Is The World More or Less Dangerous?

With the many technological advancements that the world has seen since the end of World War II, it could be said that wars may be more violent than they were before. After all, new weapons of war mean new ways to kill a person. However, this is not the case at all. Turns out the world has been less violent in the past 30 years, according to this recent study.

The study, by mathematicians at the University of York, used new techniques to address the long-running debate over whether battle deaths have been declining globally since the end of the Second World War.

The team carried out a "change point" analysis on publically available data sets tracking the number of global deaths in battle since the Napoleonic wars.

And what they found was a greater level of peace beginning in the 1990s.

Co-author of the study, Professor Niall MacKay from the Department of Mathematics at the University of York, said: "The question of whether the world today has become more or less dangerous is a hotly debated issue among historians. Our study attempts to address this question purely from the perspective of what the data can tell us.

"The change for the better our analysis detected over the past 30 years may be due to peace keeping work by global organisations like the UN and increased collaboration and cooperation between nations."

The researchers, however, admit that there is room for inaccuracy in their study. Nevertheless, it is a study that could give us hope for a better future.