Asteroid vs. Lightning

New research shows you are more likely to die from an asteroid impact than a lightning strike. Surprised? You are not alone.

Asteroid impact death risk: 1 in 156,000
Lightning death risk: 1 in 163,000

Before you panic about space rocks—

Your odds of dying in a car crash? 1 in 273

That is 500 times higher than asteroid risk.

In regions with wild elephants:

Attack chance: 1 in 14,000

Death chance: 1 in 21,000

That is much riskier than asteroids.

Carbon monoxide poisoning:

Lifetime chance: 1 in 66

Death chance: 1 in 714

Check your alarms—it is preventable.

The flu kills about 1 in 1,000 people who catch it.

Unlike asteroids, you are almost guaranteed to get it at some point in life.

A large impact could be thousands of times more powerful than WWII bombs, even blocking sunlight and causing mass extinction.

Yes. NASA’s 2022 DART mission proved we can knock an asteroid off course, but it takes years of planning.

Asteroid deaths are rare, but possible.

Still, driving carefully, avoiding carbon monoxide, and staying healthy will save far more lives right now.

Olin College of Engineering, using NASA’s near-Earth object (NEO) data. The research is in a pre-print and is set to be published in the Planetary Science Journal.