Papamoa Beach

After some heavy days driving up from the south coast, we reached Papamoa Beach near Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty. We checked into a nice Airbnb, resuming a normal schedule of copious wifi and multiple showers a day. Ahh so much to be grateful for! The weather here is 20-30 degrees Celsius and absolutely beautiful. The incredible beaches are just outside of a mid sized city that buzzes lightly with moderate density, comfortably sprawling outwards in acres of untouched land. Of all of the places in NZ we have visited, this would be a place to move to and call home one day. We went to pickup a MicroSD card from a local store here and had a nice chat with one of the female employees. She was a little bit older but not yet a pensioner, proudly a Kiwi. We got to talking about travelling and where we were from etc. and the fact that we have been in Bali came up. Her tone changed quickly to a fearful note saying that she would never go there after there were bombings in 2002 and 2005. The conversation ended shortly after that, but me being on holidays and full of great coffee took on an endeavour to investigate this fear-based outlook on life to see if it was valid. Beth helped me google some statistics about terrorism and terrorist attacks, and the numbers are absolutely astounding. One article we found was titled 'you are more likely to be fatally crushed by your own furniture than die in a terrorist attack' ....seriously. I don't really watch the news, I read online articles and try to stay out of mainstream propaganda programming as I find that it makes me generally think negatively about the world and is mostly fear based. So below I have copied and pasted some interesting numbers to put things in perspective. Feel free to google this also, it's quite interesting.

In 2011, 8 Americans died in terrorist attacks worldwide. In that same year 29 people died after being struck by lightning.

Regarding being killed by a terrorist (based on numbers from USA) you are:

35,079 times more likely to die from heart disease
33,842 times more likely to die from cancer
5,882 times more likely to die from medical error
1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident
9 times more likely to be killed by a police officer

For comparison: According to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, only 80 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks from 2004-2013; 36 of those were killed in attacks that occurred in the USA

From the CDC: from 2001-2013, 406,496 people died by firearms on US soil (incl. homicide, accident, and suicide)
From US State Department: from 2001-2013, 350 people citizens were killed overseas as a result of incidents of terrorism

The Fatal Numbers:
* The odds of being the victim of a shark attack are 1 in 11.5 million worldwide. Although there are 65 annual shark attacks each year, only a handful are fatal. Compared to this, a person is 3 times more likely to drown and 30 times more likely to be hit by lightning.
* Compared to being killed by a dog, the likelihood of which is 1 in 18 million, a person is twice as likely to win the lottery and 5 times as likely to be struck by lightning.
* 1 in 8 men and 1 in 24 women over the age of 40 will die from a sudden heart attack, while 1 in 4 men and 1 in 5 women will die from cancer.
* Worldwide, 1 in about 2,050 people will die each year from unclean water, which carries numerous, life-threatening diseases. Each year, more people die from a lack of clean water than from wars.
* The chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are about 1 in 20 million. A person is as likely to be killed by his or her own furniture, and more likely to die in a car accident, drown in a bathtub, or in a building fire than from a terrorist attack.
* The chances a person will be killed by an asteroid are 1 in 200,000, which is much higher than the odds of being killed by hail, which is 1 in 734,400,000.
* Each year, 1 out of 100,000 people die in a skydiving accident, which is 17 times lower than the risk of dying in a car accident.
* The odds of dying in a severe storm are 1 in 68,388. A person is more likely to die slipping in his or her bathtub, which occurs at a rate of 1 in 11,469.
* A person’s chances of dying in an elevator are 1 in 10,440,000. Due to successful elevator brake systems, an elevator has plunged only once—in the Empire State Building in 1945.
* The lifetime probability of dying in a car accident is 1 in 100, which is 200 times higher than the probability of dying in a plane crash.
* While 1 out of 5 people fear the possibility of being murdered, the odds that a person will be murdered in any given year are about 1 in 18,690. According to the FBI, violent crime is now at a near-historic low.Read more