Gregor Vukasinovič
Having a Blast with Statistics
That was a strange day. I woke up in the morning and didn't know much, but that I wanted to sit on a volcano today. So I did. Not just in a volcano, but on a bench in a cemetery in a volcano. Couldn't help but wonder how many people could say to have done that at one point. Not a whole lot, but there must be a few. And how many people on earth were doing that right now. Are there other cemeteries built into the craters of semi-extinct volcanoes somewhere in the world? Sounds like something the Japanese might do.
Speaking of Japan, I was going to talk about something else entirely. Namely, about nukes. I just read a comment on YouTube, saying jokingly, it's more likely to die from a nuclear bomb nowadays than from a volcano. And I was going to call bullshit on that, initially. That was, until I actually looked into the numbers. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, about 120,000 people died from the immediate effects of the bombs, and once more the same number (estimated) from long term consequences. The total death toll ranges somewhere between 220 and 240,000.
Data on how many people died from volcanoes since the end of WW2 are a bit more fuzzy, but seem to range somewhere between 50 and 60,000, with 23,000 of those having been claimed by Nevado del Ruiz alone, in Colombia 1985. So, it turned out, that comment was actually spot on. Statistically speaking, you are about four times more likely to die in a nuclear blast, and that's just from the two of them that made it into the statistics. The few thousand additional casualties through cancer etc. from nuclear tests weren't counted here.
Having a Blast with Statistics
That was a strange day. I woke up in the morning and didn't know much, but that I wanted to sit on a volcano today. So I did. Not just in a volcano, but on a bench in a cemetery in a volcano. Couldn't help but wonder how many people could say to have done that at one point. Not a whole lot, but there must be a few. And how many people on earth were doing that right now. Are there other cemeteries built into the craters of semi-extinct volcanoes somewhere in the world? Sounds like something the Japanese might do.
Speaking of Japan, I was going to talk about something else entirely. Namely, about nukes. I just read a comment on YouTube, saying jokingly, it's more likely to die from a nuclear bomb nowadays than from a volcano. And I was going to call bullshit on that, initially. That was, until I actually looked into the numbers. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, about 120,000 people died from the immediate effects of the bombs, and once more the same number (estimated) from long term consequences. The total death toll ranges somewhere between 220 and 240,000.
Data on how many people died from volcanoes since the end of WW2 are a bit more fuzzy, but seem to range somewhere between 50 and 60,000, with 23,000 of those having been claimed by Nevado del Ruiz alone, in Colombia 1985. So, it turned out, that comment was actually spot on. Statistically speaking, you are about four times more likely to die in a nuclear blast, and that's just from the two of them that made it into the statistics. The few thousand additional casualties through cancer etc. from nuclear tests weren't counted here.