Comment by godelski
1 hour ago
> what you do during a thunderstorm?
And now the odds have changed! But that doesn't change the terrorism odds. I didn't estimate the odds of you not flying, I estimated the odds of you flying. We are already talking about being in the middle of a thunderstorm!
Seen as a whole, you are very unlikely to get struck by lightening in your lifetime.
If you make a habit of running around in thunderstorms in an open field holding a metal rod in the air, then the likelihood suddenly increases A LOT.
What I mean is, the odds are only low that you get struck by lightening because precautions are taken place during lightening storms. In the same way, we only know the statistical likelihood of a terrorist attack involving an airplane in the current, overly cautious, context.
Sure, a lot of it is probably security theater, but I think the whole "don't talk about bombs on an airplane" is probably a pretty solid blanket rule.
If we stopped teaching kids what to do during a lightning storm, and if we stopped being overly cautious about airplane security, surely we would see both of those statistic move in the opposite direction.