Landing the Big One

Landing the Big One

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

For the Morbid: Odds of Dying

In preparing an update for this cruise ship posting, I came across the National Safety Council's report posing the interesting question, "What are the odds of dying?" Of course, these are not illness related, and there are the usaul caveats:
The odds given...are statistical averages over the whole U.S. population and do not necessarily reflect the chances of death for a particular person from a particular external cause. Any individual's odds of dying from various external causes are affected by the activities in which they participate, where they live and drive, what kind of work they do, and other factors.
. Is it comforting or not to know that death by "Ignition or melting of nightwear" resulted in 13 fatalities in 2002? And that the 1 year odds of it happening are one in 22,149,325 or the lifetime odds are one in 286,537? (Unanswered question- Are the odds different for non-smokers?)

Choose your own-uh- poison.

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