It seems clear that Witnesses have inflated and distorted figures on earthquakes since 1914 in order to bolster their belief in the end times. Their claim that diseases are on the increase also seems a bit incredible when you consider all the medical advances and extension in life-expectancy in the last century. As for famines, well they are terrible when they still happen, but history shows that this is one problem humans are starting to get to grips with compared with previous centuries. But what about wars? I have always thought the Witnesses did have a point to make on that score, and what I read recently confirms this somewhat:
The hundred years after 1900 were without question the bloodiest century in modern history, far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any previous era. Significantly larger percentages of the world's population were killed in the two world wars that dominated the century than had been killed in any previous conflict of comparable geopolitical magnitude. Although wars between the 'great powers' were more frequent in earlier centuries, the world wars were unparalleled in their severity (battle deaths per year) and concentration (battle deaths per nation-year). By any measure, the Second World War was the greatest man-made catastrophe of all time. And yet, for all the attention they have attracted from historians, the world wars were only two of the many twentieth-century conflicts. Death tolls quite probably passed the million mark in more than a dozen others. - Niall Ferguson
Slim