I think in most historic wars the civilian deaths far outweighed the soldier deaths, not fighting would not protect you from dying because of that war. E.g. if

I think in most historic wars the civilian deaths far outweighed the soldier deaths, not fighting would not protect you from dying because of that war. E.g. if we're talking about the major conflicts causing depopulation - the 30 years war had half a million combat deaths but five million or more dead civilians; Mongol conquests lack good numbers for aggregate combat deaths, but they are clearly a small fraction of the 40-75 million of total depopulation, as the armies simply weren't even close to that large; conquest of Americas has most of indigenous population die outside of combat; WW2 has civilian deaths at twice the military deaths; WW1 is the exception of being roughly equal, but then we have events like Taiping rebellion which killed more than WW1 but again with civilians outweighing combatants, etc.