Crunching the risk numbers
By NATE SILVER
WSJ
Most of us are horrible assessors of risk. Travelers at American airports are taking extensive steps due to fears of terrorism. But in the decade of the 2000s, only about one passenger for every 25 million was killed in a terrorist attack aboard an American commercial airliner (all of the fatalities were on 9/11). By contrast, a person has about a one in 500,000 chance each year of being struck by lightning.
The usual response I get to these statistics—especially in the wake of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to bring down Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day—is that although terrorist incidents aboard airplanes might never have been common, they are becoming more so. This belief, too, is mistaken. Relative to the number of commercial departures world-wide, passenger deaths resulting from what I term "violent passenger incidents"—bombings, hijackings, and other sabotage—were at least five times less common in the 2000s than in any decade from the 1940s through the 1980s.
Indeed, 9/11 looks like a horrible outlier. While it killed nearly 3,000 citizens, no other individual terrorist attack in the modern history of the 38 most highly developed nations has killed more than 329. Meanwhile, a literal repeat of 9/11 is unlikely, as Al Qaeda's diabolical innovation—turning a passenger jet into a missile—would almost certainly be thwarted by brave passengers (and secure cockpit doors).
Overall, academic and governmental databases report, terrorist attacks killed a total of about 5,300 people in the most highly developed nations since the end of the Cold War in 1991, a rate of about 300 per year. The chance of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist is exceedingly low: about a one in three million each year, or the same chance an American will be killed by a tornado. (The Department of Homeland Security's budget is 50 times larger than that of the weather service).
(More here.)
WSJ
Most of us are horrible assessors of risk. Travelers at American airports are taking extensive steps due to fears of terrorism. But in the decade of the 2000s, only about one passenger for every 25 million was killed in a terrorist attack aboard an American commercial airliner (all of the fatalities were on 9/11). By contrast, a person has about a one in 500,000 chance each year of being struck by lightning.
The usual response I get to these statistics—especially in the wake of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to bring down Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day—is that although terrorist incidents aboard airplanes might never have been common, they are becoming more so. This belief, too, is mistaken. Relative to the number of commercial departures world-wide, passenger deaths resulting from what I term "violent passenger incidents"—bombings, hijackings, and other sabotage—were at least five times less common in the 2000s than in any decade from the 1940s through the 1980s.
Indeed, 9/11 looks like a horrible outlier. While it killed nearly 3,000 citizens, no other individual terrorist attack in the modern history of the 38 most highly developed nations has killed more than 329. Meanwhile, a literal repeat of 9/11 is unlikely, as Al Qaeda's diabolical innovation—turning a passenger jet into a missile—would almost certainly be thwarted by brave passengers (and secure cockpit doors).
Overall, academic and governmental databases report, terrorist attacks killed a total of about 5,300 people in the most highly developed nations since the end of the Cold War in 1991, a rate of about 300 per year. The chance of a Westerner being killed by a terrorist is exceedingly low: about a one in three million each year, or the same chance an American will be killed by a tornado. (The Department of Homeland Security's budget is 50 times larger than that of the weather service).
(More here.)
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