Risk

The estimation of risk by people is crazy. I am planning a walk to India. My mother was in hysterics thinking i was going to get my head cut off in Iran. Other people have phoned my sister to say that it is dangerous in London because of terrorism. Are they mad?

Let us use road accidents as a bench mark of risk. We consider driving and crossing the road as worth the risk. Total number of road related deaths in UK 560% per 100000 (government statistic) which is one of the lowest in Europe.

Total number of people killed on July 7th 2005 = 50. Effective population of London at very least 7 million i.e. 0.71 per 100000. If those bombing happened ever 6 weeks in London the risk would rise to the same as for driving and crossing the road. So until we get terrorist attacks every 6 weeks we should consider it safe.

In Iraq say the death rate is 100 per day. In a country of population 20 million that is 50% per 100,000 per day. That is 30 times the risk of driving in this country. Is that safe?

Total terrorism for the past 40 years the world over including IRA, ETA, Al Qaida etc probably amounts to 10,000 but lets say 20,000. World population average say 40 billion in the period = 1/8% per 100,000. That makes car driving 5000 times more risky and we think that is reason for spending £1/4 trillion? and expected to rise to maybe £1 trillion. That is 6250 new hospitals that would cover the US and UK with a (hexagonal) network of hospitals so that no-one anywhere was more than 18km from a hospital.

Bearing in mind that the heart disease kills 22750% per 100,000 in the US hospitals that makes all the other apparent risks rather negligable and suggests that hospitals should be the obvious way to go rather than war!

The numbers are crude, the arguments lose but you get the point I hope!



The total number of all terrorist fatalities in the past 30 years all round the world is far less than 10,000 including IRA, Eta, Al Qaida,