Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Sources:Terrorism (2015): National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism 2016. War, US and Western Europe (UK + NATO) (2015): icasualties.org, http://icasualties.org. War, World (2015): UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset, Uppsala Conflict Data Program 2017. Homicide, US (2015): Federal Bureau of Investigation 2016a. Homicide, Western Europe and World (2012 or most recent): United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2013. Data for Norway exclude the Utøya terrorist attack. Motor vehicle accidents, All accidents, and All deaths, US (2014): Kochanek et al. 2016, table 10. Motor vehicle accidents, Western Europe (2013): World Health Organization 2016c. All accidents, Western Europe (2014 or most recent): World Health Organization 2015a. Motor vehicle accidents and All accidents, World (2012): World Health Organization 2014. All deaths, Western Europe (2012 or most recent): World Health Organization 2017a. All deaths, World (2015): World Health Organization 2017c.

Start with the United States. What jumps out of the table is the tiny number of deaths in 2015 caused by terrorism compared with those from hazards that inspire far less anguish or none at all. (In 2014 the terrorist death toll was even lower, at 19.) Even the estimate of 44 is generous: it comes from the Global Terrorism Database, which counts hate crimes and most rampage shootings as examples of “terrorism.” The toll is comparable to the number of military fatalities in Afghanistan and Iraq (28 in 2015, 58 in 2014), which, consistent with the age-old devaluing of the lives of soldiers, received a fraction of the news coverage. The next rows down reveal that in 2015 an American was more than 350 times as likely to be killed in a police-blotter homicide as in a terrorist attack, 800 times as likely to be killed in a car crash, and 3,000 times as likely to die in an accident of any kind. (Among the categories of accident that typically kill more than 44 people in a given year are “Lightning,” “Contact with hot tap water,” “Contact with hornets, wasps, and bees,” “Bitten or struck by mammals other than dogs,” “Drowning and submersion while in or falling into bathtub,” and “Ignition or melting of clothing and apparel other than nightwear.”)³

In Western Europe, the relative danger of terrorism was higher than in the United States. In part this is because 2015 was an annus horribilis for terrorism in that region, with attacks in the Brussels Airport, several Paris nightclubs, and a public celebration in Nice. (In 2014, just 5 people were killed.) But the relatively higher terrorism risk is also a sign of how much safer Europe is in every other way. Western Europeans are less murderous than Americans (with about a quarter their homicide rate) and also less car-crazy, so fewer die on the road.⁴ Even with these factors tipping the scale toward terrorism, a Western European in 2015 was more than 20 times as likely to die in one of their (relatively rare) homicides as in a terrorist attack, more than 100 times as likely to die in a car crash, and more than 700 times as likely to be crushed, poisoned, burned, asphyxiated, or otherwise killed in an accident.