A cultural blog with Kyrie O'Connor

What is most likely to kill you?


Which is scarier, fighting in Afghanistan or going on a motorbike trip? Which is more likely to kill you?

Some Brits (love those Brits) have done some data-mining to see what the odds are of something killing you, in units of MicroMorts, in which a MicroMort is the likelihood of dying in a car accident. (In Britain, and one in a million, they say.)

Check this out:

That baseline allows for some illuminating comparisons. Giving birth in Britain, for instance, exposes the mother to about 120 MicroMorts, about the same risk as riding a motorbike from London to Edinburgh and back, or from 2½ days of active service during the most dangerous period of the war in Afghanistan. (A table at the back of the book makes for compulsive reading.) Life has plainly become much safer in recent decades. This is true even on the battlefield: soldiers in Afghanistan faced around 47 MicroMorts a day, but the aircrews that bombed Germany in the second world war endured about 25,000 MicroMorts per mission.

How do you yourself assess risk? Is there something you refuse to do (say, flying) or do only reluctantly? Or are you a fatalist?

Categories: Life Skills Tests
Kyrie O'Connor

15 Responses

  1. Bill in Houston says:

    What is most likely to kill me? Heart failure. Hopefully not for a long, long time, but it has been over thirteen years since my heart attack.

    What is next likely? Carnies. You know, circus folk. Small hands, smell like cabbage.

  2. JohnD says:


    Talk to other people. Those folks are crazy! 8-)

  3. Old Gringo Stan says:

    ………….a jealous husband!

  4. Ralph W says:

    I once did a number of things I’d no longer do. I quit doing a lot of things once I married. That list grew when kids came along. One thing I will not do is ride a motorcyclem or motor bike. Another is attempt to wire something.

  5. jim says:

    There’s a great bit in one of the San Francisco courtroom thrillers by John LesCroart (pronounced, with a Cajun mumble, “L’qua” – yup he’s from Houston) where the protagonist’s 12 year old daughter is having weekly keep-the-parents-up-all-night panic attacks. Because of all awareness sessions at her very safe, very private, very expensive middle school. So the kid is up at 4 am screaming about spree shooters, terrorists, if-I-ever-kiss-a-boy-I’ll-get-AIDS, all-of-my-classmates-are-going-to-commit-teen-suicide. The sleep-deprived lawyer is talking with a journalist friend who had gone thru the same thing a couple of years earlier, and the wordsmith says “Does she worry about getting struck by lightning?” “No, that’s the only thing she’s not worried about. “Oh, in our house you aren’t allowed to worry about anything statistically more unlikely than getting struck by lightning. It’s fairly common, much more likely than a school shooting.” According to the National Lightning Safety Institute, in a population of 280 million there are about a thousand lightning strikes a year. Which is odds of one in 280,000. Plane crashes and terrorist attacks are much rarer.

  6. MeMo:

    Three That Could Eventually Get Us:

    1. A virus.

    2. A freak accident.

    3. Simply old age.
    As humans, we can live, for so long-
    No matter how careful we are, no matter how strong.

  7. BOB says:


  8. RealRick says:

    I used to work at a place where I frequently was working pretty late and I got to know the security guards as they did their rounds. I was talking to one of them one night and the subject of dying came up. (I can’t remember what triggered that, probably something in the news that day.) He said that he never worried one second about dying; that he had learned better. I asked what he meant.

    Turns out that he had been on the beach at Anzio during WWII. The US Army was trying to do an end-around the German lines in Italy. Unfortunately, the general in charge decided to consolidate his troops and supplies before moving inland. The Germans set up artillery in the surrounding mountains and bombarded the helpless American troops. The bombardment kept up until the Germans ran out of shells. The guard told me that he stood up at that point and so did 2 other guys. Everyone else in his unit was either dead or severely wounded.

    A while later, his platoon was pulled off the line for rest and they were sent to a rear area. An officer came along and told them they needed to put a telephone line up in the trees to keep supply trucks from running over it. While they were doing this task, one of the soldiers dropped from the tree. He ran over to see if the guy was hurt and found him dead – a bullet fired far away had come down and went through his eye as he was looking up at the wire he was placing, killing him instantly.

    The guard said, “From that day on I realized that if your time is up, it’s up, and if your time is not up, you can be in the middle of Hell and walk away from it. So there’s no reason to worry about when you’re going to die; just spend your time living.”

  9. RealRick says:

    As for motorcycles, I’ve heard emergency room folks refer to them as “donor-cycles”. Apparently they are a good source of organs for transplants.

    • Steve Palmer says:

      In more cynical moments, I’ve wondered if that isn’t why Texas doctors haven’t pushed harder for helmet laws. Why not give the hearts to people who WANT to live?

    • Ralph W says:

      Stve, the real power on safety laws is the insurance industry. They wee the force behing seat belts, driving age laws, alcohol levels & at one time helmet laws. Texas had a helmet law and dropped it. Likely the insurance industry, being vey praticle, saw that helmet laws cost them more in the long run because of extensive head injuries. That sounds cynicle but is not. It is the nature of the business to evaluate risks.

  10. Matt Bramanti says:

    I know enough about aviation insurance that I’ll pass on any aircraft that isn’t commercially-built, fixed-wing and powered.

    • Ralph W says:

      I agree. And I prefer that the person at the controls was trained by the U.S. military.