dear fellow internet users, i’m posting a note i sent to an old friend…
hey barlow, ran across an interesting stat this morning. seems the risk of being killed as an airline passenger by a terrorist act is currently 1 in 10,408,947 — drastically lower than getting hit by lightning, which is 20 times more likely at 1 in 500,000.1
what an opportunity for those in power (large corporations, lobbyists, and their elected minions) to launch an exquisite new endless war, “The War on Lightning” to keep us all safe, and help assure their continued reign.
what better way to usher in hope for this new decade than a govt campaign to reduce the risk of being hit by scary, deadly, lightning. even if it does cost us trillions of dollars and opens new wars and stokes constant fear — we will all be “safer.”
the reason i’m writing you is i think if we act quickly you and i could architect a brand new agency, maybe even head it up together, i call it, the LSA — Lightning Security Administration. we could get our snouts in the trough before halliburton and blackwater this time, but we gotta move quick.
here’s the plan — we station a hundred thousand armed Lightning Security Agents across the country. they force people to wait in long lines so the agents can inspect them each and every time they want to travel anywhere, even out to get their newspaper, or more dangerously, their mail from their *metal* mailbox — i’m thinking PSA spot of young mom, baby on hip, reaching for her mailbox, freeze frame, loud crack of thunder, instant terror, what a promo!
each person will be scanned to make sure they are not carrying any metal that could conduct or attract lightning, especially if on purpose because they want to stand in a large crowd and hold up something like a shiny cross pen so as to endanger innocent lives.
the inconvenience imposed on the masses is shown as necessary because years ago a nigerian man was valiantly tackled to the ground by a fellow walker and now national hero, when the nigerian whipped out a large tv antenna he had smuggled into the country and held it high in an afternoon drizzle.
key to our implementation is that if people are carrying umbrellas, the LSA agents will show extra vigilance by detaining those people, and confiscating their umbrellas because carrying them in the rain will be unlawful.
people will be free, of course, to walk in the rain without umbrellas after they have waited in line and been properly searched. however, no one will be allowed to cover their heads with hats or blankets during the last hour of any rainstorm.
another PSA comes to mind. vo: if someone tries to hand you an umbrella. first lady: Just say No!
wow, whipping up a huge govt agency seems so easy, surprised i never tried it before. i’ll get back to you after i’ve figured out which countries to bomb because they manufacture materials that could be used in the fabrication of umbrellas.
epilogue: those in power are simply exploiting human nature. humans are hard-wired to want to reduce risk to zero, something that obviously can’t be accomplished in this context. experiments show people will spend more to reduce risk from 1% percent to zero, than from 60% to 50%. sept 11 offered fewer than one month’s quota of car accident deaths, yet the real and opportunity costs of our “war” are stunning, not to mention the compromising of our ideals. bin laden has dominated us for a decade — how absurd, if we had real leaders they’d provide sensible defenses while helping us restrain irrational impulses like that, not fuel them. but alas, the leaders here are wall street, defense contractors, insurance companies, etc, and those elected to spend their days, and our futures, with corporate lobbyists.
okay, i’m going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head until my govt tells me it’s safe to come out! love ya, johnny
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1in the event there’s any controversy about the validity of the stats i used, first of all, as you know, i swear by the most practical and efficient “industry standard” on descriptive statistics, used by successful government and corporate leaders everywhere i might add, darrell huff’s “How to Lie with Statistics“
my original source of the statistics was gizmodo’s 2009-Dec-29 post titled “The True Odds of Airborne Terror Chart“
gizmodo cites their source as nate silver’s 2009-Dec-27 post on FiveThirtyEight titled “The Odds of Airborne Terror“
nate cites the Bureau of Transportation Statistics as his source, summarizing his reasoning as follows:
[In the decade beginning 2000-Jan-01] (t)here were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.
