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Column: Likelihoods of what will kill you

 
1 : 164,968
1 : 164,968
Published Dec. 4, 2015

The mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., is the latest eruption of public gun violence to put Americans on edge. Are we safe anywhere anymore when bullets can start flying at seemingly any time? The nation has witnessed an average of more than one mass shooting a day this year. But the death toll — 462 people — is in a country of 322 million. That is one death per 697,572 Americans. Gun violence is a huge problem in America. In fact, if you include suicide by gun, bullets kill as many people as die in car crashes. But mass shootings are a tiny subset, not an existential threat to most people. Bad health might be. People tend to minimize the danger of situations where they believe they are in control (driving, for instance) as well as risks that accumulate slowly (bad diet) versus acute ones (having the barrel of a gun pointed at you). All in all, people often wonder: "Just what are my odds of dying from … ?" The National Safety Council gets those questions a lot and has assembled this "odds of dying" chart. Since we are all going to die, the odds from all possible causes are 1:1. Here are the lifetime odds of death for selected causes, from most likely to least:

Odds

of dying Cause of death

1 : 7 Heart disease and cancer

1 : 28 Chronic lower respiratory disease

1 : 100 Intentional self-harm

1 : 109 Unintentional poisoning by and exposure

to noxious substances

1 : 112 Motor vehicle crash

1 : 144 Fall

1 : 358 Assault by firearm

1 : 704 Pedestrian incident

1 : 911 Motorcycle rider incident

1 : 1,113 Unintentional drowning

and submersion

1 : 1,442 Exposure to fire, flames or smoke

1 : 3,375 Choking from inhalation and ingestion of food

1 : 4,535 Pedalcyclist incident

1 : 6,699 Firearms discharge

1 : 6,745 Exposure to excessive natural heat

1 : 6,780 Cataclysmic storm

1 : 8,015 Air and space transport

incidents

1 : 12,220 Exposure to electric

current, radiation, temperature and pressure

1 : 37,351 Contact with sharp objects

1 : 55,764 Contact with hornets, wasps and bees

1 : 59,093 Contact with heat and hot substances

1 : 116,448 Being bitten or struck by a dog

1 : 127,717 Legal execution

1 : 164,968 Lightning strike

Note: The chance of dying in a mass shooting is calculated only for 2015. If you extrapolate across a 78-year lifespan, the lifetime odds become 1 in 8,943, if the rate of those deaths held constant, which it hasn't.

Source: National Safety Council estimates, except for 2015 mass shooting odds, which were calculated from news reports.