December 27, 2009
If We Forget Math, The Terrorists Win
NP: The Shield
Nate Silver crunches some numbers:
The odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.
What gets me is that I'm absolutely sure that there are Americans who don't fly anywhere, ever, who are -- mostly due to Karl Rove and Fox News -- afraid that they are, personally, at risk of a terrorist attack. Not exactly what people mean when they describe something as an "asymmetrical threat," but it's not too different.
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