A River of Blood

When you study history, you come across countless horrific stories. “Blood formed a river” is one of them. Until now, I always doubted whether this description was literally true. How could blood ever form a river? Wasn’t it just an exaggeration meaning that an enormous number of people had died? But after seeing the photo below, I changed my mind.

The source is the New York Times article dated November 13, 2019.

The blood of pigs slaughtered to stop the spread of African swine fever formed a river. According to the article, the South Korean government was desperate to prevent this blood from flowing into the Imjin River, and in the end it succeeded.

If just (?) 47,000 pigs dying could cause something like this, what would happen if tens of thousands of humans died? There was no exaggeration in the history books. What a horrific thing.

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