[at-l] Acceptable risk

[Arthur Gaudet]

On the topic of acceptable risk, the American Council on Science & Health has an
interesting pair of tools on this website: http://riskometer.org/ 

One tool is called the Riskometer, the other is called Risk Rings. From the
website: 

"The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) has constructed this website
to give Americans a more accurate perspective on the exposures and diseases that
have been proven to increase the risk of death for Americans." 

It uses 2002 data for 2.5 million US deaths. 
Using the Riskometer you can find:
17,638 people died from homicide
And nearly twice that number died from suicide.

1,554 deaths are attributed to Nature, and within this group:
	3 died from venomous snakes or lizards
	66 died from lightning strikes
	10 from venomous spiders
	54 from hornets, wasps and bees.

Another tool is the Risk Ring, that reports similar information as an "odds"
value. From the website:
"The 'odds of dying' is reported here as the number of people expected to
produce one death from a particular cause. This number is calculated by dividing
the United States population, approximately 300 million people, by the number of
deaths from each cause during 2002." (so the larger the number, the lower the
risk of death)

Homicide 1 in 17,009
Suicide 1 in 9,477
Due to Nature - 1 in 193,050
	snakes  - 1 in 100,000,000
	lightning 1 in 4,545,455
	spiders   1 in 30,000,000
	hornets, bees 1 in 5,555,556

DISCUSSION:
>From all of this I wanted to extract some useful information to tell family and
friends about the relative risk of dying while out on the trail. Using the
numbers it's easy to take a simple ratio and state: 

"It's 7 times more likely for me to die from suicide/murder than to die from
natural causes while out on the trail."
Or 
"It's 11 times more likely for me to be murdered than to die from natural causes
while on the trail."

Both statements are numerically true, but lack information about the context of
being in a big city, in a small town, or being on a trail. 

In the years 1996 - 2007 I seem to recall a handful of murders near or on the
AT. For this discussion let me speculate and call this number 10 (it's perhaps a
little high). Over that same 12 year period I'll estimate the total number of
homicides in the US as 12 x 15,000 = 180,000. With these numbers I can make a
statement:

"It's 18,000 times more likely for me to be murdered anywhere else in the US
than on a hiking trail."

This is the statement that gives me a feeling of relative safety when I get into
the woods, and I don't think I'm deceiving myself. 

As a solo hiker, I consider my risk of injury from nature to be pretty
substantial. I'm constantly thinking about risk when I'm walking (rabid animals,
snakes, toxic plants, ankle sprains), when I'm camping (tree limbs falling,
control of fire, bear encounters) or even resting alongside the trail (falling
rocks, tree limbs, logs rolling). And I didn't even mention weather related
stuff...

On the AT, deep in the woods, my risk from other people is just barely on my
radar, very low but present. As I reach a tar road with traffic, my radar moves
the risk upwards. At a lonely woods road, my radar moves it up several clicks
until I can determine that no one is around. If there's a pickup truck parked on
a lonely woods road - warning bells start clanging in my head.

Personal story: With all the hiking and camping over the years the closest I've
come to dying occurred in 2006 while camping near Manchester Center VT on the
AT. I walked in from the road to the nearest campsite, set up on a clear August
evening. Sometime around 2 AM I was awakened by a deep THUD and a shaking of the
ground. It wasn't raining, and there was no wind. In the morning as I took down
the tent I had to walk around a small tree to dismantle my Eureka Zephyr. What I
took to be a tree was a limb that had come down in the night, planting itself
about 2-3 feet from my head. The limb was easily 6 inches into the ground,
making me contemplate how my skull would've fared under that impact.