Today, it is fairly common to turn on the news, read a book, listen to a lecture in history and for the speaker to discuss the cost of a war. Quantifying the cost is usually done in dollars, assessed by how much money was actually spent or how many lives were lost. The victor and loser of a war usually quantify the gains in terms of territory gained, enemies killed, or wealth captured.
However, is this really the right way to quantify the cost of war? For example, the total number of individuals killed in the U.S. Civil War was ~650,000 souls on the battle field, 7 million in total, or about 2.5% of the U.S. population at the time[1]. This number seems monstrous to us even one hundred and fifty years later. Now if we look at World War II, some 80 years after the U.S. Civil War, it is estimated that some 20 million military personnel were killed, as well as 40 million civilians[2]. These numbers seem even more unfathomable, yet which war was really more costly?