All About Death

Spent some time this afternoon reviewing the latest reports on death. The main take-aways:

Hardly anyone is dying these days Only 800 people died for every 100,000 people living. For folks under thirty, only 100 people died per 100,000 alive. If you died recently, you were unlucky indeed.

If you get married, get it right Across all age groups, divorced people are at least twice as likely to die as those who are never married or married, widowed folks have it even worse.

Death abhors the bucolic The death rate is highest in Washington DC and Louisiana, lowest in Vermont, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Maine. Which, come to think of it, roughly correlates with my perception of how nice these places are to live.

You can pretty much predict your cause of death today Of the 2.4 million deaths, heart attack, cancer and stroke accounted for half.

Watch out for ulcers! More people were killed by an ulcer (3600) than in a war (28) a fire (2800) or drowning (2100).

Suicide: not like the movies Nearly twice as many folks died from suicide (32,000) as from homicide (17,000). How do people kill themselves? Hardly anyone jumps (670) or slits their wrists (570). Half use a gun and 7,300 choose self-suffocation. Only 5,800 took pills—and all this time I thought that was the preferred method. I’m not surprised that suicide rates are highest in Alaska. It’s all about sunshine.

Murder: a lot like the movies 51 people were murdered when someone deliberately ran them over with a car. 103 were poisoned, 163 were hit, 664 were suffocated, 676 were pushed to their death, 365 were drowned, 2080 were stabbed, 177 killed in a fire. Everyone else was shot by a gun. Are guns the weapon of choice because they’re so impersonal? I bet its much easier to kill from a distance.

Accidents: the odds According to the National Safety Council 1 out of 34 people die in an accident. But its not the things we fear that are most likely to kill us. One in 5,500 persons will die in a plane crash—about the same number that will die of exposure to cold. 1 in 130,000 will die of a dog bite, 1 in 630,000 of a snake bite. But here’s the bad news: 1 in 84 will die in a traffic accident, 1 in 200 will die in fall, most comonly while trippping on a flat surface and 1 in 180 will die of poisoning.

Pop stardom is deadly Interesting stat from another blog. Rock and pop stars are more than twice as likely as the rest of the population to die an early death, and within a few years of becoming famous, while classical musicians live longer.