Venting the madness of life, death, and suicide on earth in numbers

[notjustyetagain]

unable to sleep and anxious, i decided to put some life/death/suicide metrics together to try to get a feel for the scale of life, death, and suicide on our humble planet. i've tried to use the most reliable sources, but figures vary between them, so all figures are only rough approximations.

first, the earth seems enormous to me, but... the volume of the observable universe is ~4 × 10⁷⁷km³. the volume of the earth is ~1.08321 × 10¹²km³. this means that the earth occupies about 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000002708025% of the observable universe. but on that infinitesimal mote, there's a whole lot of life going on: ~550,000,000,000,000 kilograms (~1,212,541,000,000,000 pounds) of carbon alone in the lifeforms on it! let's break that down.

1. the earth's biomass (def. 1)[1]

● plants account for ~80% of the earth's biomass​

● bacteria account for ~15% of the earth's biomass​

● the remaining ~5% of the earth's biomass comprises, in descending order: fungi, archaea, protists, animals, and viruses​

● nonhuman animals account for ~0.36% of the earth's biomass​

● mammals (like us) account for ~0.032% of the earth's biomass​

● humans account for ~0.01% of the earth's biomass​

● ~60% of all mammal biomass comprises land livestock​

● ~36% of all mammal biomass comprises humans​

● ∴ ~96% of all mammal biomass comprises land livestock + humans​

● human activity has reduced wild marine/terrestrial animal biomass sixfold​

● human activity has cut plant biomass in half​

2. humans

2.1. human birth[2]​

● ~140,790,000 people are born every year (est. for 2019)​

● / 365.25 = ~385,000 people born every day​

● / 24 = ~16,000 people born every hour​

● / 60 = ~267 people born every minute​

● / 60 = ~4.46 people born every second​

2.2. human death[2]​

● ~59,430,000 people die every year (est. for 2019)​

● / 365.25 = ~163,000 people die every day​

● / 24 = ~6,800 people die every hour​

● / 60 = ~113 people die every minute​

● / 60 = ~1.88 people die every second​

2.3. human suicide[3]​

● ~800,000 people commit suicide every year (according to the WHO, but wikipedia says 1,000,000)​

● / 365.25 = ~2,200–2,730 people commit suicide every day​

● / 24 = ~91–114 people commit suicide every hour​

● / 60 = ~1.5–1.9 people commit suicide every minute​

● / 60 = ~0.025–0.031 people commit suicide every second​

~20% (wikipedia contradicts its own source and states "30%"?) of suicides worldwide are facilitated with pesticide poisoning[4], which means ~438–547 people commit suicide by pesticide poisoning every day. if SS readers commit suicide at a rate of 5 per day (assuming most members/lurkers don't post "goodbye" threads), this accounts for 0.2%, or one 500th, of global daily suicides.​

suicide accounted for 1.4% of all deaths worldwide, making it the 18th leading cause of death, in 2016. 79% of suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries. suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 15–29-year-olds worldwide. for every successful suicide, ~20–30 people attempt it, so only ~3–5% of attempts are successful[5]. ~1.75 men commit suicide for every 1 woman[6] worldwide. according to the World Health Organization, the countries with the five highest rates of suicide are guyana, lesotho, russia, lithuania, and suriname; the countries with the five lowest rates of suicide are barbados, antigua and barbuda, bahamas, grenada, and jamaica. other sources cite greenland as having the highest rate of suicide, with almost triple the rate (83/100,000 people) of suicide of guyana (30.2/100,000 people).​

some at-risk signifiers. the most at-risk population i could find: this 2018 study of 120,617 adolescents found that suicide was attempted by 50.8% of female-to-male, 41.8% of nonbinary, 29.9% of male-to-female, and 27.9% of "questioning" adolescents (vs cisgendered male (9.8%) and female (17.6%) adolescents -- the near-double rate of cis women vs men is alarming on its own).​

in my fair-dinkum country (australia), suicide remains the leading cause of death for people aged 15–44.​

​

there are so many potential suicide statistics but it's too laborious to pore through them all... i wish some weaponised autist would compile a comprehensive encyclopaedia of suicide. ;)​

3. animals

i consider nonhuman animal suffering important, so thought i'd include the few statistics i could find.

3.1. animal birth​

i couldn't find any figures for wild + domesticated animal births but i'd guess everything is dwarfed by the ~219,150,000,000,000,000,000,000 nematodes (excluding water-born nematodes, whose figure is "much, much higher") born every year... which doesn't necessarily mean that they account for much of the earth's biomass.​

3.2. animal death[7]​

it seems impossible to estimate the number of wild nonhuman animals killed every year, so i'll focus on the 60% of animals that are livestock and killed for human and nonhuman consumption. i'm citing 2017 figures for livestock (the vast majority being chickens -- here's a table of species sorted by number killed annualy) and 2016 figures for fish. animal deaths from scientific experimentation, fur farming, etc. would be a tiny minority in comparison. fish data was calculated using the metric-tonnage data of the FAO combined with mean weights for the fish species -- the resulting error bars are large. fish deaths seem excessive but i guess there are many small edible marine creatures (krill, mussels, anchovies, whitebait, etc.).​

● ~2,933,064,274 land livestock[8] and ~426,000,000,000–1,107,000,000,000 fish/crustaceans[9] killed every year​

● / 365.25 = ~8,000,000 land livestock and ~1,160,000,000–3,000,000,000 fish/crustaceans killed every day​

● / 24 = ~334,000 land livestock and ~48,600,000–126,000,000 fish/crustaceans killed every hour​

● / 60 = ~5,576 land livestock and ~800,000–2,100,000 fish/crustaceans killed every minute​

● / 60 = ~92 land livestock and ~13,500–35,000 fish/crustaceans killed every second​

with all this in mind, it's ludicrous to consider myself at all important. i wonder how many creatures are suffering vs creatures that aren't at this very moment.

[1] Y. M. Bar-On, R. Phillips, R. Milo, "The biomass distribution on Earth". (2018.05.21) https://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506
[2] H. Ritchie, "How many people die and how many are born each year?". (2019.09.11) https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths
[3] World Health Organization, "Suicide in the world" [pdf]. (2019) https://apps.who.int/iris/rest/bitstreams/1244794/retrieve
[4] Ibid, "Suicide". (2019.09.02) https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/suicide
[5] Ibid, "Mental Health - Suicide Data". (2016?) https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/
[6] Ibid, "Suicide rate estimates, crude estimates by SDG Region". (2016) http://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.MHSUICIDEREGv?lang=en
[7] Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations http://www.fao.org/home/en/
[8] Ibid, "Statistics - Livestock Primary". (2017 data) http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QL
[9] Ibid, "Fishery Statistical Collections - Global Overview". (2016 data) http://www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/en

in summary: "kali" by johfra bosschart (1976) -- not quite safe for work.

 

[Brick In The Wall]

Well written and properly cited sources. I can always respect good research. I'll have to dig into this a bit myself.

I don't think I've thought of it as comprehensively as you have. Still fascinating to see some numbers behind it all. Thank you for compiling this information.

 

[Science Is Scary]

Sorry you aren't sleeping well. You really put a lot of effort into this thread, and it turned out great. Your back-of-the-envelope calculations remind me of Enrico Fermi.

It's interesting to me how a person can look either significant or insignificant depending on how I frame it. They can seem like a big fish in a small pond if I zoom in closely enough. But I can also zoom out and they seem insignificant.

Is either perspective more right than the other? I'm really not sure. Maybe both have their pros and cons.

You might enjoy some subreddits like nature is terrible (EDIT: I forgot there are some nightmare fuel pictures in there) if wild animal suffering interests you. But you've clearly done a lot of reading already.

(We'd have to find someone who has weaponized and isn't lazy I guess. ;) )

Thanks.

 

[Sensei]

Well done, notjustyetagain! A pleasure to read.

 

[notjustyetagain]

It's interesting to me how a person can look either significant or insignificant depending on how I frame it. They can seem like a big fish in a small pond if I zoom in closely enough. But I can also zoom out and they seem insignificant. Is either perspective more right than the other? I'm really not sure. Maybe both have their pros and cons.

i'm not sure either, but i think both are "correct". i feel very insigificant in the world, but my problems feel so significant that i'm going to end my life. OTOH, they're significant only to me (and maybe a handful of others), and insignificant to the other ~7,800,000,000 people in the world. both framings seem valid.

i sincerely believe that every creature's life/death is significant, but this belief paradoxically diminishes as the numbers grow. when contemplating the vast number of births/deaths that occur globally every year, they're inconceivable and i can't connect to them. this diminishment may be why i'm also able to sincerely believe that, on the scale of the universe, the whole of earth is insignificant... but whenever someone posts a goodbye thread here, my heart sinks. it's the reason i wanted to break down the numbers into days/hours/seconds -- i can (barely) conceive ~4 people being born every second.

You might enjoy some subreddits like nature is terrible if wild animal suffering interests you.

just had a look through and, wow... harsh. i can certainly relate to a lot of the quotes posted there, but some of the pictures are too much for me to handle at the moment. i'll stick with safety in numbers... abstract enough to tolerate.

when i was homeless, on the coldest nights, my mind often wandered to the lives of wild animals. thinking of creatures struggling to find shelter with the perpetual fear of being found/eaten alive, fending off starvation, etc. i could connect to it more when i was in similar (but still far better) circumstances. i always felt very sad, but just as grateful, when doing so. the lives of wild/farmed animals are the main reason i'm scared of reincarnation. winning the lottery -- coming back as a pet with super-caring owners -- might be tolerable.

(We'd have to find someone who has weaponized and isn't lazy I guess. ;) )

yeah, a huge task. tantalising though -- so much suicide data out there begging to be analysed/summarised. but going through tens/hundreds of thousands of papers and distilling them is a project only someone like james murray could take on.

thanks, Brick In The Wall, Science Is Scary, and Sensei for the positive feedback. :)

 

[Flume]

114 every hour? Well if that's true that makes me feel less alone, had no idea it was that many.

 

[Science Is Scary]

Perhaps you will be the one to write that book?

 

[TriggerHappy]

unable to sleep and anxious, i decided to put some life/death/suicide metrics together to try to get a feel for the scale of life, death, and suicide on our humble planet. i've tried to use the most reliable sources, but figures vary between them, so all figures are only rough approximations

2.2. human death[2]​

● ~59,430,000 people die every year (est. for 2019)​

● / 365.25 = ~163,000 people die every day​

● / 24 = ~6,800 people die every hour​

● / 60 = ~113 people die every minute​

● / 60 = ~1.88 people die every second​

2.3. human suicide[3]​

● ~800,000 people commit suicide every year (according to the WHO, but wikipedia says 1,000,000)​

● / 365.25 = ~2,200–2,730 people commit suicide every day​

● / 24 = ~91–114 people commit suicide every hour​

● / 60 = ~1.5–1.9 people commit suicide every minute​

● / 60 = ~0.025–0.031 people commit suicide every second​

your figures are fantastically insane to my little mental comprehension - see i can't even communicate correctly!

""" 365.25 = ~2,200–2,730 people commit suicide every day
● / 24 = ~91–114 people commit suicide every hour. """

confused me completely?! 2thousand two/ seven hundred ppl ctb every day?
then what does ~91114 ppl ctb every hour? - is that Ninetyone ppl?

MINDBLOWING! thanks for your hard work
- sleep tight in the dis-comfort of the q-ueing off all of us wanting to get off this motherfucking planet...!!!

 

[JustAMatterOfTime]

It is awful to imagine how much cruelty is going on every second of the day, something is suffering and dying in agony and the vast majority of them are because of humans. Poor things makes me upset , we aren't any better who is to say I deserve to not die like that.