The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Scenes From a Cataclysm

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Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kans., in this 1918 file photo.
Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kans., in this 1918 file photo.AP Photo—National Museum of Health
By Ben Cosgrove

The harrowing Ebola outbreak that is overwhelming so many communities in West Africa and has sparked fears that the severe, often fatal illness will make its way to other parts of the globe has also raised the specter of previous pandemics. And of all those awful natural disasters, none was more devastating than the 1918 flu pandemic (the “Spanish Flu”) that infected an estimated half a billion people around the globe and, by most estimates, killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people—at the time, three to five percent of the world’s population.

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America didn’t escape the ruin: according to the United States’ National Archives, in one year, the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years. All told, more than 675,000 men, women and children in the U.S. died of the virus.

Here, we remember what the world looked like as the post-World War I pandemic ran its lethal course—before ending, almost as rapidly as it began, in the early summer of 1919.

Red Cross volunteers fight the flu pandemic, 1918.
Red Cross volunteers fight the flu pandemic, 1918.Apic—Getty Images
St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty during the influenza pandemic, 1918.
St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty during the influenza pandemic, 1918.Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images
Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kans., in this 1918 file photo.
Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kans., in this 1918 file photo. AP Photo—National Museum of Health
A patient wearing a "flu mask" during the influenza pandemic which followed the First World War.
A patient wearing a "flu mask" during the influenza pandemic which followed the First World War.Topical Press Agency—Getty Images
Unidentified baseball players wearing masks which they thought would keep them from getting flu during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
Unidentified baseball players wearing masks which they thought would keep them from getting flu during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Underwood And Underwood/The LIFE Images Collection—Getty Images
A doctor inoculates Major Peters of Boston against the Influenza virus during the pandemic, 1918.
A doctor inoculates Major Peters of Boston against the Influenza virus during the pandemic, 1918.Hulton Archive—Getty Images
Inspecting Chicago street cleaners for influenza, 1918.
Inspecting Chicago street cleaners for influenza, 1918.Bettmann/Corbis
Court is held outdoors in a park due to the influenza pandemic, San Francisco, 1918.
Court is held outdoors in a park due to the influenza pandemic, San Francisco, 1918. Hulton Archive—Getty Images

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