Related. Others?<p><i>Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34209313">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34209313</a> - Jan 2023 (113 comments)<p><i>What Was the Single Worst Year in Human History?</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118341">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118341</a> - July 2022 (1 comment)<p><i>Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30621640">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30621640</a> - March 2022 (39 comments)<p><i>Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26786838">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26786838</a> - April 2021 (117 comments)<p><i>Extreme weather events of 535–536</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598570">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598570</a> - March 2021 (86 comments)<p><i>536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565762">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565762</a> - June 2020 (356 comments)<p><i>Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469891">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469891</a> - Nov 2018 (4 comments)
do we have any records of how society perceived that time. It would be interesting to compare it to how that fares compared to the perceived injustices that modern society complains about.<p>While it's impossible to directly compare recent events, like the pandemic to the plague, it would be interesting to understand the claim of "the worst year to be alive" between a society that is hyper-distracted and always online today, with a society that walks among the ruins of a collapsing Roman empire ~1500 years ago.<p>That said, both scenarios seem to ignore non Western history.
In Britain, I believe only four documents were written in the 200 years following the departure of the legions in 410. (Two were by St. Patrick, and the other two elude me.)
> What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse.<p>Um what? The eastern Roman Empire survived for almost another millennium. Maybe the journalist confused it with the western Roman Empire (which had already collapsed)?