It's easy to be pessimistic and go all doom and gloom with little hope for 2022 but please hold on for a minute while I tell you about possibly the worst year in history, 536 AD.

In 536 A.D. most of the world went dark for a full 18 months, the result of multiple volcanic eruptions beginning that year in Iceland and elsewhere, possibly in the Pacific and even North America, in 540 and 547. Dense volcanic ash filled the atmosphere and a fog rolled over Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The fog blocked the sun during the day, causing temperatures to drop, crops to fail and people to die. It was a true Dark Age.

The change in temperature put the earth into a prolonged winter. Because crops failed vermin moved into towns and villages to devour stores of grain and rice. With them came disease and one, the Justinian Plague is known to have killed 300,000 in Constantinople(Istanbul) with a record of 10,000 dead in one day.

In Peru there are records of massive crop failures. Similar accounts were written in Ireland and Scandinavia. In China it was written that 7 out of every 10 people died of starvation. There are accounts of villages in China and Korea being forced to eat the dead. Cannibalism most likely occurred in Europe as well but scholars couldn't bear to record it other than their fear of the evil they had witnessed.

Archeologists have uncovered ruins from this period where people just abandoned their homes and took to caravans or ships in hope of finding somewhere the sun still shone. Nordic people left huge offerings of gold in hope that the sun would return.

Scholars wrote that during the day the sun was a pale blue light in the sky, so weak you couldn't see a shadow. Scientists today theorize that the temperature changed by 2.7°C(4.9°F). It was enough variance to cause radical change. The world is just as vulnerable now as it was then. I'm talking to you climate change deniers!

There was no internet. There was no reliable way to disseminate information. People were largely illiterate. What people knew came from merchants and traders and there was little commerce going on during all of that darkness. All people knew was their town, their village, and their family.

So as bad as your 2021 was and as bad as you expect 2022 to be, it is nowhere near as bad as 536. If your biggest problem is you have to wear a face mask before you can get a caramel macchiato then I'd say you're doing all right.

I learned much of this because of Radiolab, one of my favorite radio programs/podcasts. I highly recommend it.

This month I’m writing a short story set in a historical period.

Step one of planning: pick setting

Done!

Let me tell you about the catastrophe of the year 536 AD.

Never heard of it?

It might be because it happened during a historic period that’s not exactly popular. Rome’s over. The dark ages haven’t begun. We tend to skip this bit.

It might also be because the worst of it occurred in northern Europe, specifically Scandinavia, and there are no written records authored by the people living there then.

So, what was the bad thing that happened?

Do you know anything about Norse Mythology? Ragnarök - the end of the world?

Ragnarök is to be preceded by the ultimate winter. The fimbulwinter.

However, new research suggests that this winter isn’t a prediction as much as a warning against something that happened before possibly happening again.

In 536 AD a volcano in the tropics had an eruption, sending huge amounts of ash into the atmosphere. Most of it filled the atmosphere over the northern hemisphere. The further north you were, the less sunlight could get down to the ground.

Records from both Rome and China makes mention of it, saying that the sun was weak, and commenting on crop failure.

A few years later, there was likely a second eruption, with the same consequences, meaning that this volcanic winter lasted for a long time.

Although there aren’t any written records from Scandinavia, there are other clues.

There are plenty of abandoned settlements from the time. And it takes many years before there are traces of as many people living in the region again. I don’t recall exactly, but I think we’re talking past the renaissance before the population had recovered. About every other person living in Scandinavia died between 536 and 550. The population was halved.

Other remarkable finds that date from the time are offered gold. People were wealthy before the volcanic winter. They traded with Europe, and some went there to work as hired soldiers, bringing home gold. A lot of this gold has been found at offering sites (in lakes and bogs). And often, the symbols of the gods that were in the designs had been destroyed. The theory is that at first people tried to appease the gods, but when that brought no relief, they would have turned on them.

As if this isn’t enough, some researchers now connect the volcanic winter with the Plague of Justinian. It was as bad as the black plague, killing twenty-five percent of the people living around the Mediterranean, and likely, it reached all the way north to Scandinavia, augmenting their misery. 

At the time, no one understood the cause. Ancient historians described it as an endless winter, a “mystery cloud” that blotted out the sun for over a year. People starved as harvests failed, and plague and war soon followed, toppling empires and rewriting history. It became one of the worst natural disasters in human history.

It wasn’t until modern scientists analyzed ice cores from glaciers that the cause was identified. The likely culprit? A massive volcanic eruption—or possibly multiple eruptions—believed to have occurred in Iceland or North America. These eruptions sent millions of tons of ash and sulfur into the atmosphere, creating a global climate catastrophe.

This event triggered the coldest decade in the last 2,000 years. The Byzantine Empire struggled to hold itself together, while the collapse of the Persian Empire followed. In China, summer snow fell, and famine swept the land. Historians now recognize this event as the beginning of what is known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, a period that reshaped human civilization.

The long-lasting effects of food shortages and disease devastated populations, causing power structures to crumble and new ones to emerge. Some even argue that this event contributed to the rise of Islam, as the weakened Byzantine and Persian empires left a power vacuum in the Middle East.

While the disaster of 536 AD was largely forgotten over the centuries, it is now recognized as one of the most significant climate events in history, one that quite literally changed the course of the world.

Source: Facebook

found this documentary on youtube and it was actually really interesting and got into various different nature studies (like tree rings, ice cores, etc) and studies of people within this area of human history. I found this video pretty cool as it overlapped with my autistic special interests and adhd hyperfixations.