Coconut Falls
Divides by 8 billion people. Most humans never go near a coconut palm.
Calculate Your Risk
The misleading stat
150 deaths per year worldwide
(global average, including people never exposed)
vs
Your actual annual risk
1 in 63,715
(0.0016% chance per year)
For comparison
- Car crash (US annual): 1 in 8,000
- Lightning strike (US annual): 1 in 16,000,000
- Bee sting death (US annual): 1 in 4,600,000
Methodology & sources
This calculator multiplies chained probabilities:
- Coconut falls: 0.0086 — ~75 coconuts/tree/year ÷ 8,760 hours = 0.0086 (FAO cites 70-100 nuts/tree/year for a mature palm)
- Hours in zone
- Number of trees
- It hits you: 0.0025 — Site estimate: ~0.15 m² top-down area of a person (head and shoulders) ÷ ~60 m² drop zone (canopy 6-10 m across, plus wind drift over a 20-30 m fall) = 0.0025
- Fatal outcome: 0.002 — Site estimate. No study reports deaths per impact: Barss (1984) saw 0 in-hospital deaths and 2 village deaths in 4 years; India 2025 (PMC11829407) saw 0 deaths in 29 ED cases, 21% severe head trauma. Most impacts never reach a hospital. Assumes ~1 in 20 impacts reaches an ED and ~4% of those die, giving 0.2%. Cross-check: default exposure gives 1 in 64,000/year, so ~10 million people at 1 hr/day under a palm would produce ~150 deaths/year.
Result multiplied by 365 to annualize.