A cop is more likely to kill you than a terrorist!

[wildbilln864]

Eye Wash Station - After 9/11, the fear of another attack on U.S. soil cleanly supplanted the fear of having one's penis chopped off by a vengeful lover in the pantheon of irrational American fears. While we're constantly being told that another attack is imminent and that radical Islamic fundamentalists are two steps away from establishing a caliphate in Branson, Missouri, just how close are they? How do the odds of dying in a terrorist attack stack up against the odds of dying in other unfortunate situations?
more here.

[Kurovski]

2. "What's a terrorist"? Asks the 15 year-old living in my head.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Worth noting that that list is fairly clearly nonsense.

To pick some obvious examples:

Over the past 15 years, to within a power of 2 (but probably not more accurate than that, so don't repeat them without that caveat, or complain if they're wrong within that tolerance), the number of Americans killed by


-----------Deaths - -Actual ratio to terrorism- - - -They claim ratio to terrorism

Terrorists - 3000 - - - - - - 1 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Planes - - -3000 - - - - - - 1 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -11,000
Police - - - 6000 - - - - - - 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 8
Cars - - - -600,000 - - - - 200 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -1000

If you restrict to the last ten years, to exclude the September 11th attacks, divide all the other numbers in the left hand column by 1.5, multiply all the numbers in the second column by a large constant - probably a bit less than a hundred, I guess, although I'm not sure - and it still won't be anywhere near their answers.

I have no idea where they got their numbers from or what they're doing with them, but they're clearly not just wrong but massively, mind-bogglingly wrong.

On edit: Horrible ugly dotted lines added to make the table line up. What is the correct way to make a table on DU?

[wildbilln864]

4. kick. n/t