Micromort

A micromort is a unit equal to one millionth of the probability of death. Micromorty are used to measure the risk of a person’s daily activities. Micro-probability is 1: 1,000,000 the probability share of an event, and micromort is a micro-probability of death. The concept of micromorta was proposed by Ronald Howard, who introduced the modern practice of decision analysis. [one]

Average values

The average probability of death per day can be calculated from the average life expectancy. If we take the life expectancy of 70 years, then this means that one death will fall on 25,500 days lived (70 × 365 = 25,550).

The number of micromorts per day can be calculated by dividing 1 million by this number of days, that is, in this case, one person spends 39 micromort per day, or 1.63 micromort per hour. These are average numbers for the entire population, which can vary depending on various parameters, such as gender, age, lifestyle.

An alternative way to calculate the number of micromorts is to take the number of deaths per day (for the UK about 2500) and divide by the total population (60 million), which results in 41.6 micromort.

These numbers include all deaths caused by both natural causes and accidents. In the UK, about 50 people a day die from accidents. [2]

For each hour of your life, you accumulate approximately 1.63 micromorta. About 39 a day. There are classes for which “bonus” micromorta are accrued, such as smoking, drinking alcohol, living near a nuclear power plant, practicing extreme sports, etc.

Additional factors

Actions that increase the probability of death by about one micromort:

• Drinking 0.5 liters of wine (liver cirrhosis) [3]
• Use 1.4 cigarettes (cancer, heart disease) [3]
• Staying in a coal mine for 1 hour (lung disease) [3]
• Staying in a coal mine for 3 hours (accident) [3]
• Living in New York or Boston for 2 days in 1979 (air pollution) [3]
• Living with a smoker for 2 months (cancer, heart disease) [3]
• Drinking 100 steaks on coal (cancer from benzopyrene) [3]
• Canoeing for 6 minutes (accident) [3]
• Driving 6 miles on a motorcycle (an accident) [4]
• Walking 17 miles (accident) [5]
• Moving 10 miles by bike [3] (or 20 miles [5] ) (accident)
• 370 km travel by car (accident) [4] (or 250 miles [5] )
• Traveling 9656 km by train (accident) [4]
• Flight 1600 km by plane (accident) [3]
• Flight 10,000 km by plane (cancer from increased background radiation) [6]
• Flight 19,000 km by plane to the USA (terrorism) [7]

Risks of other actions:

• Flight on a hang glider - 8 micromortas per flight [4]
• Diving - 4.72 micromorts per dive [8]
• Parachute jump (in the USA) - 7 micromort per jump [9]
• Horseback riding - 0.5 micromort
• Ecstasy (MDMA) - <0.5 micromort [10]
• Skiing (1 day) - 0.5 micromort [5]