[tictoc]

Thanks for your reply.

Please be patient with me while I'm trying to figure this out.

Frequency of asteroid impacts that wipe out all higher lifeforms on the planet: 1 in 65 million years.

If the frequency was once per average lifetime duration, i.e. 60 years, then probability of being killed in an asteroid is 1 in 1, i.e. 100%.

However, since killer asteroids come only every 65 million years, we divide 60 years by 65 million years, giving a probability of less than one in a million.

Where is my mistake?

[discostu]

they're not talking about the asteroids that destroy everything on the planet. They're talking about the little buggers (generally meteors or even meteorites) that occasionally do things like crash into your house killing you. Which happens more often than people think.

[Poohbah]

Like I said, probabilities based on long-term averages do not adequately describe all-or-nothing scenarios.

However, I think the key is to understand how many known AAA earth-crossing asteroids (so called because they fall into three orbital types, each type epitomized by a specific asteroid--Apollo, Aten, or Amor) there are, how many come too damn close for comfort, and how long you keep rolling the dice.

Spin the cylinder and pull the trigger enough times, and the odds of you blowing your brains out approach 100%.