Excepting the Omer’s band of runaways, the people had destroyed almost everyone in society. Only thirty participants survived the war—and this in a society which was numbered in the millions! (see Ether 15:2) The amount of revenge, hatred, and violence which could have produced such a war is hard to comprehend, but it is only a foreshadowing of the final Jaredite war of annihilation (see Ether 14-15).
“A war of the most horrible character broke out, which lasted for several years, and ended when nearly every soul was slain. Of the Kingdom of Akish, for which he had sinned so much, there remained but thirty souls. All the rest-men, women, and children, had been swept by bloody hands into untimely graves. The people of Akish having been thus destroyed, Omer, with his friends, returned from his exile and reigned over the feeble remnant of a wasted people.” (Reynolds and Sjodahl, Commentary on the Book of Mormon, vol. 6, p. 136)