Conservatives Freak Out Over Nigerian Terror Suspect

The Odds of Airborne Terror
by Nate Silver

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

Again, no editorializing (for now). These are just the numbers.

Fox is calling for profiling of course. Which says more about their bedwetting fears than knowledge about detecting terrorists before they act.

Conservatives are always if nothing else ready to be two faced hypocrites - Republicans Who Opposed The Stimulus Continue To Pan It As A ‘Failure,’ While Also Taking Credit For Its Success