Bloomberg on Terrorism

“There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life…. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.”

How much?

From the National Safety Council: The odds of getting struck by lightning in one’s lifetime are 1/80,000.

The NWS suggests four factors necessary for recovery:

• Supportive family/friends network.
• Becoming your own advocate and learning as much as you can about this disability.
• A physician willing to listen, read, learn and work with the survivor and their family.
• A sense of humor.

That’s great general advice, but they also put the lifetime odds at 1/5,000. What gives?

This graphic listing the top causes of death helpfully points out that the odds of dying, the baseline, all causes combined, is 1/1, or 100%.

I can’t find any consistant numbers on the terrorist attack odds, lifetime, per year, or otherwise. Most put the odds at over 1/1 million, or make assumptions like “if there was a shopping center attack every week, and you went shopping every other week” type hypotheticals.