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Despite the fact that most of us see multiple thunderstorms a year over the course of our lifetimes, the chances of being hit by lightning is incredibly low. But like winning hands in blackjack or dying in a plane crash, even a low probability isn’t the same as impossible.
Someone asked “What do people not realize has an extremely low chance of happening?” and netizens shared their most improbable examples. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own examples and experiences in the comments section below.
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#1
Being attacked by a trans woman in the bathroom. The chances are so low it essentially doesn't happen. Transwomen are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
David 4 months ago
What I find weird about that is assuming any gender / sexual orientation is likely to make you an attacker. Gay men use male restrooms / lesbians women's restrooms. But it's not like straight men and women are all, "Gee I'm afraid to go potty because the other person who looks like me might be gay and attack me. I'm not wording it well I'm saying being 'different' from the norm doesn't make you a monster or attacker.
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#2
Gun owners overestimate the chance that they'll use the gun for self defense and underestimate the chance that the gun will be used to k*ll its owner.
#3
People handing out m**ijuana edibles to kids on Halloween. Literally, no one does that. No one would be careless enough to do that. That s**t is expensive, and people want to get high off them.
#4
One Presidential candidate being shot and the other one dropping out inside of a 10 day span.
#5
Drowning in quicksand. I spent far too much time as a child thinking this was going to be an adult concern.
Justin Tyme 4 months ago
I got stuck in quicksand when I was 14 years old. That was the same year I got struck by lightning and bitten by a rattlesnake. Occasionally I just suddenly stop and think "Wow, my life has been so bizarre."
#6
Being k*lled by a serial k*iller. I was a sociology major in college and in my Deviant Behavior class, this is what my teacher said at the beginning of a lesson about serial k*llers: "None of you will be k*lled by a serial k*ller. I'm telling you as a statistician that the likelihood of it is nil. Even the most prolific of serial k*ller's victims make up a fraction of a percent of people who die from m*rder."
Sadly you are much more likely to be k*lled by someone you know. same goes for sexual assault and trafficking. It's actually very unlikely to be a stranger.
#7
Being thrown from a car during an accident, and coming out unharmed. I know people to this day that don't wear seatbelts because they think it's safer to be thrown out.
Anne Nielsen 4 months ago
I have a state trooper friend. He said in a survivable accident, he has never pulled a dead body from a seat belt. But has picked up plenty of dead people, from the road who did not wear their seatbealt
#8
Random child abductions are extremely rare, most of the time it's one of the parents. Of course you should teach your kids stranger danger, but the way some parents behave they think there's kidnappers hiding behind every bush.
nottheactualphoto 4 months ago
Even when it isn't one of the parents, it's usually some other adult the kid knows: relative, priest, scout leader etc.
#9
A third party ever winning an election in the us.
nottheactualphoto 4 months ago
The winner-take-all system ensures that there will only ever be two parties that "matter."
#10
Winning the lottery - but hey, a girl can dream right?
Doug McKenzie 4 months ago
A lottery ticket is a weird gift to give someone. It’s like saying, “Here. This has a 99% chance of being disappointing. I saw it and thought of you”.
#12
Contracting a brain eating amoeba from swimming - it happens but only on average 3.3 cases per year in the entire world, but to my kid on the spectrum anytime he goes near water it’s gonna happen to him, poor guy. We are working on it.
#13
Your 11 year old becoming a professional baseball player.
StrangeOne 4 months ago
Your kid is most likely going to develop an injury that will put them out of the sport before they graduate High School.
#15
People often overestimate the chance of a plane crash, but the odds are about 1 in 11 million for a commercial flight.
#16
Having an adverse reaction to covid vaccines
Some people lose their mind over it.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 4 months ago
I actually DO HAVE moderate to severe reactions to the COVID vaccines. My second booster put me at a 105F fever for two days. The ones since have only hit 103F. But do you notice something about that? I keep getting my shots.
#17
Actually coming out ahead in gambling, if you do it often enough.
Of course, anyone with a decent brain knows that typical gambling is negative value every time, but if you do it often enough, it's even less likely that you'll come out ahead (as the number of events being looked at approaches infinity, the outcome will approach the mean - which is negative value).
That's one reason why if you put on a 'cheeky bet' and end up winning, just quit while you're ahead. Or don't bet in the first place (it's fine if you can consider it an entertainment expense, but all too many people try to use that as a justification when the truth is that they're really hoping to buck the odds, and the maths doesn't care about how much you wish it would bend to you).
Jacob B. 4 months ago
We once went to Laughlin, not much to do at night. So I bit the bullet, gave my wife $20 (which she lost) and I played the Black Jack table with the same amount. Made out very well by estimating probabilities. Didn't play with my winnings. Once my initial $20 was gone, grabbed my chips to cash them in. Guy next to me said, "why are you leaving, you are doing really well". I said, "I just made a 500% return, nothing in Wall Street could get me that, I'm getting out while I'm ahead".
#18
Surviving after CPR. It's roughly 7-10% if you're outside the hospital, and even less when you're a senior citizen.
It's also very brutal, as many people aren't prepared to see 200 pound men putting their body weight onto grandpa and grandma's chest, breaking all their ribs, instead of just letting them pass peacefully.
Bahija Just 4 months ago
Ill take the 7% Losing my mom at just 63 was incredibly painful. It’s heartbreaking to think that knowing CPR could have made a difference. I wish everyone had the opportunity to learn this lifesaving skill. It could mean the world to someone you love."
#19
Becoming an Internet influencer.
Ben Aziza 4 months ago
Chinese influencer "farms" are a dystopian nightmare. influfamrs...d-jpeg.jpg 
#20
Making a living from YouTube or playing video games.
Edit*
I agree with alot of us saying it requires an uncontrollable amount of luck, despite the quality of content. I'm a teacher and it k*lls me to hear how popular this idea has become lately. More so, how unfair and fickle it all seems to me at times. I see small youtubers poor their heart and soul into their content,like literally building an entire drift car project,but barely manage to build an audience. Other times I see what I believe are just e-beggers making millions from mediocre content, playing games poorly or worse people who simply steal content and do voice overs. Man, must be nice to make millions stealing internet videos and doing some obvious voice over narration but that's a whole different subject.
#21
Hollywood stealing your idea because you told someone in a bar it'd be cool if Batman fought Deadpool.
#22
Growing up I was sure that grown ups were constantly on fire, sinking in quick sand, and offering free d***s to every kid they see/sticking if in random pieces of candy...
#23
Becoming a professional athlete. I see so many parents grooming their kids to go pro but don’t really give them life skills so when they inevitably don’t make it, the child ends up lost in life not knowing what to do.
#24
Making money at an MLM or pyramid scheme, 95% of the people entering those things will lose money, and they know it, the only thing is that promotors convince them that they will be part of the 5%. They won't.
Captain Grump 4 months ago
A pyramid scheme where each person has to recruit just 6 below them (which sounds fairly tame and reasonable) needs more people than the world's population after just 12 levels.
#25
Finding your soulmate
Imagine every person is a puzzle piece. There are 8 billion pieces. Do you think the 3-4 pieces you fit in perfectly with are going to be in your immediate area? Find one that’s close and make it work. There are plenty of remarkable pieces that fit pretty well even if they’re not the *one* and you might even make a neat picture in your tiny part pf the world.
#27
Getting attacked by a shark on the beach. It's so low it's not funny.
#28
Dislocating your kneecap when you sneeze.
Happened to a coworker of mine. Their doctor said that it's not common, but it isn't unheard of.
#29
Being “awake” under anesthesia. People worry about it often thanks to Hollywood or a story someone told them. The reality is that true awareness under anesthesia is close to 1 in a million, and most anesthesiologists will never see it in their entire career. Real awareness under anesthesia means that you a paralyzed as the surgeon is actively working. It is traumatic and associated with PTSD.
People often say that they were “awake” under anesthesia, but this is usually due to a few things. Poor communication by the anesthesiologist — the patient thought they would be asleep, but they will only get sedation. They remember things prior to surgery — like being in the room, seeing the equipment, and/or having a mask on their face. This is fairly normal. Lastly sometimes patients say they “woke up early”. Some practices wake people up in the recovery area, but it’s also common for patients to be woken up in the room. Sometimes this occurs as a dressing is being applied. Again, this is normal.
It is really rare to have true awareness under general anesthesia. Good communication preoperatively helps patients to know what to expect during the surgery.
GB 4 months ago
I have Pseudocholinesterase deficiency, a rare disorder that makes metabolizing succynicholine (a paralytic administered to a patient to allow the insertion of a breathing tube) take much longer than normal. It usually takes only about 15 minutes to wear off, which means that by the time surgery is finished, a person can be extubated and breathe fine on their own. But for me, it takes hours and hours to wear off. Unfortunately, because it's so rare, they don't regularly test for this issue beforehand. I found out the hard way; i.e. I was extubated after surgery but still completely paraylized. I couldn't breathe, nor could I speak or gesture to indicate that I couldn't breathe. But I was totally awake, and aware that I was suffocating. Luckily they monitor your vitals the whole time. Once they saw my oxygen level plummet, they immediately sedated and re-intubated me. It was more than 9 hours before I was able to breath on my own again. It was a terrifying experience.
#30
Becoming millionaires affected by the tax raises they vote against
Edit: there might be a problem with semantics in my original comment, but you guys need to stop assuming everyone is American.
#31
That we are going to be able to survive unchanged after AI progresses a little further and the “average” person will not be able to determine fake video from real video. Worried about “bots” on twitter or Reddit now? Just wait.
Dumb teenager 4 months ago
Already happened. My perants were debating just 10 minutes or so ago weather or not a picture of a cat with markings that resembled a smaller cat was real or AI. A photograph is no longer evidence of anything
leendadll 4 months ago
Saw a headline today that a new AI is extremely good at drawing hands. That was pretty much our last telltale clue!
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Roni Stone 4 months ago
I'm terrified of this dystopia happening and pretty glad that I'm an old woman who won't live to see much of it.
Angelshark 4 months ago
There's also the use of generative AI in the arts. Eventually it will get good enough that it will be indistinguishable from it's human counterparts. You want a Rembrandt? AI has you covered. You want a new song that sounds like a Taylor Swift pop piece? AI can do that too. Did you read that new horror novel that's like a Stephen King work but personally tailored to you, the reader? It's great, too bad he's now out of work. Our great artists will fall by the wayside, because for as much as the techbros in silicon valley espouse that AI is "just a tool," people are using that tool for the art itself. If I could run a magnet over every generative AI server on the planet, I would do it without hesitation.
Michael Largey 4 months ago
Millions of people in my country already can't tell a con man from a statesman on account of AI (Authentic Imbecility).
Liz The Biz 4 months ago
I've been saying for a long time that by the time my kids are my age nobody will be able to determine what's real or who is real. Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle now.
Dan Flo 4 months ago
Looking at both the AI development and robotics, it is both mind bending and terrifying. It took evolution billions of years to create a creature walking on two legs. It didnt even took a centry for computer aided technology to create a robot doing backflips. Combined with AI, we are seeing the rise of a new kind of life and it is not even scifi anymore to think the next step in evolution will not be biologic.
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PixxelDust 4 months ago
THINGS TO LOOK FOR IN AI THAT AREN'T HANDS: ends of the hair (they tend to merge with clothing or ears), earrings/jewellery having artifacts or being inconsistent on each side, super sharp shadows, slightly exaggerated/disproportionate features, inconsistency in lighting direction, zippers/buttons/charms/dangly bits on clothes that don't make sense, asymmetry in the cuffs of sleeves or pants, overall 'smooth' appearance
Steve Hall 4 months ago
Have you noticed that bored panda is AI, and has now started commenting on your posts.
Paul Gerrard 4 months ago
AI is already showing limits and social acceptance is low. AI will be like 3D TVs. A technology that is poorly demanded. Like selfcdriving cars. They are still unsafe
Dan Flo 4 months ago (edited)
Im sorry to say that you are very wrong. AI is more comparable to the evolution of computers and internet. It will not go away, it will only keep evolving in ways we as of now have no idea. Ai help us develop faster, so AI will aid us in making better AI, that is its turn will help us make even better AI. It is a singularity that we can never predict the outcome of, just as people who saw the first computers never could predict Bored Panda for example. :)
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#32
If you drive to the airport to catch a flight, congratulations, you won. The odds of you dying have significantly and infinitesimally reduced. You have better odds at the lottery than you do dying on that plane, compared to the rolling death trap that is a car.
Costco card 4 months ago
And my parents wonder why I hate driving 😑 (I am a *very* new driver)
#33
Being killed by a terrorist or immigrant. According to the CDC cancer, heart disease are coming for you.
#34
A lot of people here are falling for the logical fallacy of small probabilities. "Since the probability of x is so small, it's an invalid fear". But while the probabilty of you dying today, for example, is small, according to some sources,166,859 people still die every day, the probability of you dying today is modulated, in part, by your choices and behaviors, and the probability that you will die eventually is 100%. A lot of things affect only a small percentage of the population but their absolute numbers are still high enough to be significant issues. Covid is a good example of this. Most people did not become seriously ill or die of covid even before the vaccination but covid was still a public health nightmare due the strained community resources and took an unprecedented number of lives. .
#35
Being buried alive.
I can't believe how many smart people I know that think this can actually happen. I always ask them how they plan to survive being embalmed first and they give me a blank stare.
Luis Hernandez Dauajare 4 months ago
Nowadays it's rare. In the past it was frighteningly common...
#36
Prion Disease, or CJD -- you don't need to eat contaminated meat or otherwise be exposed. We all have about a one-in-a-million chance of spontaneously developing one.
R Dennis 4 months ago
The one from meat is vCJD, it was nvCJD when I wrote a research paper on it. It is contracted from BSE infected cows. Other versions are iatrogenic, hereditary, and sporadic. Sporadic is most common because all unknown causes are lumped into that category, so it is considered "spontaneous".
#38
Making money at a casino. If you go, go to have fun and keep your losses to a specific number. If you think you’ll make money, absolutely do not go.
#39
The person most likely to k*ll you is... yourself. More people die from s****de than from wars, natural disasters combined
#40
I guess a lot of young dudes will hate me for that, but Im truly sure that nowadays it is a chance of becoming a famous rapper starting from zero, it's possible if you already have money and professional production behind you, but it's impossible to become a star from your parents' bedroom, sorry.
Becca not Becky 4 months ago (edited)
I would say it takes a ton of luck unless you already have connections. The right people have to see you and the chance of that happening on Tik Tok or YouTube is extremely slim.
#41
Aliens want to visit and trade with us as friends.
Fishpanda (fish/panda/it) 4 months ago
Aliens visited some time ago and then went "nevermind" and flew off.
#42
Making enough money to ever feel financially stable in todays economy.
#43
In the US, a constitutional amendment. It’s virtually an impossibility at this point.
Paul Gerrard 4 months ago (edited)
Most people think amendments cant or should not be amended. The 2nd A was an amendment and could just as easily be amended out or modified to use present day circumstance. Slavery was amended out. Its quite easy if intelligence is used. Courts focus of preserving what was once right and should be made to consider change to meet present needs
#45
Themselves living to 100.
Pieter LeGrande 4 months ago
The trick is to get to 130. Then you are set. Have you ever heard of a 130yo dieing?
#46
Any one of the natural disasters big enough to create any real extinction event. Super random, rare and not likely in your life by the current projections.
#47
Where we think we will be in 10 years.
nottheactualphoto 4 months ago
In 10 years? I'll settle for being alive and in reasonable health. As long as we're dreaming, let's also say neither homeless nor broke.
#49
Crowded restaurant in a foreign country, stranger eating alone offered to share their table, found we had mutual friends.
What do you think ?
Apatheist Account2 4 months ago
Indeed - winning a sweepstake you didn't enter is a scam, nothing more, nothing less. All one has to do is ignore the message. Shark and meteorite are potentially fatal, the other two are possibly mildly inconvenient.
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Captive 4 months ago
Yes planes are very safe. Yet I absolutely hate it when they shake mid flight due to turbulence
CanadianDimes 4 months ago
The good news is turbulence is extremely unlikely to cause a crash, and becomes less likely the bigger the plane is. It’s hard to damage a plane by dropping altitude alone and the bigger the plane, the more force it would take to impact it, especially enough to be a problem. It still doesn’t make turbulence fun, but might help with any anxiety
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Dan Flo 4 months ago
Well we are lucky that every major war has been won by the good side... 😏
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Steve Gilbert 4 months ago
Only one person in all of recorded history has been stuck by a meteorite. Thousands of people have been attacked by sharks throughout history. People win sweepstakes every week. Very few people have found hidden treasure of any really great amount.
CanadianDimes 4 months ago
One person that was recorded by history or at least for whom we have surviving written records
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Dan Flo 4 months ago
Looking at the world today, they would starve pretty quickly from the lack of brains to eat.
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Apatheist Account2 4 months ago
Indeed - winning a sweepstake you didn't enter is a scam, nothing more, nothing less. All one has to do is ignore the message. Shark and meteorite are potentially fatal, the other two are possibly mildly inconvenient.
Load More Replies... Captive 4 months ago
Yes planes are very safe. Yet I absolutely hate it when they shake mid flight due to turbulence
CanadianDimes 4 months ago
The good news is turbulence is extremely unlikely to cause a crash, and becomes less likely the bigger the plane is. It’s hard to damage a plane by dropping altitude alone and the bigger the plane, the more force it would take to impact it, especially enough to be a problem. It still doesn’t make turbulence fun, but might help with any anxiety
Load More Replies... Dan Flo 4 months ago
Well we are lucky that every major war has been won by the good side... 😏
Load More Replies... Steve Gilbert 4 months ago
Only one person in all of recorded history has been stuck by a meteorite. Thousands of people have been attacked by sharks throughout history. People win sweepstakes every week. Very few people have found hidden treasure of any really great amount.
CanadianDimes 4 months ago
One person that was recorded by history or at least for whom we have surviving written records
Load More Replies... Dan Flo 4 months ago
Looking at the world today, they would starve pretty quickly from the lack of brains to eat.
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