Struck By Lightning and Other Odds of Dying

While joggling the rainy Chicago Half marathon I got to thinking about lightning.  Would they cancel the race if it started to thunder & lightning?  Maybe, but I’ve never been in a race where that’s happened so who knows.

Thoughts while running

But while you run over 13 miles (and your headphones aren’t working) you start to think about different things.  I tend to think about things mathematical.

While being rained on, the thought of getting struck by lightning occurred to me.

What are the odds?

I guessed it was something like 1 in 13 million.  That came from something I remember while growing up.  Now I wonder if it is true.

According to this article on LiveScience the odds of getting hit by lightning is 1 in 83,930.

Wow, was I off!

But the article had a lot of other interesting odds of dying.  This is interesting because if you are trying to live to 107 like me, you’ll want to know what kinds of things you should try to prevent.

Odds of dying for US citizens

Here is a list of some interesting things that could cause your demise.

1 in 5         Heart Disease
1 in 7         Cancer
1 in 23       Stroke
1 in 36       Accidental Injury
1 in 100      Car accident
1 in 121       Suicide
1 in 246       Falling down
1 in 325       Assault by firearm
1 in 1116      Fire
1 in 3357      Natural force like heat, cold, storms, etc
1 in 5000      Electrocution
1 in 8942      Drowning
1 in 20000    Air accident
1 in 60000    Tornado
1 in 83930     Struck by Lightning
1 in 100000   Venomous sting or bite
1 in 147717   Attacked by a dog
1 in 200000   Asteroid impact
1 in 500000   Killed by Tsunami
1 in 615488   Fireworks accident

Now, I wonder what the odds of being hit by a car while joggling are?  They can’t be too high as I’ve never heard of this happening.  It’s nearly happened to me a couple of times.  If you are an urban joggler, be sure to look out for this danger.