So here's the thing - I hate flying. I f**king hate it with unbridled intensity. I just don't like the idea of being strapped inside a giant metal tube travelling at near 1,000km/h, completely powerless to do anything in the case of an emergency. I will soon be flying home for a holiday, and thus my thoughts turn to this fear.
So to calm my worries, I decide to look up the statistical odds of dying in a plane crash. In the process, I stumble across this site:
http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm. This is a table displaying the statistical odds of dying in just about every situation imaginable, and its a goldmine. Very interesting.
The first column of numbers shows the number of people who died from the specified cause, the second your odds of dying from the specified cause in one year (in the form 1:x) and the last the odds of dying in the average lifetime. Here are a few interesting ones to start with:
Number of people who died in 2002 due to:
Exposure to inanimate mechanical forces - 2,727
Inhalation of gastric contents - 369
Ignition or melting of nightwear - 13
Narcotics and psychodysleptics [hallucinogens] n.e.c. - 8,264
Car occupant: 16,377
Assault by firearm - 11,829
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