Day: September 14, 2006

The current administration likes to scare the public. We enact The Patriot Act and other such measures that damage our Constitution and deprive the people of freedoms previously assumed guaranteed. Are our fears displaced?

For those of you who wonder just how safe you will be once you’ve given up all of your Constitutional freedoms and rights, it may be a valuable exercise to see what the odds are that you, personally, will die in one of these terrorist attacks… [Source]

Now, I have searched the CDC’s website but been unsuccessful in finding the source that anotherperspective.org cites and their figures are slightly differen than the National Geographic Ways to Go chart (used as the background of this post) as linked to by the National Safety Council. I think the numbers are close enough to make their point. I have also searched Snopes and did not find anything discrediting anotherperspective.org. Odds of dying (100% if course!):

• 1 in 88,000 of a terrorist attack
• 1 in 1,500,000 of a terrorist-caused shopping mall disaster assuming one such incident a week and you shop two hours a week
• 1 in 55,000,000 in a terrorist-caused plane disaster assuming one such incident a month and you fly once a month
• 1 in 55,928 of death by lightening
• 1 in 20,605 in your clothes igniting
• 1 in 10,455 of dying in your bathtub
• 1 in 10,010 by falling from a ladder or scaffolding
• 1 in 9,396 due to excessive heat
• 1 in 8,389 due to excessive cold
• 1 in 7,972 in a drowning accident
• 1 in 6,842 in a railway accident
• 1 in 197 of dying in a homicide
• 1 in 299 of dying in an assault from a firearm
• 1 in 5,330 of dying in an assault by hanging or strangulation
• 1 in 207,261 in operations of war

Now, the question that every American must ask themselves is this; am I willing to give up my Constitutional freedoms in hopes of avoiding death by lightening, which is 983 times more likely than dying because a terrorists crashes an airplane? Are you willing to live in a Republican/Nazi police state in hopes that you don’t die from your clothes catching fire (2669 times more likely) or falling in your bathtub (5261 times more likely)? Are you seriously asking this regime to protect you from being strangled or hanged when the odds of that happening is 10318 times more probable than dying in a terrorist-caused attack? Are you, at your very core, comfortable with the idea of leaving to your children a world in which Republicans/Nazis/fascists control all American’s everyday life? [Source]

Let me restate one thing from above "death by lightening … is 983 times more likely than dying because a terrorists crashes an airplane"

As an aside, the CDC has podcasts! The Center for Disease Control has an impressive amount of useful content. If you are a parent, you should definitely look in on the CDC from time to time.