How We Die PART I

Notes

How likely are we to die as infants? as teenagers? in our twenties, thirties, forties and fifties? in old age? What's most likely to kill us at each of these times of our lives? accidents? suicide? cancer? How, ultimately, do we die?

Most of what we know about death is anecdotal: a friend dies of cancer at a cruelly early age; an elderly relative with Alzheimer's is in slow decline.

The Internet only adds confusion: the news media is fleetingly obsessed with teenage suicide; social media is suddenly awash with diabetes awareness.

Of course, there are statistics: table after table of death rates published by the government, broken down by age, gender, race… but it's difficult to make sense of all those numbers.

This visualization aims to give a better sense of how we die. It shows up to 1000 people, from newborns to centenarians: people are born on the left, and move to the right as they grow older. When someone dies, a symbol appears to show the cause of death: a heart disease, a brain disease, suicide, homicide or cancer.

As you'll see from the left side of the visualization, most people survive to the age of 50: very few of us die in childhood; accidents, suicides and (these being US statistics) homicides start to creep in as we reach adulthood; tragically, despite significant reductions in infant mortality over the years, neonatal and congenital conditions still claim a few of us before we reach our first year.

This picture changes dramatically on the right side of the visualization. Slowly, the two biggest killers – heart disease and cancer – begin to claim us. Few of us remain on the far right edge, at age 100, where the diseases of old age – strokes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's – take their toll.

This first of two visualizations of how we die emphasizes the element of chance. No matter how long you look, you'll never see the same visualization: sometimes you'll see an unusually high rate of infant mortality; other times you'll see more suicides and homicides.

Make sure you check out the second visualization, too, How We Die PART II, which focuses on which causes of death are most lethal as you go through your life.