Food for thought

[giza]

Number of Americans killed in wars insince 1775: 1 million

Number of Americans killed in/by cars since 1913: 2.5 million

(Source: Ask Marilyn, March 5th, 2006)

Comments

[omnibahumut.livejournal.com]

seemingly random dates...

[giza.livejournal.com]

1775 was when the Revolutionary War started. 1913 is when Henry Ford started mass-producing the car.

I /could/ have said "automobile deaths since 1775" and gotten the same numbers. Just seemed kinda silly to do so.

[furahi.livejournal.com]

But people already died in car accidents before they were mass produced... I've read of a couple

[sleepingwolf.livejournal.com]

I suspect you mean wars since 1775.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Ooooops! I fixed that.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Do you one better. Put up "Number of Americans killed in Vietnam" vs. "Number of people killed in Car Accidents Last Year alone."

[giza.livejournal.com]

I don't have those figures handy. But I'd love to know!

[puctiger.livejournal.com]

I find those numbers hard to believe. Total Civil War Deaths: 560,000; War of 1812 deaths: 19,000; World War I deaths: 126,200; World War II deaths: 418, 500; Mexican-American War deaths: 13,200; Vietnam War: 58,000 dead; Korean War: 54,000, plus several other deaths from various wars and 'police actions'. I think it'd be more fair to put American military deaths at 1.25-1.5M.

It's also kind of comparing apples to oranges. We aren't at war every day, but we're driving every day. Not to mention we're comparing the entire population to a fraction of a number -- my numbers coming close to one million including reserves. If only one million people drove, the number of deaths, I think, would be considerably lower. :)

[giza.livejournal.com]

> If only one million people drove, the number of deaths, I think, would be
> considerably lower. :)

I'm glad that somebody paid attention to the sample size! :-)

Also not mentioned is what the total number of participants were in all wars since 1775. If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere in the tens of millions.

[silverscalenaga.livejournal.com]

we have however, bene at war every 20 years or so.