- Your chances of both incredible misfortune and fabulous luck are much lower than you might think.
You’d be surprised how much of what we consider normal life is actually everything but. Many things that people think occur regularly happen so rarely that your chance of ever experiencing them is virtually nil.
Take, for instance, getting bitten by a shark or being in an airplane accident. Neither is any kind of a real risk, yet a lot of people are deathly afraid of both.
There are many other examples like this. Here’s a list of just eight things that happen extremely rarely yet people think they go down all the time.
1. Dying from a Lightning Strike
To begin with, getting struck by lightning is something that doesn’t happen much. The chances of lightning hitting you are one out of 1.1 million within any given year, and over your lifetime it stays at one in 13,500.
Even if you were struck by lightning, you likely won’t drop dead. Only around 10% of all lightning strike incidents are fatal.
Now, we’re not saying you won’t be potentially stuck with lifelong neurological or other health problems following the lightning strike. We’re just saying that you probably won’t die from them.
2. CPR Being Successful
Okay, but let’s say that lightning did strike you and your heart has stopped. That’s fine — a passerby who knows CPR can just pump you back to life, right?
Not likely. In the vast majority of cases where CPR is administered, it doesn’t do jack.
When given by a non-professional, CPR helps only in 10-12% of cardiac arrest cases. Even if the pros at the hospital are doing it, the success rate is less than 25%.
In other words, if you find yourself in a condition where CPR is necessary, you still most likely won’t make it. TV shows sure make it look a lot more effective than it actually is.
3. Eating Wasabi
Even the biggest sushi freak who eats the stuff on a weekly basis has probably tasted real wasabi only a handful of times — if that. That’s because real wasabi is a real b**** and a half to grow.
The plant is very picky about when and where it deigns to grow. That makes producing it on a mass scale next to impossible, so true wasabi is mostly reserved for the Japanese market.
But what’s in that pile of green, sinus-clearing mush you get with your sushi, then? Mostly horseradish, mustard, and green food coloring.
4. Seeing Pandas in Zoos
A lot of people love pandas (even though they’re pretty sad creatures). Yet, if you want to see a black-and-white cuddly-wuddly bear in the flesh, your options are very slim.
For a while, Atlanta Zoo was the only place in the U.S. that had pandas. There used to be more, but the animals either died or got returned to China.
The San Diego Zoo did recently acquire a new pair of pandas, so the number of zoos hosting the bears in America has grown to a whopping two. However, it will still take quite some time before the public will be allowed to see the San Diego pandas.
5. Getting Harmed by a Stranger
Horror movies, crime shows, and other popular media would have us believe that we’re constantly at risk of getting killed or kidnapped by a malevolent maniac. Yet, it’s not the strangers we should be worried about.
Only around 10% of all homicides in the U.S. are committed by someone unknown to the victim. It’s much, much more likely that the killer is a family member, partner, friend, coworker, or someone else from your “inner circle.”
It kind of makes sense, though. Unless they’re a total raving madman, a stranger has very little reason to hurt you. People who know you, however, may have all kinds of motives lurking in their minds.
It’s the same story with child abductions. Sadly, way more kids fall victim to people the children know than to stranger danger. The thing is, when a stranger kidnaps a child, it usually has a more gruesome ending — which helps it make the headlines and distort the public perception further.
6. Getting Audited on Taxes
The tax season is a stressful time and the possible fear of getting audited just adds to the dread. However, you are actually very unlikely to get caught in a tax audit.
Roughly 60% of Americans say they fear getting audited, yet the IRS is in no position in terms of money or workforce to audit that many people. In fact, only about 0.2-0.3% of taxpayers face an audit every year.
Your chances of getting audited do rise significantly if you earn more than $10 million annually. In other words, you or I probably don’t ever have to worry about it.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t file your taxes properly, though. That’s one of the better ways to reach your audit likelihood toward 100%.
7. Making It Big on Social Media
It seems there’s a new social media personality breaking through every day. Whether it’s on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter, there’s always someone making it big and earning those sweet sponsor bucks.
Maybe you could be the next social media star? Dream on.
It’s hard to put numbers on how many people actually make it big on social media. That’s because for every star, there are likely thousands and thousands of people who fail to catch on.
Just to try and put things into perspective, if you had 200 simultaneous viewers on Twitch, you would be in the top 1% of active streamers by view count. In April 2024, Twitch had 7.23 million active streamers — that should tell how hard it is to get even one person to pay attention to you.
8. Having a Photographic Memory
A photographic memory might seem like a strange choice for our list. Granted, not that many people claim to have a photographic memory, but everyone who does is a liar.
That’s because photographic memory simply doesn’t exist. At least not in the way people imagine it.
When you hear the phrase “photographic memory,” you might think about something you see in a Hollywood movie about a savant who can memorize a textbook by glancing at its pages for a few seconds. There’s no scientific proof or existing case study of anyone, ever, who had a memory like that.
People tend to confuse photographic memory with eidetic memory, which allows people who have them to recall an image in vivid detail for an extended period after seeing it. However, even they can’t memorize text at a glance — but they can tell you everything about the picture on the book cover.