Start with something a lot of people don't seem to really grok.
In 2010 (just a year ago), roughly 25% of the world's population died.
Let me put that in a little bit of context.
From 1918 through 1920 the modern world was swept with the Spanish Flu. It's the great pandemic everyone references when talking scare tactics. Global death proportion? 3 to 5%.
The Black Plague is a better comparison. In 1400 it reduced the world population from ~450 million to between 350 and 375 million. The social, political, and economic effects were extraordinary, though on the surface nothing major seemed to happen. Just... armies were smaller, and a lot of leaders were dead, and the vast labor pool shrunk to the point labor was a semi-precious resource. Cities and dense populations became places to avoid. There was a resurgence of the meme that stranger==danger (that worked in interesting balance to the decentralization of the populations, and led to methods of verification and absentee trust).
Not to mention the explosion of snake oil salesmen and grief vampires.
Oh, and an ancillary benefit was an explosion of per capita and individual wealth merely by having what existed divided among fewer people. Between this and the increased value of labor the ground was prepped for what became the renaissance.
Frankly, when I look at how SR has run I'm surprised at how stable and calm things are overall. That may have been due to the presence of dragons, mind -- when push comes to shove, man-sized teeth tend to have a negotiating edge. It still surprises me.
I've digressed; I apologize.
The point is that when you look at the massive death rates of the preceding half-century, deaths that have been everywhere, a lot of what seems big to us turns into chicken feed.
