Korean Job Discussion Forums

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

Whenever I walk under an apartment building in Seoul, I always look up. People like to kill themselves that way. Ever wonder what are the odds of being hit by a falling body while you walk under/past an apartment building? I sure have.

Korea has a death rate of 16 people per million dying by falling from a building (according to nationmaster.com). Seoul has a population of 10 million. So 160 people a year in Seoul die falling out of buildings. This means on any given day there's a 43.8% (160/365) chance a person is going to die in Seoul by falling out of a building (whether suicide, accident, or murder). In any given hour there's a 1.83% chance someone is falling out of building to his/her death. Per minute you have a .03% chance someone is falling to his/her death. In any given second there's a 0.00051% chance someone is smacking into the pavement or the hood of a Hyundai.

Now let's work with the assumption that a falling body has a 1 second window of opportunity to hit me as I pass under his/her falling body. Now what are the odds that I'm going to be under that body at that exact second in that exact place?

Seoul has an area of 605.52 square kilometers. That's 605,520,000 square meters. For convenience sake, let's say a falling body (2 meters x .5 meters) occupies 1 square meter of Seoul. So that body occupies 0.000000165% of Seoul. So the odds of being in the right place at the right time are 0.000000165% x 0.00051% = 0.00000000000084%

So the odds I'll be hit by a falling body during any given second I pass under an apartment is roughly 0.00000000000084% or about 1 in 8.4 quintillion. Put another way, we'd expect one person every 12,500,000 years getting killed by a falling body.

I like those odds.

flotsam · Joined: 28 Mar 2006

You really did the math too, didn't you?

numazawa · Joined: 20 Mar 2005 Location: The Concrete Barnyard

Yeah, but what if you actually live in one of those high-rise buildings! Then you will be walking in and out and alongside every single day! That's like buying a fistfull of lottery tickets every day! You can't miss! (literally!) Not to mention you could even be one of the people falling out the building, which practically doubles your odds, pseudo-scientifically speaking. (Though of course the odds of being both the falling victim and the victim of collision below on the same occasion are just too astronomical to give cause for general alarm.)

I'm a goner fer sure.

You should live every day like it's the last day of your life -- because one day you'll be right.

numazawa · Joined: 20 Mar 2005 Location: The Concrete Barnyard

By the way, how does Korean law treat "victim-impact" statements?

Col.Brandon · Joined: 09 Aug 2004 Location: Seoul

numazawa · Joined: 20 Mar 2005 Location: The Concrete Barnyard

HapKi · Joined: 10 Dec 2004 Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL

Spending that much time doing mindless calculations...

I wouldn't worry about being hit by a falling jumper, I'd worry about being the falling jumper....
Get a life, and then keep it!

numazawa · Joined: 20 Mar 2005 Location: The Concrete Barnyard

Eunoia · Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 6:28 am Post subject:

Don't forget that as a body falls from a height, it will usually* tend to move away from the building, due to complexities of aerodynamics of which I have not the wherewithal to discuss here. Therefore, if you really stay close to the side of the building, your odds of being struck will be lessened.

* (I suppose if you were on the direct windard side of a building the above might be moot. But then again, I'm not an aerodynamacist, is I?)