Estimates, not counts

Every figure is a historian-sourced range, low to high. The headline number is the midpoint, marked ≈. No precision is implied. Confidence is graded per subject.

How the dead are counted

The mechanism field says how a death is charged to a name. Some ordered the killing. Some ruled a regime the dead fell under. Some set a policy. Some are contested. These are not the same, and the field says which is which.

Confidence

Well documented, debated, or speculative. This grades the state of the record, not the severity of the events.

Aggregation

Subject estimates overlap and cannot be added: shared wars, shared famines. The index gives no dataset-wide death total, because none would be honest.

Living and contested subjects

Living figures appear only as clearly-labeled, contested policy attributions drawn from published estimates. No entry claims a person killed anyone, and none shows a photograph.

The legacy chart

The impact-over-time chart is schematic. It marks the period over which attributed deaths accrued, not year-by-year figures.