--- title: The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Scenes From a Cataclysm description: LIFE.com recalls what the world looked like as the terrifying 1918 flu pandemic ran its lethal course. canonical: https://time.com/3730287/the-1918-flu-pandemic-scenes-from-a-cataclysm/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-01T16:10:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:05:16.584Z og:title: The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Scenes From a Cataclysm og:description: LIFE.com recalls what the world looked like as the terrifying 1918 flu pandemic ran its lethal course. og:url: https://time.com/3730287/the-1918-flu-pandemic-scenes-from-a-cataclysm/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8966b77c09e99907/698781e50b72e371bc6ddf74/141001-spanish-flu-03.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: 1918 Flu Pandemic og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Scenes From a Cataclysm twitter:description: LIFE.com recalls what the world looked like as the terrifying 1918 flu pandemic ran its lethal course. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8966b77c09e99907/698781e50b72e371bc6ddf74/141001-spanish-flu-03.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The 1918 Flu Pandemic: Scenes From a Cataclysm > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 1, 2014 4:10 PM UTC  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](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 1, 2014 4:10 PM UTC The harrowing [Ebola outbreak](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/world/africa/ebola-spreading-in-west-africa.html) 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. [\[See all of TIME.com’s Ebola coverage\]](http://topics.time.com/ebola/) 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. Apic—Getty Images  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. AP Photo—National Museum of Health  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. Underwood And Underwood/The LIFE Images Collection—Getty Images  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. Bettmann/Corbis  Court is held outdoors in a park due to the influenza pandemic, San Francisco, 1918. 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