Bolts or Bullets?

I like to feel safe.  This is one aspect of myself that you could classify as “normal”.  I don’t want to die a horrific death.  I hope my death won’t hurt at all.  I don’t like owies. 

Image courtesy of kerttu at Pixabay.com

In order to feel safe in the world today, many of us are going through Active Shooter Training.  Preparedness would make me feel safe they said.  This training could help me help others they said.  It was necessary they said.  What they didn’t say is that the training may result in crying, shortness of breath, and an overall desire to crawl under a bed and hide.  But hey if school kids can brave this training and worse, I felt capable and furthermore, obligated.

Well, this video that was supposedly going to make me feel safe opened with “you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to encounter an active shooter”.  Really?  Okay.  At first I felt better.  Then I started thinking more critically.  (This is where I usually get into trouble.)  There have been shootings in both a mall I shop in, a school in the town I work in, and a campus in my state.  Twelve people died in those shootings, not including the shooters themselves.  There have only been 2 fatal lightning strikes in Oregon since 1990. 

Okay, okay I know statistics don’t quite work that way.  I admit I failed Statistics in college, but I do know how they don’t work.  The word statistic should be understood as ‘sciencey sounding number digits or percentages that can be both true and used to tell lies’.  That’s right, I took the red pill.

But think about how many times you’ve heard that you’re more likely to get struck by lightning than ___________”.  (Fill in the blank with whatever is pushing your panic button at the time.)

Image courtesy of WKIDESIGN at Pixabay.com

So how true is it that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to encounter an active shooter? 

Let’s assume we are talking about civilian shooters in public places in the United States, and we are comparing that to the number of fatalities by lightning strike.  After all, according to the NOAA, only 10% of people struck by lightning actually die from it.  I guess that’s why no one is truly afraid of being struck by lightning.

Whether or not lightning strikes twice, the average number of deaths by lightning strike in the U.S. from 2004 to 2013 is 33; or it could be 49 depending on where your numbers come from.  According to the NWS Storm Data, over the last 30 years (1984-2013) the U.S. has averaged 49 reported lightning fatalities per year.

The number of strikes varies from year to year.  Lightning is hard to count, but according to the National Lightning Detection Network (yes, that’s a real thing) there are approximately 20 million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per year in the U.S.  So yeah, even if 49 whole people die from 20 million lightning bolts, those odds are actually pretty good!

However, according to Scientific American global warming is expected to increase America’s annual lightning strikes by about 12% per degree Celsius.  Scared now?  Don’t be.  One degree Celsius is like 33.8 good ole American degrees so it will be awhile before we notice the extra 10 million annual lightning strikes they’re predicting by the year 2100. 

I’m totally not scared of lightning anymore, and the only training I needed was Google!

So, If I’m more likely to get struck by cuddly lightning than encounter an active shooter, I can sleep easy.

Just to cover all bases though, I read the FBI ‘s “Study of Active Shooter Incidents” report that reports neat statistics like 486 Americans lost their lives in active shooter events from 2000 to 2013.  That’s approximately 37 deaths a year.  

However, if we recalculate the data to reflect only those shootings from ’04 to ’13, the annual number of deaths decreases to 427, thereby increasing our deathtimate to 47 deaths a year.

The FBI report also showed that incidents from 2007 to 2013 increased by 150% over the previous six years.  These statistics don’t even include San Bernardino, Charleston, Roseburg, or any events that happened prior to 2000, ie Columbine.

To clarify, there were 138 active shooter events from 2004 to 2013 according to the FBI and only 427 people died.  In that same timespan there were 180 million lightning strikes, give or take, and 297 people died.  Or maybe 441 people died.  That’s 37 or 47 dead people vs 33 or 49 people a year dying from bullets or lightning bolts.  Maybe we should get better people counters?

So, according to my research and training, 49 people may be less than 37 people but 33 people is more than 37 people. These odds are so good I’m going to wait out the next storm on the golf course.  Who’s with me?! 

Image courtesy of lightningsafety.com