One of the criticisms Pinker got from the first run of Better Angels of Our Nature was his classification of the Rwanda genocide as a 'minor' event that 'only' killed 500,000 people. This was before the death counts in Iraq hit the 100,000 and above levels. Even with those two wars, going only by body count we have been almost three generations without a major war. WWI wiped out a whole generation of men in Europe, WWII and its related war crimes, genocides, mass murders and battle deaths wiped out another whole generation 30 years later. The Smithsonian Mag has a chart, but it looks like they are under-counting Iraq deaths which is to be expected considering the source.

The big thing that is making the world safer, in my opinion, is that the 'wars' are more low-key, precision munitions, and guerrilla wars where thousands of non-combatants are rounded up and killed or who die in the big epic battle fronts. I am fairly confident that Iraq is going to be one of the last, old school, "mass troops on the border and roll to the capital" wars. The specter floating over the heads of the guys who want to fight these wars is nuclear weapons. That and a war of that scale is bad for trade and business. I'm convinced that China and the US won't fight a war for at least a generation; same thing the US and Russia. There will be small-scale stuff like Crimea and Ukraine, but no Kursks or Stalingrads.

As an aside, yea, the "Violent Death Project" would be a kick ass metal band name. The only thing close I could find was Death Project which, as a sound mixer, will hurt you to listen to.