Below is a curious article citing the odds of, as the thread title says, certain emergencies and disasters happening in our lives.
From things like the odds of getting struck and killed by a meteorite someday (1 in 625,000), to the odds of being killed while riding a bicycle (1 in 4,381), and lots of other stuff in between.
I assume the author had access to some reliable stat sources somewhere, maybe actuarial type stuff, to come up with these figures. But the numbers for most of these claims at least seem plausible enough in most cases, as well as concerning in others.
BTW, odds of getting cancer? One in seven. But that's likely some kind of very generalized average for all the cancers, so probably not all that meaningful. (But interesting that 1/7 has usually been the stat quoted for being diagnosed with PCa, as I recall).
Which disaster, and its stated accompanying likelihood, seems the scariest? Well, for me, it was the account of: What are the Odds of a Major Solar Flare Hitting the Earth?
As to this possibility, we are told:
"The Carrington coronal mass ejection (major solar flare) occurred in 1859 for multiple days impacting the entire planet. The results: telegraph wires burst into flames, touching off fires (while in other cases fire crews were called to fires that did not exist, due to the fiery lights in the sky). Telegraph machines scorched paper printouts, stunned operators with atomic shocks, transmitted gibberish, and continued working for hours even after being unplugged from the batteries that powered them. For two days, the light show and electromagnetic storm continued, then faded. Even at this lower level it would be devastating to our modern electronic environment. A tiny solar flare event caused Toronto to be without power for an entire day in 1989. Again the odds of this are hard to predict but over a 10 year period, the likelihood is as high as 1 in 8."
ONE in EIGHT??? (Gasp!) But, really, we simply have to live with the chances of a thing like that
maybe happening some day, and it may never happen at all.
Spending time worrying over such things that may or may not happen is not what life should be about
.
I remember a while back when my local newspaper here in Gainesville, Florida, ran an article about
the odds of a Category 5 hurricane coming ashore at Cedar Key (a fishing community on the Gulf of Mexico, about
60 miles west of here), with winds of, say, 180 MPH. Then making a beeline for Gainesville, arriving here with winds of maybe about
150 MPH by that time, and then basically taking out most of Gainesville.
I remember the newspaper reporting about
a 1/45 chance of that ever happening during any given year (however they arrived at that number). But after reading that article I decided then and there that I was not going to worry about
a roughly 2% probability event happening, however catastrophic it might be if it did. Life's too short.
But, still, it's interesting to see just what the chances are that some things will, or likely won't, happen, and then just get on with one's life.
So if you wish, click below and have a little fun reading up on some of the things that
might happen (and only might), such as: odds of dying in a tsunami/flood (1 in 558,896), odds of dying from parts falling off an airplane (1 in 10,000,000), or dying from the plague (1 in 3,000,000 depending on where you live), and then just smile and go about
your daily business.
https://commonsensehome.com/odds-of-everyday-emergencies/#:~:text=a%20tiny%20solar%20flare%20event%20caused%20toronto%20to,that%20we%20will%20run%20out%20of%20natural%20resources%3f