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Discussion » Questions » Weather » Average annual US deaths due to lightning strikes: 33. Average annual US deaths due to terrorism: 7. Shouldn't we be "DOING SOMETHING! OMG! BE AFRAID!" about lightning strikes?

Average annual US deaths due to lightning strikes: 33. Average annual US deaths due to terrorism: 7. Shouldn't we be "DOING SOMETHING! OMG! BE AFRAID!" about lightning strikes?

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Note: Above figures are for 10-year period of 2005-2015

Posted - July 15, 2016

Responses


  • Staying indoors when lightning is around is not bad.

    If one must go out at such times,

    wear thick rubber soles, waterproof hat and overcoat,

    and if possible avoid touching conductive metals.

      July 15, 2016 8:13 PM MDT
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  • I thought lightning rods were a normal part of building standards.

      July 15, 2016 8:16 PM MDT
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  • 3934

    @hartfire -- I think most people understand the "do's" and "don'ts" of being around lighting.

    What I was trying to get at is how outsized the media hype (and our emotional reactions) are to the actual magnitude of the terrorism threat. In the wake of the Nice, France truck attack, people are once again proposing impractical, immoral, and/or extremely expensive "solutions" to the problem, when there are many many things in our lives that imperil us much more.

      July 15, 2016 8:18 PM MDT
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  • 3934

    @hartfire -- You are thinking too literally about this.

    I was hinting at how outsized our reactions are to terrorism (both in emotional energy and actual effort spent countering it) given how few people overall suffer from it.

      July 15, 2016 8:22 PM MDT
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  • Yeah, I kind of gathered that.

    It was my rather lame way of joking.

    Sorry.

    Serious gals shouldn't try to be funny.

      July 15, 2016 8:31 PM MDT
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  • 46117

    MMs?   I am in over my small brain now.  What does that stand for?  In my world that is an abbreviation for muscles. 

    MMs?  What is it Oz?  What? Microwaved Mexicans?

      July 15, 2016 8:38 PM MDT
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  • Ummm... M&M? .... sorry but the puns have a tendency to go down hill quickly ... at least mine do ... I'll just go and sit in the corner for a little while as punishment

      July 15, 2016 9:15 PM MDT
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  • 46117

    Oz

    Oh.  Okay

    #guilty of overdoing it again.  I'll go in corner first.

      July 15, 2016 9:17 PM MDT
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  • I'll see you over there lol :)

      July 15, 2016 9:27 PM MDT
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  • 628

    He y there Old School'''

    Ok, I understand what you are doing here...using absurdity to illustrate what you believe to be absurd.

    A few ponts though...

    First, I suspect the use of an average that stops conveniently short of including what is the largest fear producing, life taking terrorist attack in our history, that if included would blow that 33 out of the water. It also obviously doesn't include americans who have been killed abroad, thus increasing that number even more..The latter I can forgive as I am sure the average also didn't include americans who have been killed abroad by lightning.

    Using this type of average suggests that if conditions remain constant going forward, the average will continue along the same path.  What happens if we change those conditions,

    The average also doesn't consider the amount of lightning strikes that happen compared to the amount of attacks, I hazard to guess that in those 10 years there were millions of lightning strikes, as compared to possible dozens of terrorist attacks.

    None of that even matter because the point of this question, and the people you are talking about aren't included in your average anyway. They were not included as a condition of your average. So the question should be then, what percentage of people in THEIR condition have been killed by terrorist attacks compared to lightning strikes. After all, That is the pool from which they are coming from. They are not from the pool of people who existed here from 2005 to 2010. 

    Lastly, lightning is a condition of weather, are you gonne tell me we aint going crazy and spending vast amounts of money, time and energy trying to influence it....

    OK, that was pretty much out of boredom.

    While I do believe we should take care and caution when it comes to who we allow in, I also think the notion of not offering a helpless child or the old woman holding him an open hand and a safe place to escape goes against everything I believe a "shining city on a hill" should be...We can be both compassionate and careful...

      July 15, 2016 10:05 PM MDT
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  • 3191

    Yep, not to mention all thost cost plus contracts they get to approve and profit from.

      July 15, 2016 10:33 PM MDT
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  • 3934

    @designer -- How do you propose we "change those conditions?"

    To date, the main proposals I've heard are "BOMB THE F***ING HADJIS HARDER" and/or "DON'T LET ANY F***ING HADJIS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA!"

    Given that the Orlando shooter was born in New York City, the San Bernadino shooter was born in Chicago and the mastermind of the Paris attack was born in Belgium, you'll have to work long and hard to explain to me how changes in immigration policy would have had ANY effect upon those attacks.

    No, I'm not seriously proposing we put up $3 trillion worth of lightning rods or engage in weather control efforts. But I think if you had asked someone prior to 2001 what we should do if, hypothetically, 15 Saudis, two Egyptian, a Jordanian, and an Emirates expat pulled off the biggest terrorism attack in history, and the person's response was, "Well, we should launch a $3 trillion invasion to overthrow the government of Iraq while also destablizing the government of Syria, creating a power vacuum in the Levant which will inspire a new Wahhabist caliphate movement and more terrorist attacks in the US and Europe", you would have thought that person was an insane idiot. Yet that's precisely what the United States DID.

    I don't think my plea to get a little perspective and quit thinking with our AMERICA...F**K YEAH glands is unwarranted.

      July 15, 2016 10:39 PM MDT
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  • 17490

    Oh...........I see now.  :)

      July 15, 2016 11:27 PM MDT
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  • 2500

    That's terrible, TERRIBLE, I say.

    All that uncontrolled discharge of static electricity is deplorable. It's high time that Congress do something about it, pass a law banning it, at least in the "blue" States. Maybe they could even commission a "study" to determine how much of that static electrical discharge is due to all the hot air coming from inside the Capital Beltway. The could also look at boondoggles, I mean methods to "capture" that energy instead of letting it escape being harnessed for bigger profits for their political contribuitors, I mean the greater good of their "Constituency". It might even give the "Global Warming" crowd something else to look at too.

      July 16, 2016 1:00 PM MDT
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  • 46117

    Make sure when that happens you drink a lot of POG for that VOG.

      July 16, 2016 1:02 PM MDT
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  • 46117

    3.6

      July 16, 2016 1:03 PM MDT
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  • 3934

    @S and RP -- I note with some irony that you are largely supportive of similarly idiotic measures in the War for Cheap Oil and Demonizing F***ING HADJIS....er, War on Terror....;-D...

    Please see the comment above (in reply to designer) about how ridiculous America's post-9/11 actions would have seemed if described as a pre-9/11 hypothetical.

      July 16, 2016 1:24 PM MDT
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  • 503

    Sounds like you've been struck more than once already !

      July 16, 2016 1:30 PM MDT
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  • 3934

    @EC36 -- Not to my knowledge. Although I did stick my fingers in a few Christmas light sockets growing up, and my mother claims I once cut an electrical cord with a pair of scissors, resulting in much arcing, smoke, etc.

    Of course, I'm sure that had NO effect upon my ultimate development....;-D...

      July 16, 2016 1:37 PM MDT
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