section_path: Causes
section_name: Causes
paragraph_text: Causes
  
  The leading cause of human death in developing countries is infectious disease. The leading causes in developed countries are atherosclerosis (heart disease and stroke), cancer, and other diseases related to obesity and aging. By an extremely wide margin, the largest unifying cause of death in the developed world is biological aging, leading to various complications known as aging-associated diseases. These conditions cause loss of homeostasis, leading to cardiac arrest, causing loss of oxygen and nutrient supply, causing irreversible deterioration of the brain and other tissues. Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds die of age-related causes. In industrialized nations, the proportion is much higher, approaching 90%. With improved medical capability, dying has become a condition to be managed.
  
  In developing nations, inferior sanitary conditions and lack of access to modern medical technology make death from infectious diseases more common than in developed countries. One such disease is tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that killed 1.8 million people in 2015. In 2004, malaria caused about 2.7 million deaths annually. The AIDS death toll in Africa may reach 90–100 million by 2025.
  
  According to Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Reporter on the Right to Food, 2000 – Mar 2008, mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality rate in 2006. Ziegler says worldwide, approximately 62 million people died from all causes and of those deaths, more than 36 million died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients.
  
  Tobacco smoking killed 100 million people worldwide in the 20th century and could kill 1 billion people worldwide in the 21st century, a World Health Organization report warned.
  
  Many leading developed world causes of death can be postponed by diet and physical activity, but the accelerating incidence of disease with age still imposes limits on human longevity. The evolutionary cause of aging is, at best, only beginning to be understood. It has been suggested that direct intervention in the aging process may now be the most effective intervention against major causes of death.
  
  Selye proposed a unified non-specific approach to many causes of death. He demonstrated that stress decreases the adaptability of an organism and proposed to describe adaptability as a special resource, adaptation energy. The animal dies when this resource is exhausted. Selye assumed that adaptability is a finite supply presented at birth. Later, Goldstone proposed the concept of production or income of adaptation energy which may be stored (up to a limit) as a capital reserve of adaptation. In recent works, adaptation energy is considered an internal coordinate on the "dominant path" in the model of adaptation. It is demonstrated that oscillations of well-being appear when the reserve of adaptability is almost exhausted.
  
  In 2012, suicide overtook car crashes as the leading cause of human injury deaths in the U.S., followed by poisoning, falls, and murder.
  
  Accidents and disasters, from nuclear disasters to structural collapses, also claim lives. One of the deadliest incidents of all time is the Failure of the 1975 Banqiao Dam Failure, with varying estimates, up to 240,000 dead. Other incidents with high death tolls are the Wanggongchang explosion (when a gunpowder factory ended up with 20,000 deaths), a collapse of a wall of Circus Maximus that killed 13,000 people, and the Chernobyl disaster that killed between 95 and 4,000 people.
  
  Natural disasters kill around 45,000 people annually, although this number can vary to millions to thousands on a per-decade basis. Some of the deadliest natural disasters are the 1931 China floods, which killed an estimated 4 million people, although estimates widely vary; the 1887 Yellow River flood, which killed an estimated 2 million people in China; and the 1970 Bhola cyclone, which killed as many as 500,000 people in Pakistan. If naturally occurring famines are considered natural disasters, the Chinese famine of 1906–1907, which killed 15–20 million people, can be considered the deadliest natural disaster in recorded history.
  
  In animals, predation can be a common cause of death. Livestock have a 6% death rate from predation. However, younger animals are more susceptible to predation. For example, 50% of young foxes die to birds, bobcats, coyotes, and other foxes as well. Young bear cubs in the Yellowstone National Park only have a 40% chance to survive to adulthood from other bears and predators.