At 10:38 PM 2/21/98 -0800, Jane Hadley wrote:
>Do the odds you're citing here for being killed by a bear attack refer
>to everybody generally?

The general odds cited by Andrew of course aren't relevant to the case
you refer to, i.e. going out to the backcountry of Alaska.

>In other words, the odds that any one of the U.S.'s 200 million people
>would be killed by a bear attack would be much much lower than if the
>odds were being calculated for a person going into the Alaskan
>backcountry in August.

On the other hand, flying small planes in remote areas is fairly dangerous.
Even though Alaskan bush pilots are very skilled, making the risk minimal,
I bet flying to a remote area to begin your trip is as likely, or more
likely, to kill you than an attack by a brownie.

Of course, most of us very rationally nervous when flying.

Even major airline statistics are cunningly presented. They love to point
out how your chance of dying is many times less per mile travelled than
an auto trip. However, Interstates are much safer than city streets,
so if you factor that into long-distance trip plannings the odds don't
look quite so rosy. And, Boeing's products travel about 6-7 times faster
than a car on the interstate, so casting the statistics in terms of
HOURS travelled rather than MILES travelled leads to a change in the
safety margin enjoyed by airlines...



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net