Short answers, pulled from the story.
Phase 5 famine requires at least 20% of households in an area to face extreme food shortages with limited ability to cope. The prevalence of acute malnutrition in children must exceed 30%. Finally, the death rate must surpass two people per 10,000 per day.
The Great Famine struck Europe between 1315 and 1317 due to an unusually cold and wet spring of 1315. Widespread crop failures lasted until at least the summer of 1317 and some regions did not fully recover until 1322.
Estimates for the Chinese famine range from 18 million to at least 42 million deaths. This event remains the greatest peacetime demographic disaster of the 20th century and only became widely known twenty years later when censorship began to lift.
The Ethiopian Great famine resulted from a combination of Rinderpest epizootic which killed 90 percent of the national herd, drought associated with an El Niño oscillation, human epidemics of smallpox, and intense war. The crisis cost roughly one-third of its population.
Famine was declared in Sudan in August 2024 where over 24 million people are facing acute food insecurity. UN experts stated never in modern history have so many people faced starvation and famine as in Sudan today.