Figure 1. Event-severity benchmark across geographic scales and domains.

Each data-point shows (p, α) values for event severity distribution Ms^−α (Fig. 1A inset) for confrontations. (A) within a given continent (Africa); (B) across the globe, for different actors and different injury levels; (C) within a given country (departments in Colombia). (D) shows conventional wars and sexual violence against women⁵. Suicides etc. form a near continuum at p = 0 with α ≫ 2.5. The darker the color of each data-point, the larger the total number of victims (see SI). Red star shows value for global terrorism¹⁷, green ring is value for entire Africa database, purple ring is value for all interstate wars from 1860–1980. Dashed horizontal line shows theoretical benchmark α = 2.5 derived from the simple version of our theory, as described in the text; SI shows α = 2.5 result is robust to generalizations. Red shaded area corresponds to goodness-of-fit p < 0.05. Inset in Fig. 1D shows empirically determined Red operational network for PIRA in South Armagh²⁰. Fig. 1D lists other empirically determined α values. Domains are omitted in Figs. 1,2,3 if we lacked the necessary data (see SI).