Historically wars frequently involved one side razing the others city and murdering and enslaving all of their non-combatants. Not exactly out of harms way.
How so? The last century saw the civilian death rate in war increase fast, such that something like 90% of war deaths a civilians. The overall stats are not skewed much by the overwhelmingly male make up of most armies. Or are you arguing that male civilians die in wars a lot more than female ones?
The 90% figure is disputed, and includes refugees. A more reasonable figure in the article is:
"On the average, half of the deaths caused by war happened to civilians, only some of whom were killed by famine associated with war...The civilian percentage share of war-related deaths remained at about 50% from century to century."
I agree that 90% seems to be the upper end, but 50% is the extreme low end and is a dated figure and the other sources seem to show this. Notably that quote you cite was written in the early 80s, and according to most those sources, wars are getting more deadly for civilians and less deadly for combatants (drones and other remote killing methods?).
Edit: Intersting discussion here, suggesting much of the difference comes down to how you measure and when you stop measuring. The longer you measure, the worse it is for civilians and in particular, women. https://files.prio.org/Publication_files/Prio/Armed%20Confli....
