updated: 2003-02-07
(This file is about physical objects that are very large or very small in some quantifiable way. If you are looking for so-called "bignums" mathematical packages for calculating pi to umpty-million places, factoring large integers, etc., look at linux.html#tech or Challenge to_program.html#programmers_challenge or BigInt unsigned integer math library for VB.NET )
I enjoy interesting ``order of magnitude'', ``back of the envelope'' calculations (``Feynman challenges'' ?). For example, "What fraction of Earth's surface needs to be covered in average-efficiency solar cells, to generate enough power for the average American lifestyle ? Do we already use more (stored fossil) energy in a year than falls in sunlight in a year ?" #solar_power
contents:
large numbers of people.
DAV likes to start every analysis with "everything". In the case of humans,
U.S. and World Population Clocks - POPClocks http://census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw ... http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
Given these 2 numbers, that leads to the conclusion that about 1/15 of all the people who have ever lived are still alive today. -- DAV.
``The Mortality Myth'' http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/BT/18andhalf.html#mortality
times
Boeing 777 http://www.boeing.com/commercial/777family/sitemap.html | http://www.boeing.com/commercial/777family/pf/pf_facts.html | http://www.boeing.com/commercial/777family/pf/pf_exterior_general.html has a wingspan of 60.0 m (200 ft). The Boeing 777-200 is 63.7 m (209 ft) long; the Boeing 777-300 is 73.9 m (242 ft) long.
QE2: "70,327 gross tonnes ... The vessel can take about 1,770 passengers ... The vessel uses 18 tonnes of a fuel an hour, or 433 tonnes per day, with one gallon of fuel moving the ship 49ft 6ins." -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/319027.stm
I feel that all human life is sacred. Every death is a tragedy.
Still, I think it's useful to track of what sorts of things cause the most deaths, so I can focus my limited time and energy appropriately.
morbidity data ; mortality data.
[FIXME: should I move this data to Wikipedia: List of wars and disasters by death toll ?]
DAV: the data I've collected in this table supports
"Safe, Fun-To-Drive Automobiles" by
by Karl Pfleger 2002
http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/kpfleger/auto/
when he says that
The biggest danger of death or severe injury for most Americans comes from motor vehicles.
...
Statistically this danger completely overwhelms the threats posed by terrorist bombs, anthrax, and the like.
Though these more sensational topics receive vastly more media attention,
the average person could prevent deaths and injuries far better by devoting attention to auto safety.
[FIXME: read the rest of "Health and Safety Consumer Information" by Karl Pfleger http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/kpfleger/consumer/ ]
[FIXME: add the numbers from "Annual Causes of Death in the United States" http://drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm to this table ]
numbers in this table are generally rounded to 2 significant figures. [I used to use standard SI notation si_metric_faq.html#si to express the appallingly large numbers in this table. Not any more. ]
Here I'm trying to focus on historical events where real humans died. Should I add some links to possible future events that, while at the moment hypothetical, could lead to the death of many or perhaps all humans ? "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards" paper by Dr. Nick Bostrom http://www.jetpress.org/volume9/risks.html [FIXME: finish reading]
National Safety Council http://nsc.org/ | National Safety Council of Australia Ltd. (NSCA) http://safetynews.com/ | National Safety Council Ireland http://www.nsc.ie/ |
lists "What Are the Odds of Dying?" http://nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm
If there are any errors in this table, or you can help me fill in the blank spots, please give me the correct information via email d.cary@ieee.org. or web feedback feedback.html .
[FIXME: what order should I list this data ? chronologically; worst-killers-first, or what ?] [FIXME: how to distinguish between ongoing killers (deaths/year), versus things that are (I hope) over and done with ? ] [FIXME: How to make more obvious the heirarchial order of some of these entries ?
]
[FIXME: include stats from Tracey O. http://www.teacheroz.com/wwi.htm ]
Some of these numbers are rough guesses. Please tell me if you find more accurate numbers.
killed | year | cause |
---|---|---|
[ how many ???] | the Soviet purges "pogroms" | |
[ how many ???] | 1095 to 1270 | The Crusades christlib.html#crusades |
[ how many ???] | "More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes." http://www.raptureme.com/humor/hb4.html [FIXME: yes, but what are the actual numbers ?] | |
[ how many ???] | [FIXME: ] _The long road to recovery: Community responses to industrial disaster_ book edited by James K. Mitchell 1996 http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu21le/uu21le00.htm#Contents discusses Minamata disease (methyl mercury poisoning), the Bhopal crisis, The Chernobyl disasters, ... [FIXME: split up into individual disasters ?] | |
300,000,000 | 1900-1999 | smallpox: "It's no exaggeration to say that the smallpox vaccine is one of humanity's greatest achievements. In the 20th century alone, smallpox killed more than 300 million people, three times as many as were killed in all the wars of that century combined. Prior to that, the disease killed untold millions, slaughtering kings and commoners alike and changing the course of history" -- [need reference] |
25,000,000 | 1918-1919 | the influenza pandemic of 1918 "WWI had just ended, claiming 9 M men in 4 years; the "Spanish Flu" killed 25 M people in 18 months of 1918 to 1919 ... history's worst plague -- for largest number of people dead in the shortest time .... America, with "only" 850 000 deaths was among the areas least devastated ..." -- ??? ``the very scourge that had caused nations to establish infectious disease control agencies'' -- ??? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu |
25 000 000 | 1347-1350 | The Black Death (sometimes called the Black Plague) "Approximately 25 million deaths occurred in Europe alone, with many others occurring in northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death |
22,000,000 (?) | "22.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are currently infected with HIV and are expected to die within the next 10 years ... Over the next decade, deaths from HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to surpass the deaths of combatants in all the major wars of the 20th century combined." -- ?? | |
20,000,000 | 1939-1945 | World War II (WWII) |
16 000 000 | 1914-1918 | World War I (WWI)
-- http://www.worldwar1.com/sfnum.htm "The Great War" |
10 000 000 | per year | "...by 2030, current smoking patterns will produce about 500 million premature deaths from tobacco-related disease among people alive today... by 2030, tobacco is expected to be the single greatest cause of death worldwide, accounting for an estimated 10 million deaths per year." -- http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1023898043312CVD_stats.pdf |
10 000 000/year | 1996 |
World Hunger Today ... In 1996, a World Food Summit ... findings ... An estimated 10 million persons are reported to die every year from hunger or hunger-related causes.-- http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/after.htm |
7 300 000/year | 2000 ? |
heart disease
Risk Assessment http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3003499
-- http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1014991567713AfAmHtFct.pdf
"International Cardiovascular Disease Statistics" fact sheet for 2002 http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=711 | http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1023898043312CVD_stats.pdf
American Heart Association. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics -- 2003 Update. Dallas TX: American Heart Association; 2002. http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1928 | http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1040391091015HDS_Stats_03.pdf [FIXME: simplify; add new lines for some of the "other" causes listed] |
12,000,000 | 1941-1944 |
-- http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/general.shtml (book recommendations) |
7,000,000 | 1932-1933 | Stalin's Forced Famine: genocide http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/ |
6,000,000 | 1938-1945 |
Nazi Holocaust: genocide
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/
the Nazi ``final solution''
(This is limited to the numbers of Jews killed -- it doesn't include Gypsies, Soviet POWs, dissidents, and others) |
3,000,000/year | 2000 | ``Malaria has long been a scourge -- particularly of children -- in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, India and nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa. Each year, it kills between 1.5 million and 3 million people around the world and 95 percent of the deaths occur in infants and young children. The mysterious re-emergence of the disease in the highlands of East Africa after a six-decade hiatus has baffled researchers since the first new cases were reported in 1988. Since then, malaria, which has caused thousands of deaths in a region that had been free of it, has become one of the area's two biggest infectious-disease killers. AIDS is the other.'' -- http://unisci.com/stories/20013/0831015.htm |
2,100,000 (?) | Vietnam War | |
2,000,000 | 1975-1979 | Pol Pot in Cambodia: genocide http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/ the "killing fields" of Cambodia |
1,500,000 | Korean War | |
1,500,000 | 1845-1850 |
Irish Potato Famine ... British Census Commissioners in 1841 had declared the population of Ireland to be 8,175,124. ... During the Famine years, 1845-50, Ireland's population declined in the millions ... about ... 1,500,000 having died from the effects of the famine ... Continued emigration combined with a lowered birth rate resulted in a steady decline of Ireland's population until the 1960s when it leveled off at about four million.-- http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/after.htm |
1,500,000 | 1915-1918 | Armenians in Turkey: genocide: The Turkish massacre of the Armenians -- http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/ |
1,100,000 / year | 2000 | ``1.1 million worldwide ... lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world, but the number of cases could be dramatically reduced if more people gave up smoking.'' http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1517000/1517668.stm |
800,000 | 1994 | Rwanda genocide http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/ the Hutu-Tutsi massacres in Rwanda |
610 000 | 1861 - 1865 |
Union Statistics: 360,000 killed in action or died of disease Confederate Statistics: 250,000 killed in action or died of disease-- http://www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/map1.html |
600,000 | 1942-1945 |
"[When] Air Marshall Arthur Harris ... became head of RAF Bomber Command in February 1942,
he introduced
a policy of area bombing (known in Germany as terror bombing)
where entire cities and towns were targeted.
... attacks were launched on Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden and other German cities. This air campaign killed an estimated 600,000 civilians and destroyed or seriously damaged some six million homes. ... bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror ... The atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also examples of area bombing. It has been estimated that over the years around 250,000 people have died as a result of these two bombs being dropped. " http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWarea.htm |
300,000 | 1937-1938 | Rape of Nanking: genocide http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/ |
275 000 | all recorded history through 2001 | volcanoes. ``In recorded history, volcanic activity has killed about 275 000 people, estimates Tom Simkin ... recent decades have averaged around three deadly eruptions per year. ...'' -- S. Perkins in ``Scientists analyze volcanoes' killing ways'' article in _Science News_ 2001-01-13 |
200 000 | 1992-1995 |
Bosnia-Herzegovina genocide
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/
"Milosevic ... agreed to a partition of Bosnia. The war he had fomented had resulted in ... over 200 000 dead." Rudolph Chelminski in _Reader's Digest_ 1999 May. |
170,000/year | ??? | ``Stroke kills nearly 170,000 people a year [in the U.S.]. That's about 1 of every 14 deaths. It's the third leading cause of death behind diseases of the heart and cancer. '' -- http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1015263837906StkFct.pdf |
150,000/year | 1999 ??? |
More Christians have died for their faith in the 20th century than in the previous 19 centuries combined. About 150,000 each year are martyred.http://members.tripod.com/kelschbiblestudy1/sil_kills/ |
135,000 | 1945-02-13 |
the bombing of Dresden
"the fire-bombing of Dresden on 13th February 1945. 135,000 people died in the ruins of Dresden, which means that it was the greatest man-caused massacre of all times (71,379 people were killed by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.)" -- Marek Vit http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/4953/themes.html
-- Alexander McKee ? http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p247_Lutton.html |
120 000 /year |
From: "Jeff Harding" Subject: Christlib: Fw: interesting stats Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 07:37:40 -0500 Read this tidbit this morning... DOCTORS ARE DANGEROUS Number of physicians in the US = 700,000 Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year = 120,000 Accidental deaths per physician = 0.171 (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services) Number of gun owners in the US = 80,000,000 Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups) = 1,500 Accidental deaths per gun owner = 0.0000188 (U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) Therefore, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than guns. owners. Taken from the Benton County News Tribune on the seventeenth of November, 1999 Moral? It pays to know how to take care of your own health!
Ronald Gerughty mentions that
The really interesting question here is, what can you and I do about it ?
"take care of your own health" is most important,
but in addition to that perhaps there are other things you and I could do to make things better.
Naturally there are other things you and I could do to make things worse.
Ronald Gerughty suggested passing a law with
| |
120,000 | 1991 |
the first Gulf war
"Counting the dead: In the event of war, how many Iraqi civilians will die? And how many will starve, or be displaced? In secret, the UN has been doing the sums" article by Jonathan Steele Wednesday January 29, 2003 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,884356,00.html
... points to http://www.medact.org/ [FIXME: break up into individual statistics] |
100 000/year | 2000 ? | "the Amoeba ... Entamoeba histolytica, which is estimated to infect about half a billion people and causes about 100,000 deaths per year." -- James Smith http://martin.parasitology.mcgill.ca/jimspage/biol/Amoeba.htm |
100,000 | 0001 to 0100 A.D. | ``Some 50,000 to 100,000 Jews were themselves crucified by the Romans in the first century.'' http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/anti-semitism/jesus.html |
86,000 | 1975 |
The Banqiao Dam ... China's Henan Province... failed catastrophically in 1975 ... Approximately 86,000 people died from the flooding and another 145,000 died during the subsequent epidemics.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam |
85,000 | 1945-03-09 |
the March 9, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 85,000 Japanese in one night-- Ernest W. Lefever 2000 http://www.eppc.org/publications/xq/ASP/pubsID.123/qx/pubs_viewdetail.htm |
80 000 | 1995 (per year) | ``In the US there are two million hospital acquired infections annually, resulting in a mortality of 80,000. That is three times the annual mortality from AIDS'' http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/chap2.htm |
66 500 | 1914-1918 | World War I (WWI) "the First World War"
|
66 000 | 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945 |
Fusion bomb (Hiroshima)
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp10.htm
(initial deaths; more died later from secondary effects)
|
51,509 | 1939-1945 |
... the 51,509 British civilians killed by the Luftwaffe during the whole of the Second World War ...http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWdresden.htm |
48 000 | 1988 (per year) | ``The Truth About Guns??'' http://libertarian.faithweb.com/articles/cars.html |
44,500/year | 2003 |
Motor vehicle deaths ... Deaths in 2003 totaled 44,500, up 1 percent from the 2002 total of 44,000. ... The estimated annual mileage death rate is 1.57 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveledhttp://nsc.org/issues/driving/TrafficSafetyDec2003.pdf |
43 000 / year | 1999 ? | "43 000 women die of breast cancer each year" -- _Reason_ Magazine_ 2000 http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/ ``43,300 will die ... The leading cause of death for African-American women, ages 30-54, is breast cancer. African-American women die at twice the rate of white women.'' -- http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/myths31.htm ... Breast Cancer Prevention Institute http://bcpinstitute.org/ ??? |
[ how many ???] | per year |
deaths attributed to using a cell phone while driving
"a University of Toronto study warns that drivers using a cell phone have four times the normal accident rate -- making driving while phoning as deadly as driving while drunk." -- _Consumer Reports_ 1999 Oct. |
-- | (many war stats at http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~sereno/war.html ) | |
[ how many ???] |
How many people have died from asbestos ?
"It's estimated that mandatory asbestos removal from 110 000 public school buildings will cost taxpayers $ 49 000 000 per life saved." -- _Reason_ Magazine_ 2000 | |
-- | [FIXME: grab some numbers from http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd.html ? ] | |
[ how many ???] | Man-made Disasters http://www.edmasters.cyberteacher.com/EMLdis3A.htm | mirror http://www.edmasters.cyberteacher.com/EMLdis3Z.htm | very similar site: Man-made Disasters http://www.readyed.com.au/urls/disaster3.html [breadk up into individual statistics ?] | |
[ how many ???] | Chernobyl | |
[ how many ???] | Boer War in South Africa | |
[FIXME: get some numbers from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/ ] | ||
[ how many ???] | the first winter: Pilgrims on the Mayflower | |
43 000 | 1996 | deaths from Motor Vehicle accidents in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
39 000 | August 9th, 1945, at about 7:50 A.M. | Fusion bomb (Nagasaki) http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp10.htm (initial deaths; more died later from secondary effects) |
38 000 | 1994 | people died in the US from gunshot wounds. |
35 000 / year | "35 000 American men die of prostrate cancer ... each year" -- _Reason_ Magazine_ 2000 | |
29,350/year | 2000 | "Intentional self-harm" http://nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm seems to say that 29 350 Americans successfully committed suicide in the year 2000. ... "The Economics of Suicide" by Charles Duhigg, Oct. 29, 2003 http://slate.msn.com/id/2090424/ |
22 500/year | "Some 22,500 people are killed every year by exposure to insecticides" (worldwide) -- http://www.eco-action.org/dt/bhopal.html [FIXME: more details ?] | |
20 000 | (per year) |
``
About 70 million [Americans]
get today's flu vaccine ... each year.
Yet influenza still kills
20 000 Americans each year and
hospitalizes about 100 000.''
--
Tulsa World
2001-07-27
"Influenza in an average year kills 20 000 people in the United states." -- federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. |
14 000 | 1996 | deaths from accidental falls in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
12 000 | per year |
3500 elderly people commit suicide each year in France ... The main reasons they give is loneliness and the feeling of uselessness. ... Frenchmen, aged 75 or more, have nearly the highest suicide rate in Europe, ... Suicide accounts for 12 000 deaths a year in France,http://www.lafrance2003.org/UK/downloads/prayerguides%202002/pgpdf.pdf |
13 000/year | 2002 ? | "Brain tumors affect about 18,000 people in the United States every year, killing 13,000." -- "Study: Altered virus kills brain tumors in mice" Copyright 2003 Reuters. May 6, 2003 http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/05/06/cancer.virus.reut/index.html |
13 000 ? | 1984 | major accident at chemical plant in Bhopal "On Dec. 2-3, 1984, Bhopal, India was the site of the world's worst chemical disaster, killing 16,000 people" -- http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/remember-bhopal "there were 13,000 death claims, whereas government figures showed 4,000 deaths." -- http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu21le/uu21le0c.htm | photos by Pablo Bartholomew http://www.m-web.com/bhopal_photos.html |
9 800 | 1996 | deaths from accidental poisoning (including drugs) in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
10,000 | 1900-09-08 |
_Isaac's Storm_ book by Erik Larson
On September 8, 1900, a massive hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas. ... By the time the water and winds subsided, ... as many as 10,000 were dead -- making this the worst natural disaster in America's history.http://www.blumer.org/adam/books.htm |
8 428 | 1776-1865 (?) | ``all America's battle deaths from the Revolutionary War up to the Civil War (8,428).'' -- George Will, in article ``Destroy haystacks, not needles'' 2001-09-14 |
8 000 | 1995 July | "Bosnian Serb troops overran U.N. peacekeeping forces and seized the city of Srebrenica in July 1995. The estimated 8000 Muslims who were thereupon executed constituted the biggest single mass murder in Europe since World War II." -- Rudolph Chelminski in _Reader's Digest_ 1999 May. |
8 000/day | 2003 | "At a rate of 8,000 deaths a day, HIV/AIDS claims as many casualties as the Vietnam War every seven weeks and as many as World War I every three years." http://www.worldvision.org/Worldvision/pr.nsf/hopequizdone1?OpenForm&q1=b .(global) |
5 000 | 1995 | earthquake in the city of Kobe Japan http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_426000/426035.stm . |
5 000 | 1998 | pedestrians killed by automobile drivers in the US [fixme: is this right ?] |
about 5 000 | 1793 | ``the 1793 Yellow Fever epidemic. Philadelphia was literally decimated by this epidemic: about 5,000 of Philadelphia's 50,000 residents were taken by the Aedes mosquito.'' -- http://www.ushistory.org/tour/tour_tomb.htm |
5 000 | 1972 | "like the mercury tainted wheat which led to the death of as many as 5,000 Iraquis in 1972, wheat which had been exported from the U.S." -- http://www.eco-action.org/dt/bhopal.html [FIXME: more details ?] |
4 000 | 1952 | "industrial pollution killed some 4,000 people in ... in London, in 1952, when several days of "normal" pollution accumulated in stagnant air to kill and permanently injure thousands of Britons." -- http://www.eco-action.org/dt/bhopal.html |
3 981 | 2001-09-11 | terrorists who hijacked and crashed American Flight 11 from Boston, United Flight 175 from Boston, American Flight 77 from Washington D.C., and United Flight 93 from Newark NJ, into the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/death-toll.htm | http://www.unitedheroes.com/ | http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/worldtrade.crash/story.html |
3 900 | 1996 | deaths from accidental drowning in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
3,000 | 2001-2002 | U.S. military in Afghanistan "3,000 - 3,400 [October 7, 2001 thru March 2002] civilian deaths -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan" -- Marc W. Herold Ph.D., University of New Hampshire http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm partial mirror http://www.media-alliance.org/mediafile/20-5/index.html |
3,200 | 1996 | deaths from accidental fires and burns in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
3,000 | 1996 | deaths from accidental suffocation in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
2 500/year | 1998 |
land mines
Campaigners against landmines, who recently received the Nobel Peace Prize, hailed a new ban treaty as a gift to future generations. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, approximately 60 to 100 million mines are still scattered throughout 69 countries. These weapons kill or maim more than 25,000 people a year -- equivalent to a victim every 22 minutes.http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/cr9802.htm [FIXME: how many are killed ? I randomly guess 1 in 10 are killed, the rest are "merely"maimed. Need better numbers.] |
2 395 | 1941-12-07 | 353 aircraft pilots of the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field, on the Island of O'ahu, Hawaii, a territory of the United States, killing 2 341 U.S. military personnel and 54 civilians. http://www.execpc.com/~dschaaf/pearl2.html | http://www.pearlharbor.navy.mil/ | http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm | http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/pearlharbor/ [FIXME: the official numbers are slightly different] |
1,400/year | 1996 | unintentional firearm-injury deaths in America (_Accident Facts_ from the National Safety Council) |
1000/year | ??? |
``Lightning kills about 300 people each year in the United States
...
More than one thousand people are killed each year in the U.S.
due to generated electric current
...
A safety key to prevent inexperienced operators from energizing a coil is essential.''
ttp://www.pupman.com/safety.htm
(see
high_voltage.html#tesla
)
[better source ?]
However, another source claims: From 1971 to 2000, lightning strikes killed an average of 73 people each year -- compared with 68 tornado fatalities and 16 hurricane deaths. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s1161.htm ... which points to an album of lightening photographs http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/nssl/lightning1.html . |
400 / year | 400 men die of breast cancer each year http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/myths31.htm (2001) | |
400/year | "The Consumer Product Safety Commission says cooking equipment ... causes 400 deaths ... each year." -- 1999 | |
390 / year | 1998 | "Jim Clark ... Tulsa police sergeant ... An estimated 600 000 officers police the United States, whose population is roughly 250 million. Clark said about 375 to 400 suspects are fatally shot by police each year." -- _Tulsa World_ 1999-08-22 |
350 / per year | 2000 | "This was the deadliest crossing at the border since 1987 when 18 Mexican men died in a locked railroad boxcar near Sierra Blanca, Texas. However, deaths due to exposure at the border are all too common. The Border Patrol places its official numbers of such deaths at over 350 last year alone. ... We've made the act of looking for a better job in the United States a crime that carries the death penalty with it." http://www.rtfcam.org/report/volume_21/No_3/article_4.htm |
290 | 1988-07-03 |
"the destruction of Iranian Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes
...
that killed 290 civilians.
...
(For full details and documentation see:
Chris Hables Gray, "AI at War: The Aegis System in Combat"
in
_Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing_
1990, Vol. III, D. Shuler, ed., Ablex, 1996, pp. 62-79.)"
--
http://cpsr.org/program/peace/#essay
"On July 3, 1988, and American warship shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 civilians. This is the true story of how it happened..." http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5260/vince.html _Storm Center: the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655: A Personal Account of Tragedy and Terrorism_ book by Will Rogers, Sharon Rogers |
274/year | 2002 |
-- http://upway.com/cgi-bin/readnews.cgi?day=03_03_17&item=#1047917437 |
270 | 1988-12-21 |
"the destruction of PanAm flight 103 over Lockerbie on December 21,1988
...
270 people"
http://www.sundayherald.com/13435
"December 21st, 1988 flight Pan Am 103 exploded and pieces of the plane fell onto the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 259 people on the plane and 11 people on the ground." http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5260/headpage.html |
250/year | "in the U.S. ... chemical incidents ... On average, these accidents kill about 250 people nationwide every year." http://ens-news.com/ens/dec1999/1999-12-02-07.asp | |
168 | 1995-04-19 |
Timothy McVeigh ... truck bomb
... the Oklahoma City federal building [also known as]
the Alfred P. Murrah building
http://www.okcbombing.org/News%20Articles/missile_murrah.htm
,
http://www.vikingphoenix.com/news/stn/2000/stn2000-025.htm
,
http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/mcveigh717.htm
"April 19, 1995 ... 168 people were dead in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. (Prior to 09-11-01) ... McVeigh was sentenced to death. Nichols was ... convicted of Involuntary Manslaughter and Conspiracy to Use a Weapon of Mass Destruction, and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole." -- http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/mcveigh717.htm |
135 | 2000 | ``Assailants killed 51 law enforcement officers on duty in the United States last year ... Of the killings in 2000, 13 were officers conducting traffic stops; 12 involved arrest situations; 10 were ambushes; 8 were officers responding to disturbance calls; 6 involved investigations of suspicious circumstances; and 2 were officers handling prisoners. ... In addition, 84 officers were accidentally killed on duty in 2000. ... including 42 automobile accidents ... 14 struck by vehicles ... 7 Aircraft accidents ... 6 Motorcycle accidents ... 3 accidental shootings ... out of 441 311 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers '' -- www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/00leoka.pdf |
100/year | 2000 ? |
On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.[FIXME: source ? Is this just US, or is it global ?] |
50/year |
Every year, ... in the United States ... about 50 die from ... chickenpoxhttp://thinktwice.com/cpox.htm Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute http://thinktwice.com/ | |
40 / year | 1998 | "Tipsy people frying late-night meals are to blame for many of the house fires that kill about 40 people each year, the [British] government said Monday as it launched an advertising campaign warning of the danger. ... The government plans to spend the equivalent of $2.4 million on the campaign." -- London (AP) 1999-08-24 |
20/year | 1997 | playground-related injuries
53 000 children are injured in a year in accidents at playgrounds. Nearly 30 000 of these occur on monkey-bars. Roughly 20 children a year pay for play with their lives!-- david zjaba http://lonsberry.com/writers/zjabs/index.cfm?story=6420 quoting from http://www.mast.mb.ca/student_safety/playgound%20saftey/danger.htm |
20/year | 1999 | water heaters igniting flammable vapors
Each year, gas-fired water heaters igniting flammable vapors cause nearly 2,000 fires, 320 injuries, 20 deaths and more than $26 million in property damage.http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml99/99157.html (apparently, someone invented a burner design that prevents this from happening ... how ?) |
14 | 1989-12-06 | The Montréal Massacre http://www.howdyneighbor.com/one-in-ten/FEMINISTmassacre.html , "the worst single-day massacre in Canadian history." http://www.gendercide.org/case_montreal.html |
14 | 2000 | Out of 67 people involved in the murder of a law enforcement officer in 2000, 14 of them died in 2000. -- www.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/00leoka.pdf |
13/year | ~1998 | bus and motor coach accidents.
-- Glen Johnson, Associated Press, 1999 Sept. 22 |
12 | c. 1870-1889 | The feud between the Hatfields & McCoys (which took place during most of 1870s and 1880s) resulted in the deaths of 12 people. http://www.discovery.com/news/archive/news990510/brief6.html?ct=3745fa83 |
7 | 1929 |
The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
the most spectacular mob hit in gangland historyhttp://www.prairieghosts.com/valentine.html | http://foia.fbi.gov/massacre.htm | http://www.mysterynet.com/love/valentine/massacre/ |
[FIXME: add the following data to the above table]
Lee Clarke, a sociology professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. ... Clarke is an expert in disasters and in organisational and technological failures. ... and says people tend to react well in a crisis.
... the public needs to be educated about the real threat and how we might cope.
Every year, a small asteroid explodes in the Earth's atmosphere with an energy equivalent to 5,000 tonnes of TNT. Lee Clarke said: "Stuff comes in and it blows up. This sort of thing needs to be common knowledge."
-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2003/denver_2003/2763993.stm
http://www.reason.com/0208/fe.rb.forever.shtml`` If all the causes of death in the United States before age 50 were eliminated, average life expectancy would increase by only three and a half years. ... Researchers reported in the April 29 Science that life expectancy has been increasing at about two and a half years per decade for the last 160 years. ''
[DAV: pet peeve: no, they're not "countless". "unknown" or "uncounted", perhaps.] [FIXME: copy question to unknowns.html ?]...
... the usual critics reminded us that it is dangerous and costly to put people in space. But let's put it in perspective: 17 astronauts and 11 cosmonauts have died in the 40-odd years of space-faring. In addition, dozens of space workers have died in ground accidents and explosions. Still, the total is miniscule compared to the thousands of sailors who perished exploring the globe in the 16th and 17th centuries, or the hundreds who died opening the ocean floor ... in the 20th century. Large construction projects, from the Great Pyramids in Egypt to the Golden Gate Bridge, also left countless workers dead.
Grand exploration or construction -- in other words, large-scale, lasting achievement -- almost always claims payment in human lives. ...
... The question is, what's intrinsically significant ?
...
http://www.feedmag.com/templates/default.php3?a_id=1709"If you were to cure all cancers in all people for all time in North America, you add only about 3.5 years to life expectancy," he said. Yet there is a 3.9-year gain associated with winning an Academy Award.
-- "World Resources 1992-93" http://www.ciesin.org/docs/001-233/001-233all.html ( 3d_design.html#counter-intuitive )Although it might seem that reducing child mortality would increase population growth, the opposite is the case if countries also develop economically. As countries develop, they go through a process called demographic transition in which living standards are raised, child mortality is reduced, and fertility declines. This transition can be speeded by policies that promote education, health care, and use of contraceptives.
... total fertility rates in the industrialized countries have remained roughly at or below 2 during the 1980s and into 1990. (The fertility rate is the average number of children women bear in their lifetime.) ...
On a global level, about 48 million people died annually during the mid 1980s, including about 11 million in the industrial world and about 37 million in the developing world. Three fourths of all deaths in the industrial world were caused by diseases of the circulatory system (54 percent) and cancer (21 percent) (11) (12).
Statistics on causes of death in developing countries are often unavailable or unreliable. Using available data and indirect methods, WHO has estimated that of the nearly 37 million people (23.3 million adults and 13.5 million children) who died in develo ping countries in 1985, 44 percent (16 million) died of infectious and parasitic diseases (13). ...
Malaria ... estimated ... deaths at about 1 million a year, with about three quarters of all deaths occurring among children under 5. ...
Schistosomiasis is caused by schistosome parasites... About 200,000 people die of schistosomiasis each year ...
... early 1991, when, for the first time in this century, a cholera epidemic struck ... As of late September 1991, the World Health Organization had received reports of ... 3,200 deaths, primarily in Peru ...
... Diarrheal disease causes about 3.2 million child deaths annually ...
... Measles accounts for some 900,000 deaths a year ...
http://thewinds.arcsnet.net/arc_features/government/statism_revolution08-98.html [FIXME: Christlib.html ?] ???Political scientist R. J. Rummel calculates that in this century alone governments have killed more than 119,400,000 people during times of peace. This is four times the casualties of combat in this century's wars and more than all the people killed in religious persecution in all history. This is the wretched fruit of a political madness and fanaticism to which mankind seems so prone. It is the fruit of Statism, or the worship of the State. It is a religion in and of itself.
CPU die sizes, transistor counts, etc.
chip sizes
Please help me complete this table. [FIXME: besides mm, also *date* when each CPU was released ... also transistor linewidths and number of gates/transistors would be nifty. ]
computer_architecture.html#benchmarks lists information about how to benchmark a CPU.
1948: Bell Laboratories invents the TRANSISTOR, replacing the VACUUM TUBE.
Preliminaries: die size, power consumption, and clock speed
Process Die Size Transistors Core Voltage Power Dissipation PowerPC 970: 1.8 GHz 0.13um 121 mm2 52 million 1.3v 42 Watts Pentium 4: 2.8 GHz 0.13um 131 mm2 55 million 1.525v 68.4 Watts G4e: 1 GHz 0.18um 106 mm2 33 million 1.6v 30 Watts ... if you consider the fact that the 970's power consumption at 1.2GHz is a mere 19W, it's almost certain that we'll see a future notebook from Apple based on the new chip.
prices dollars pounds $ € £ ¤
[FIXME: sort by magnitude]
Current market size estimates from IDC ... the mobile & wireless market for handheld devices at $7.8B and notebooks at $47B in 2003. In 2004, the market size is expected to grow $8.7B and $52B, respectively. ... Over time, the new ultra mobile PC market is expected to significantly cannibalize sales from the $52B laptop and handheld device markets.
http://www.twf.org/News/Y2002/0427-Mystery.html2001 ... bringing U.S. military spending to $379 billion.
This . . . It matches the combined military spending of the 15 countries with the next biggest defense budgets. . . . It would roughly match, in inflation adjusted terms, the U.S. defense budget in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War.
And for 2003 the president's budget directs an additional $37.7 billion to "homeland security."
Smoking costs Americans over $157 billion annually in medical care.-- http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1040391091015HDS_Stats_03.pdf
aircraft carriers ... Nimitz-class carriers ... the ships carry a price tag of $5 billion apiece ... In 2000, ... a fishing boat loaded with explosives and a suicide crew ... killing 17 sailors ... the USS Cole ... destroyer ... warship was repaired at a cost of $250 million ... ... the 97 000 ton Nimitz-class ships. ... The [U.S.] Navy -- which has an authorized strength of 12 carrier battle groups -- must retire old ships before it can add new ones ... The Russian navy... has only one carrier, the 65 000 ton Kuznetsov. ... U.S. Navy aircraft carriers http://www.chip-fo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers http://www.chipfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers ... Globalsecurity.org ... aircraft carrier 1 092 feet long 4.5 acres crew: 5 680 (ship's company: 3 200 Air Wing : 2 480 )
What is wrong is that a tiny tail of "copyright protection" is wagging the big dog of communications among humans. As Andy Odlyzko pointed out, ( http://www.research.att.com/~amo/doc/eworld.html , see "Content is not king" and "The history of communications and its implications for the Internet"), "The annual movie theater ticket sales in the U.S. are well under $10 billion. The telephone industry collects that much money every two weeks!"
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter16.htmlHubble Space Telescope ... It is hard to quantify the value of knowing better the nature, history, and origin of the universe in order to compare it to the cost of the telescope. ...
...
Designed to be serviceable in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope was the most mechanic-friendly spacecraft ever flown. ...
... in June 1984, at which time the cost of the Hubble Space Telescope was estimated at about a billion dollars.
...
Typical estimates for the repair mission are $500 million, and for the Telescope's initial construction $1.5 billion, making the repair about one-third the "value" of the Telescope. However, the figures change substantially if one includes the transportation costs of a Shuttle mission or the costs of mission operations and data analysis.
...
... 25 miles of flight wiring ...
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=52510&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=160&mode=thread&pid=5205293#5205587Re:NASA site mission STS-107 by DoktorFaust (564453) on Saturday February 01
The ISS program, and the supply flights to build & support it, will have a total price tag of at around $100,000,000,000. Scientific-notation kinds of fundage ($1e11)!!
To put that in perspective, while the total cost of the ISS program may be around 100 billion USD after 15 years of design and construction, the US Military has a budget of 420 billion USD for a single year.
Doesn't make it seem like quite as much any more, does it?
"What fraction of Earth's surface needs to be covered in average-efficiency solar cells, to generate enough power for the average American lifestyle ? Do we already use more (stored fossil) energy in a year than falls in sunlight in a year ?" http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/fork-faq.html /* was http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/LOCAL/faq-fork.html#notorious */ Gordon writes:
From gordoni at acid.base.com Wed Apr 30 15:06:48 1997 Subject: Re: Global warming, population, nuclear power To: FoRK@xent.com > Solar doesn't cut it -- we already use more energy in a year than > falls as sunlight in a year. What is your source for this claim. It sounds bogus to me. The Solar constant is 1366 Watts / square meter. The Earth's radius is 6400 kilometers. The population is around 5 billion I think. 1366 x 3.14 x 6.4e6 x 6.4e6 / 5e9 = 35 megawatts per person Relative to most people, I lead an extremley affluent life style, but still only probably consume perhaps 10 kilowatts. Even at 10% efficiency, 1 thousandth of the Earth's surface should thus be able to provide sufficient energy for all current needs.... "Actually an American uses 3 kilowatts average"
- A. Mother Russia, by Yevgenyi Vuchetich, 1967, 270 feet, Volograd, Russia, reinforced concrete with stainless steel sword.
- B. Statue of Liberty, by Frederic Bartholdi, 1874-1886, 151 feet, hammered copper over an iron framework.
- C. Christ the Redeemer, 1931, 98.5 feet, Corco-vado Mountain, 2,329 feet high, Rio De Janeiro, concrete and soapstone.
- D. Bavaria, by Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler, 1848, 59 feet, Munich, Germany, cast bronze.
- E. Vulcan, by Giuseppe Moretti, 1904, 57 feet, Birmingham, Alabama, cast iron with polished steel spearpoint
- F. The Amika Buddha, 1252, 37 feet, Kamakura, Japan, bronze.
-- Michael Finley http://currents.net/articles/2009,3,5,1,0901,01.html reviewing _The Sum of Our Discontent_ book by David Boyle``The awful irony is that our credulity with numbers belies our ineptitude with them. At a time when we need engineers and scientists as never before, fewer kids are taking the math courses to support those careers.
Seems to me we have a choice: Study math so that we can criticize numbers when they lie, or forswear it entirely--neither study numbers nor believe in them.
But what we are getting is the worst possible combination of ignorance and awe.''
-- Mark Monroe Kris Krueger Sean Torres http://www.egr.msu.edu/classes/ece482/Teams/97fall/xdesign2/web/technical_report.html (What is the source of this information ? ARM ?)
HARARE (Reuters) - At least 40 people were killed and 60 injured when a passenger train collided with a goods train, derailed and caught fire in Zimbabwe early on Saturday.
Rescue teams were still battling to douse flames more than 14 hours after the accident.
Police spokesman Andrew Phiri said the collision happened at around 3:15 am (0115 GMT) near Dete, about 90 southeast of Victoria Falls, a popular tourist destination in northwestern Zimbabwe.
...
... Indications were that between 1,000 and 1,100 people were on the passenger train, Phiri added.
He said the goods train had been carrying a flammable liquid, ...
...
...
...
... an unexpected lahar that gushed down the sides of the Colombian volcano Nevado del Ruiz in 1985, killing at least 23,000 ...
... The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein. But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. ...
... the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and ... asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.
-- http://bodytrends.com/serpa.htmthe American public spends an average of $35 Billion dollars per year on a certain item that is doomed to failure from the beginning ... What is this item? A new stealth bomber? Six thousand dollar toilet for a missile frigate? No, not even close. How about welfare or farm subsidies? You're not even warm. The answer is much simpler than you might think: Weight Loss.
It is widely estimated that we spend approximately $35 billion per year on weight loss programs, products, and potions and you know what? They don't work!
$6,700 million: NASA's 2005 budget for manned space flight including shuttles and the International Space Station
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