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Comment by Simon_O_Rourke | Hacker News Reader

There's a concept I read about before called micromorts, where activities are given a danger rating something like the expected number of fatalities per million events.

So riding a motorbike 100 miles is 8 micromorts.

Hang-gliding is 9 micromorts.

Base jumping is 430 micromorts.

And summiting Everest is 37,000 micromorts.

Incidentally, of those - I know of two guys who died either on Everest or at base camp there over the past 15 years. First guy fell on the descent, and the second guy developed health issues at altitude (apparently related to an Israeli team immediately prior stealing their oxygen bottles).

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I try to calibrate risk based on the likelihood of dying during my commute. I'm glad that there is a more standardized scale!

Well if you commuted by riding 100 miles per day on a motorbike for 40 years your total risk is roughly 77,000 micromorts (77 millimorts?), or double the risk of summiting Everest once!

Is there anything you do that ends up being more dangerous? Genuinely curious

I often think about this while riding my bicycle to work. The exercise and quiet time surely has a positive impact on my health span, but being among cars risking collision and breathing in exhaust is a negative. What’s the net result?

A lot more than 2 people die on Everest per year according to Wikipedia and I’m sure oxygen bottle theft plays a role but I haven’t read anything attributing deaths to “Israeli team stealing oxygen bottles”.

Mind sharing where you got these news from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_climbi...

I feel like you want some higher moments on these. At least the standard deviation would be useful on top of the expectation.

Wild, is that really accurate for base jumping? I've met a number of base jumpers (there's some overlap with the climbing community where I live) and several of them have subsequently died jumping. I guess they probably jump a lot more than I think?

> summiting Everest is 37,000 micromorts

That's only 3.7 % — I imagined it was higher.

Does the death rate of 'summiting' include those who die before they reach the top? or those that abandon an attempt and survive?

The main killer in the Himalayas are avalanches, and the route to Mt. Everest summit is somewhat predictable in this regard. There was a terrible avalanche in 2015 that swept the base camp and killed almost twenty people, but most of the time, nothing like that happens.

The more deadly mountains like K2, Nanga Parbat and Annapurna, are prone to avalanches that cannot be avoided by taking a specific route. Or icefalls. A couloir called the Bottleneck is a major killer on the K2 route. You have to traverse a very exposed terrain there to get to the top, and a majority of K2 deaths have happened there.

Nothing like that on the standard Everest route. The Khumbu icefall or the Hillary step are challenging, but nowhere near as treacherous.

Everest is such a well-known target, they have helpers and there’s a whole system, right? I vaguely think I’ve seen photos of a line at the top…

I think it is somewhat commercialized. Actually, I’m surprised the death rate is that high. I wonder if it is pulled up by people who aren’t really ready, because it is so popular. FWIW,

https://www.climbing-kilimanjaro.com/mount-kilimanjaro-death...

> Approximately 50,000 people ascend Mount Kilimanjaro every year. According to Kilimanjaro travel guides and recorded statistics, on average 3 to 10 people die each year. It is widely believed that the actual number could be two to three times higher, although these estimates are not substantiated by reliable data.

probability is memoryless.

If you have been base jumping for 20 years, you have the same risk on your next jump as someone trying it for the first time.

Yes but you’re answering the wrong question. It’s not, “what is the probability of death on my next jump?”. It’s “what is the accumulated probability of death by jumping repeatedly.”

The way you answer it is by flipping it upside down (what is the probability of surviving a single jump?) and multiplying that value by itself n times, where n is the number of jumps.

.99999 * .99999 * .99999 * …

That’s only if you are planning to jump 100 more times.

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