little rhymes about the Spanish flu that they would sing to themselves.