Munich shooting incident

[Minim]

Warning from forum staff: Please be very careful when discussing topics like this. If things get out of hand (in any way, regardless of which "side" the out-of-hand argument is for) this topic will unfortunately have to be closed.

Hi everyone.

I didn't really want to talk about something as morbid as this, but I'm quite shocked about the shooting that took place there, especially if one of our forum users lives there. I found out that Nepster lives in Munich, per this post, so I hope he's alright.

[namida]

Yes, it's very sad to hear when things like this happen. We actually have quite a lot of users from Germany in general, so I tend to get a bit worried any time there's an attack there...

[Simon]

I'll make myself unpopular and give the argument why you needn't be extra-worried.

For a 30-year-old German, the chance that they die within this year is 0.0005, equating 1 death per 2,000. Source on Wikipedia. For a given day, this means 1 death in 730,000 (= 2,000 * 365).

Munich has 1,300,000 inhabitants. The attack killed 9 people. If we don't know anything else, the change to having been killed is 0.000006, or 1 death per 150,000.

This shows how it is only 5 times as likely to have been shot here than it is to die on a chosen day by random cause -- usually a traffic accident for 30-year-olds. If you aren't worried about car crashes throughout the entire week, you needn't be worried about the shooting.

It doesn't matter how prominent it appears in the media. It appears in the media because there are few comparable events. Let's be happy about this rarity instead.

-- Simon

[Nepster]

Yes, I am alright.

Of course this is extremely sad for the families of people who died or were injured there. However neither I nor any of my friends (some living rather close to the shopping center where the shooting occured) were worried in any way. I guess, living in Munich gives you automatically a pretty good idea how huge Munich is and how unlikely it is that anyone you know got hurt, even without doing the math first. Actually the only worry I really had, was about a collegue perhaps missing his flight to China yesterday evening. I am still not sure whether he managed to get to the plane in time with all public transports standing still and (very likely) a lot more security checks in the airport itself.

Call me a cynic, but if the death of 9 men and women makes it to the top of the news, then I can only see this as a proof of how extremely secure Germany actually is and how extremely rare such shootings are.

[mobius]

One thing I love about this forum community is that nobody here is the type who seem to get overly worried or reactive to things like this.
We have to remind ourselves that bad things happen in the world, and sometimes there's just nothing you can do about it. Bringing intelligent facts and comfort like the above is far better than watching the News IMO. I could rant on for days about why I hate the News but I won't.