U.S. of A: Savior of the world!

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DanS
The chances of alien invasion are unknown, but the chances of a devestating meteor hitting earth are a lot higher than you might imagine. The chances of death by meteor impact and/or its aftermath are estimated at something like 1 in 6,000. It's a lot better hypothetical than most that come to Poly.

You are being misleading. The chances of an impact are far more remote than that, its just that big because if it happens its far more destructive.

That is to say that a one in a million chance (per year) catastrophic collision results in a 1 in 40,000 chance of you dying from such a collision.

[Provost Harrison]

I think Dan's statistic was utterly meaningless without a timescale anyway...

[Dauphin]

I presumed the timescale for the 1 in 6,000 was the length of the average human life. Which presumes a globally catastrophic event every 150,000 years or so. Which is not right AFAIK..

[Provost Harrison]

He never explicitly said that...although it could make sense if he also included ice ages into that calculation...150 millennia does seem a little short apart from that...

Besides, have you replied to that damn message yet?

[DanS]

Originally posted by Dauphin


You are being misleading. The chances of an impact are far more remote than that, its just that big because if it happens its far more destructive.

That is to say that a one in a million chance (per year) catastrophic collision results in a 1 in 40,000 chance of you dying from such a collision.

Why is that being misleading? It's a simple estimated mortality calculation.

I didn't do the calculation and can't vouch for its accuracy (done by the U. of Arizona or somebody), but as I understand it a 1 km to 2 km asteroid hits Earth about once or twice every million years. Assume that this kills most/all people on Earth.

Then there are much smaller chances of an object bigger than that hitting Earth. See, for instance, the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Lastly, there is a much larger chance of objects smaller than that hitting Earth and causing death on a mass scale, but not killing most people.

Personally, I'm willing to take our chances with the Russians pushing these rocks out of the way, but there are some Americans who want to become a multi-planetary species in order to avoid the possibility of extinction because of meteors and other causes. They are spending fantastic sums of their own money on this. Indeed, this is the driving force of much of what American private entities are doing in space nowadays (only tens of millions of dollars are going to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence every year).

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DanS


Why is that being misleading? It's a simple estimated mortality calculation.

I didn't do the calculation and can't vouch for its accuracy (done by the U. of Arizona or somebody), but as I understand it a 1 km to 2 km asteroid hits Earth about once or twice every million years. Assume that this kills most/all people on Earth.

Then there are much smaller chances of an object bigger than that hitting Earth. See, for instance, the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Lastly, there is a much larger chance of objects smaller than that hitting Earth and causing death on a mass scale, but not killing most people.

Personally, I'm willing to take our chances with the Russians pushing these rocks out of the way, but there are some Americans who want to become a multi-planetary species in order to avoid the possibility of extinction because of meteors and other causes. They are spending fantastic sums of their own money on this. Indeed, this is the driving force of much of what American private entities are doing in space nowadays (only tens of millions of dollars are going to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence every year).

You can do the probability density distribution of impacts of varying size and cross multiply with the resultant loss of life predictions from varying size to give a result of 1 in 40,000 chance of a person being killed by an impact.

However, what that figure disguises is when the next event will occur. It also disguises the fact that when it does occur it will apply by killing most people during that event.

The distribution of deaths from an impact is therefore extremely atypical and as such will be misleading to just state an odds without explanation.

Its not like say the lottery, where a few people win a week against odds in the millions to one. The probability of someone winning in any given week is actually quite high, but the chance of a million people winning in the same draw is astronomically remote.

The chance of at least someone dying from an asteroid collision any given year is extremely low, far lower than winning the lottery, but the chance of a million people dying simulataneously from an asteroid collision is not much less likely.

The distributions are very different. That is my point.

[Kuciwalker]

Actually, I bet there's a higher chance of a million+ people dying from an asteroid than of one person dying from an asteroid.

[DanS]

OK, if you want to attach an explanation of distribution to those figures, I don't have anything against it.

[Dauphin]

Its just a case of lies, damn lies and statistics.

[DanS]

No lies or damn lies involved. Do you think people are AOK to die with billions of their fellow human beings, but not AOK to die by themselves? Indeed, we could say that death by meteor is the worse way to leave the material plane, because whole families would be snuffed out and your property is destroyed or devalued in the process.

[Dauphin]

If we are all snuffed out together then there would be no-one left to care about land value, and no-one to worry about being left behind.

Suits me just fine.

About the stats, the same data that says we each have a 1 in 40,000 chance of dying from an asteroid impact, also says the none of us would be likely to see a globally catastrophic impact even if we all lived 1,000,000 years.

IMHO it all depends on how you phrase the terms, doesn't it?

[Dis]

the U.S. would never charge the other countries money for this. (though they would accept donations)

[DanS]

Originally posted by Dauphin
If we are all snuffed out together then there would be no-one left to care about land value, and no-one to worry about being left behind.

Suits me just fine.

You lack human feeling, dolphin.

[St Leo]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
And thus you prove it

Of myself I poke fun. Bite me, Kuci.

[Kuciwalker]

*bites*