‘Terror kills, but panic later not proportional to actual danger’ read the headline of an article in the Times of India after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The statistics displayed at the bottom of the article sparked a conversation amongst my friends and some questions were raised.
“Jeepers, lightning kills nearly 3000 people per year? Wow!”
“I think comparison criteria are wrong. Why don’t they compare victims of terrorism in different countries? That would be an interesting study”
Of course, I had to get to the bottom of this. So here’s what my research shows:
Let’s deal with the easy one first. The US government says that about 100 people die every year by lightning. But the National Crime Bureau in India says that about 2553 and 2113 were killed by lightning in 2008 and 2009, respectively. [See reference. PS: Alex… Jeepers!!]
By comparison, deaths by traffic accidents were 144,587 and 152,689 in 2008 and 2009, respectively and 127,151 deaths were committed by suicide. [See reference] So Times of India did get it right this time.
As for the deaths by terrorist attacks, let’s look at the global figures. The US does most of the research, of course. In 2006, 14000 attacks took place mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan killing 20,000 people. [See reference] In 2005, 11000 attacks took place killing 14,600 people. [See reference, it verifies the figures mentioned in the MSNBC report]. FBI reports 15,765 deaths in 2008 due to terror attacks [See reference, report goes into a lot of details.] For data before 2005, see this (The numbers are so much lower!).
I couldn’t find numbers for 2010 but from the above we can imagine that the number is in the 20,000s or less. Now compare this to the 1.2 million deaths that occur annually due to traffic accidents around the world. The article had a good point to make.
Akshat Rathi 
“You are 6 times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack.”
http://johnbakersblog.co.uk/odds-of-dying-in-a-terrorist-attack/
Unfortunately he doesn’t cite sources.
Hahaha… this one is better. “You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.” Same place. The source is mentioned to be “compiled using data from 2004 National Safety Council (NSC) Estimates”. So data is old. May be in the new analysis it is revealed that you are 80 times more likely to be killed by armymen trying to protect you from a terrorist!
[…] Deaths due to terrorism | Contemplation Quote: […]
Well thanks alot that helped
I believe that you people truly need to study statistical analysis or at least the principles of logic. Comparing automobile accidents to acts of terrorism is akin to saying that beating your spouse to death is no different than their succumbing to cancer. Accidents are just that random occurrences that befall one. A terrorism is a premeditated designed to kill and maim people in order to bring attention to some cause or as revenge for perceived slights. I have lived in the middle east where locally the chance of auto accident is eight times higher than in the US or EU and acts of violence rival that.