The death toll in this war will continue to mount. While there have been deaths in war before, it appears that this war is particularly devastating. Even though captives are being taken, the goals of the war are such that deaths in conflict are high. Hassig reminds us that the reporting of dead in a war is sometimes related to the intent of the chroniclers. Victories perhaps underestimate dead, and defeats might overestimate them (Ross Hassig. Aztec Warfare. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1988, p. 117). For instance, in victories, the Aztec report large numbers of captives, and relatively few Aztec dead (in the hundreds). In contrast, the defeats give numbers such as 21,900 Aztec dead, and 8,200 dead in another account (Ross Hassig. Aztec Warfare. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1988, p. 301).
The problem with a devastating war with many dead is that it takes removes a greater percentage of the productive male population among the Nephites than it does among the Lamanite/Gadianton army. That army is extended a long way from its homeland, and is succeeding because the alliances of the people who remained in the former Nephite lands southward has been turned to this new army (Mormon 2:8). Thus in a war of attrition, the Nephites are doomed. They simply don’t have the available population from which to pull their armies as do the Lamanite/Gadianton army.