Tsunamis in South Asia, mudslides in Southern California and blizzards in the upper Midwest -- suddenly, even a glance at the headlines or the evening news might be enough to convince us that Mother Nature has gone on a rampage.
Yes, it's a forbidding world out there. But we can take some comfort if we remember that natural disasters are rare and the chance that any one of us will perish in a tidal wave, hurricane, earthquake or other natural calamity is very, very low -- even though studies conducted over the past 25 years consistently have found that most people believe the odds are very, very high.
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In fact, statistically speaking, a person is more likely to die by falling from a tall building, slipping in the bathtub or being legally executed than to perish in an earthquake, flood or "cataclysmic storm" such as a hurricane, according to the latest estimates by the National Safety Council derived from 2001 data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The overall chance that an individual born in 2001 will die from any "force of nature" is estimated to be 1 in 3,357. That's considerably lower than the probability of dying from various types of accidents, and much smaller than the odds that an individual will commit suicide or die from complications from surgical or medical care.
Here are the lifetime odds of succumbing to various natural calamities:
Exposure to excessive natural cold... 1 in 6,165
Exposure to excessive natural heat... 1 in 12,310
Cataclysmic storm... 1 in 68,388
Lightning... 1 in 83,930
Flood... 1 in 105, 512
Earthquake... 1 in 131,890
Exposure to all other unspecified forces
of nature... 1 in 92,323
And here are the lifetime odds of expiring from some specific causes of death, based on official tallies:
