11 thoughts on “Is Someone Out To Get You?”

  1. This strikes me as pretty silly, apart from an occasional case where there’s a likelihood of spousal murder or a crew member conflict. Pure accidents (slip and fall) also aren’t a big problem given the railing height. But stupidity and suicide are both much more likely explanations. Which would you expect to happen more often?

    1. Drunk idiot decides to climb on a rail to imitate Leonardo DiCaprio’s “King of the World” scene, falls off;

    2. Drunk idiot loses $20,000 at the ship’s casino, jumps over the side;

    3. Serial killer spends over a thousand dollars to find a random person to push over the edge for kicks?

  2. Accidental falls are a very common cause of household injuries and death. Add in alcohol and partying, and you can probably explain most of the mysterious disapparances.

    Of course, anyone who watches television knows that cruise ships are hotbeds of murder, with homicide rates approaching those of Juarez, Mexico or Cabot Cove, Maine.

    On the other hand, cruise ships seem to have avoided the frequent outbreaks of food poisoning that plague airline crews, causing flight attendants to go on the PA system with the dreaded announcement, “Is there a pilot onboard?”

  3. 20 million passengers per year, 15 years – 300 million passengers (from wikipedia). So a likelihood of “going missing” of 1 in about 2 million.

    Um, yeah, run for the hills and stuff.

    For reference, your likelihood of being murdered in Washington DC: 1 in 5,000

  5. Wow – actually I was off by quite a bit. I forgot that to make apples to apples we need the homicide rate for 15 years, not 1.

    Your likelihood of being murdered in Washington DC: 1 in 300

    Yikes!

  7. You’re using the wrong numbers.

    Instead of the murder rate, you should be looking at the missing-persons rate.

    The FBI reports around 700,000 missing-person reports are entered each year. (Many are later found. As of Dec 31, 2010, only 85,820 reports remained open.)

    So, the average American has a 0.2% chance of going missing in any given year, or ~0.004% in any given week.

    Assuming the average cruise lasts a week, and 20 million people take cruises every year, you would expect about 800 people to go missing during a cruise every year.

    But only 165 go missing? Suddenly, it doesn’t look so mysterious.

    It appears it’s harder to get lost when you are confined to a metal hull than in an open area. Surprise!

    Also, some of the people who go missing from cruise ships may do so voluntarily. If someone wants to “disappear,” doing so while traveling may be a convenient opportunity.

  8. another sign of the innumeracy of the media.

    No, the innumeracy of the readers. People don’t continue to read articles by the ignorant, unless they’re just as ignorant.

    It all goes back to the culture and the schools.

  9. You’re missing the point. Cruise ships are a really good way to kill somebody that you know. Apparently by those statistics, people aren’t making the connection, but now that it’s in print…

  10. The original Dailymail article brings up various anecdotes. The first is a man who goes missing, but his spouse isn’t on the cruise with him. Another discusses how some suicides are occassionally caught by a camera. Sometimes, they are caught by eyewitnesses.

    Regarding:
    Drunk idiot loses $20,000 at the ship’s casino, jumps over the side

    The cruise I was on recently, you could owe $20,000 on just the tab trying to get drunk.

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