The fail-safe excuse any government official will give to you as a justification for their horrific treatment of peaceful people is “terrorism”. The cowards in government can stand behind that word, which works as some kind of ‘accountability shield’. They strip you of your rights, your dignity, your clothes (TSA body scanners), and even your life… but it’s okay… because when it comes to “terrorism”, better safe than sorry, right? Well, here are a few facts about your actual risk of death by terrorism, that I put in an easy to read infograph.
Turns out you’re more likely to be killed by the people you pay to protect you from terrorists.
8 times more likely.
You can download a high resolution version of this infograph here.
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10 comments
3 pings
Brandon says:
September 23, 2011 at 6:45 am (UTC -5)
Sources?
Meg McLain says:
September 26, 2011 at 1:29 am (UTC -5)
it’s at the bottom.
Moe Loubani says:
September 23, 2011 at 5:59 pm (UTC -5)
Interesting, I’d love to see an infographic of the same thing but add to it how likely a Palestinian is to die of an Israeli attack. I remember doing the math one time and it was like a Palestinian is ~3000 times more likely to die of an Israeli attack (to some people a terrorist attack) than your average American.
I think an Israeli was about 3 times more likely to die of a Palestinian attack compared to an average Israeli.
Mike Anderson says:
September 25, 2011 at 12:08 pm (UTC -5)
Love the relative risks, hate the graphic. Even putting the data on a log-log scale doesn’t reproduce your bar lengths, which seem to have been measured out by the same folks who write President Obama’s budget speeches.
Meg McLain says:
September 26, 2011 at 1:31 am (UTC -5)
then make a better one.
Meg McLain says:
October 7, 2011 at 3:59 pm (UTC -5)
Like I said, I got my data from a study done by the progressive review. the stats here aren’t “how many people die each year from ____”, but it’s risk factor when compared to terrorism. for instance, the death by airplane stat is vs. death in an airplane due to terrorist hijacking, which both are obviously MUCH lower than dying in a car accident, but they are (some what misleading, i know) a different comparison in data.
Coral says:
October 18, 2011 at 8:33 am (UTC -5)
Agreed, Meg. I posted your infograph on my Facebook and my sister and I had a lengthy debate over the stats. Like Ken said, my sister stated that far more people die in car accidents than plane accidents, so how could this info be correct? I pointed out the airplane crash stats were compared to airplane terrorist attacks and that all the other data collected for general “terrorist attacks” could very well have included not just air attacks, but car bombs, train bombs, and just bombs in general. I explained that every set of data was to be read against itself vs. the statistics it’s being compared to. That this wasn’t something to illustrate the number of deaths per year compared to each other. She flipped her lid and started claiming the data was manipulated to have a certain outcome.
Now, she’s saying that all of the data is incorrect and she doesn’t buy it because that one item is compared to terrorist attacks differently than all the others. I was trying to point out to her that, even though it may be compared differently, it still has its purpose on the graph and that is to illustrate that we should be more worried about drunk pilots and weather conditions than terrorists on a plane.
Meg McLain says:
October 18, 2011 at 3:23 pm (UTC -5)
There will ALWAYS be people to complain about anything you do. Even though you offer it to the world for free; you’ve still managed to let people down somehow *rolls eyes*.
The best thing i find in these situations is to simply state: “okay, then make it right/better. SHOW ME how it’s done right.”
I have yet to have anyone take me up on that offer; so I can only conclude that they simply have opinions based on their own ignorance… it’s not like they tried to prove me wrong
JPC says:
October 26, 2011 at 10:00 pm (UTC -5)
I’ve seen most of the other statistics on your infographic (which is great, by the way!) posted in other places (including the NSC report), but I have to call out that one aviation-related stat.
There is something clearly wrong with that statistic, even with the proviso that the denominator only includes “aviation related” terrorist attacks.
There is some kind of “fine print” that’s not making it through to the graphic, because the statistic as stated, “[y]ou are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane,” leads to absurd results.
In other words, the statistic as presented doesn’t pass the “laugh test,” just like a claim that “17 billion people die every year from AIDS.” Well, there are only 7 billion people in the world, and most of them have been alive much longer than a year, so clearly the statistic, no matter how authoritative it claims to be, must be wrong, since it flies in the face of easily observable facts.
Anyway, even if we *only* count Americans (ignore people of all other nationalities), and only count Americans who died on September 11, 2001 (ignore all other aviation-related terrorist attacks), and only count those people who were actually aboard the planes (ignore the ~2500 people killed on the ground), that’s about 200 dead people right there (about 50 on each of the four flights).
200 x 11,000 = 2.2 million
If the statistic (“11,000 times more likely”) as presented were true, it would follow that there have to have been *at least* 2.2 million aviation-related fatalities.
That’s a lot. I have no problem believing that you’re 30,000 times more likely to die from cancer and heart disease (combined) than terrorism, because cancer and heart disease kill thousands upon thousands of people every day. Just walk into any random ER, or open up any random local paper’s obituary page, and you’ll find no shortage of people dying or dead from those two causes. But aviation fatalities are considerably rarer; they’re rare enough that when they happen they are newsworthy.
Even if you spread those 2.2 million fatalities as thinly as possible (uniformly from the present day going back to the beginning of aviation in 1903), that’s only 108 years, or roughly 40,000 days.
2.2 million / 40,000 days = 55 fatalities per day
That is, 55 aviation-related fatalities per day, each and every day, 7 days a week, 365/366 days per year, from 1903 up to the present day.
This is roughly equivalent to one major plane crash (with dozens of fatalities) every single day, and is clearly absurd. There are maybe a handful of major plane crashes (with dozens of fatalities) per year, if even that many.
And of course, that’s starting from a far more restrictive definition of “people who died in aviation-related terrorist attacks,” which is likely to be at least an order of magnitude larger than what I calculated. That’s hundreds of aviation-related deaths per day.
If the number were 11, I’d have no problem believing it, and if it were 110, that would be within reason. But 11,000? No way.
Sonya says:
January 28, 2012 at 9:23 am (UTC -5)
Thanks for the very thorough analysis and the reasoned sanity. Interesting that the one comment offering a proper analysis of the data is also the one meg hasn’t responded to… :p
Love the message, hate the graphic « The Home for Wayward Statisticians says:
September 25, 2011 at 1:00 pm (UTC -5)
[...] Meg McLain tells a great story about the relative risk of being killed by terrorists in the US. Unfortunately, she comes up with this baffling graphic which appears to use the sort of number scales beloved of President Obama’s budget speechwriters: [...]
A great relative risk graphic for terrorism-Financial News | Coffee At Joe's says:
September 25, 2011 at 4:30 pm (UTC -5)
[...] taking a relative risk assessment approach to our security and surveillance policies and spending. Courtesy of Meg McLain, here’s a vivid graphic representing why that’s a good idea, and why we shouldn't be [...]
A great relative risk graphic for terrorism « Knowledge Problem says:
September 26, 2011 at 5:05 pm (UTC -5)
[...] taking a relative risk assessment approach to our security and surveillance policies and spending. Courtesy of Meg McLain, here’s a vivid graphic representing why that’s a good idea, and why we should not be [...]