How Many Die in a Typical Terror Attack? Fewer Than You Think
|
Version 0 of 1. Headline-grabbing attacks like those last week in Orlando, Fla., or on 9/11 are as bloody as they are horrifying, but what they are not is typical. The average death toll in terror attacks, it turns out, is close to zero. The Global Terrorism Database, a federally financed project at the University of Maryland, has a trove of surprising statistics about terror attacks. The data includes 140,000 attacks around the world since 1970. In more than half of them, no one was killed. That’s the good news. The bad news: It seems to be changing. In the 1970s and ’80s, “there was much more of an emphasis of symbolic events,” said Erin Miller, the program manager for the terrorism database. “Terrorists would call in a warning. It would be terrorizing, intimidating, coercive but nonlethal.” Nowadays, terrorist groups like the Islamic State and Boko Haram are not looking to simply send messages; they are looking to kill people. In 2014, 43,500 people were killed in 16,800 attacks worldwide. The death toll from Islamic State attacks was five times as high as it was the previous year. Boko Haram quadrupled its body count over the same period. Though events like the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in which hundreds or thousands of people die are exceptionally rare, Ms. Miller said, the frequency of events in which one to four people are killed is rising. |