We're all gonna die...but how?

Thanks to anonymous for the link to this delightful interactive infographic from the Guardian, detailing how people die in various areas of the world. The data are drawn from a study that recently came out in The Lancet, which has compiled cause of death data from 187 countries, for the period 1980-2010. Creating the dataset for the study was a notable undertaking in and of itself, apparently involving 500 researchers in 50 countries. [Sounds like a nightmare...In my job I can barely manage to corral comparable data from 5 different people, let alone 500.]

Anyway, if you want to find out how people die in various places, have yourself a look-see at the infographic aforementioned. There's also a short accompanying article containing even more fun death data.

I may or may not have spent many minutes last week clicking around to find out fun death statistics, such as where one is most likely to die from unintentional injuries like poison, fire, drowning, falling, medical mistakes, and of course, "mechanical forces" and "animal contact" (answer: Eastern Europe).

[What I want to know is (a) What constitutes "mechanical forces" and (b) Do people actually die from "animal contact"? If so, that totally justifies my fear of touching any animal ever.]

And speaking of fire, this 1830's children's book should scare you away from playing with it. Maybe they should reprint it for the more fire-prone areas of the world? (Western Sub-Saharan Africa, I'm looking at you...)

Via this delightful page of moralistic children's books from the 1830's