Articles

Reading the numbers

Thirty-one pieces. Eight on how mortality statistics get misread, four on where the count comes from, six stories behind the Pathological Toll, six behind Accidental Dooms, six behind the rare cards that replaced weaker ones, and one on the toll those first columns leave out.

The dashboard is a visualisation. These are the explanations behind it, written for anyone who has looked at a global death statistic and wondered where on earth it came from.

Why 1.95 deaths per second? This piece derives the global death rate from scratch, and explains why the "right" answer moved by twenty per cent between 2019 and 2021. What actually kills people Cardiovascular disease leads the global mortality table and has for decades. The far more interesting question is what has been climbing the table underneath it. How rare is a rare death? This piece sorts the rare column: registers, estimates, the coconut myth, and spontaneous human combustion, and explains why we are so bad at judging them. Why Germany looks deadlier than Kenya On the Ledger, Germany's crude death rate is higher than Kenya's. Germans are not in more danger. It is the single most misread statistic in demography. What life expectancy actually measures The most quoted number in demography is not a forecast for anyone alive today. This piece explains what it is built from, why it can fall two years in twelve months, and the better question to ask. The number that says the most about a country Ask a demographer for one figure about a place they have never seen, and many will name this one. This piece explains why the rate reveals so much, how far it has fallen, and where it has not. Where the deaths fall The age bars are shares of deaths, not a ranking of danger. About half fall after seventy, and the smallest bar is the school years. Countries with no card The atlas lists every country in the WHO file for 2023. These are the ones it does not, and why.

Where the count comes from

Four pieces on how a count of the dead came to exist, who publishes the file, and what disease and war do to the record.

The bills of mortality London was already listing its dead every week. In 1662 John Graunt read that list as a series. National registration came later. Not a register The file behind the atlas is a modelled WHO estimate. It is not a live list of deaths, and it is not an American one. Three kinds of paper The Black Death, the 1918 flu, and COVID each broke the count. They did not leave the same kind of record. A year the rate cannot describe The counters are a peacetime year. A big war is a different kind of year, and it often burns the office that would have recorded it.

Behind the Pathological Toll

One story for each counter in that column. The names and the numbers on the dashboard are unchanged.

Cardiovascular Demise Eighteen days The first human heart transplant lasted eighteen days. The counter above it is heart attacks and strokes. Neoplasm Malignancy Several diseases, one slot Lung, bowel, breast and the rest share one ticking number. The study that made cigarettes hard to dismiss is the story. Infectious Pathogens The one that ended Smallpox is the only human disease ever declared gone. The infections on this counter are not. Respiratory Failure Five days of coal smoke London, England, in December 1952, the official toll and the later one, and the slow lung disease the counter actually counts. Neurological Decay She was fifty-one Auguste Deter was not old. The dementia counter is a disease of old age that was named for her. Metabolic Collapse The first dose failed Leonard Thompson's first injection abscessed. Insulin changed which diabetes kills. The counter is the one that remained.

Behind Accidental Dooms

One story for each counter in that column. The names and the numbers on the dashboard are unchanged.

Road Traffic Carnage Four miles an hour Bridget Driscoll, at the Crystal Palace in London, England, in 1896. The driver said he was doing 4 miles an hour. Lethal Falls Fifty-seven metres Franz Reichelt jumped from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. The counter is mostly people over 60. Drowning Abysses Fourteen hundred and ninety The Titanic inquiry's dead are not quite two days of this counter. Fire & Inferno Burns The doors were locked The Triangle fire, in New York City, in the United States, killed 146 people. That is about eleven hours of the burns counter. Poisonous Toxins The wrong cask Arsenic sold as a harmless powder in Bradford, England, in 1858. The counter is accidental poisoning, not suicide. Fatal Electrocution Noon at Chambers Street A lineman killed on a telegraph wire in New York City, in the United States, in 1889. The famous electrocution was a punishment.

The unlisted toll

The lines the first two columns leave out. Four of them tick. The others are explained, and do not.

The Unlisted Toll The unlisted toll About 13 million deaths a year sit outside the first twelve counters. Four published totals now tick. The rest are refused a counter.

Rare cards with their own story

The column as a whole is sorted in How rare is a rare death?. These six are the replacements, each with the series the card is actually using.

Scorpion Sting Deaths Under fifty Mexico's antivenom drop, and a world estimate of about 3,000 deaths a year that the sources say is short. Snow Avalanche Deaths A hundred in the Alps The Alpine series is about 100 deaths a year. The world figure of about 250 is an estimate. Commercial Aircraft, Onboard People on board The card ticks the five-year mean, about 200. The second line is 394 onboard deaths in 2025. Bee, Wasp and Hornet Stings Coded X23 788 certified deaths in the United States from 2011 to 2021. The card says United States. Civilian Skydiving Deaths Nine, then sixteen Nine civilian deaths in the United States in 2024, sixteen in 2025, against more than three million jumps. Pufferfish Poisoning, Japan The liver, at home Japan's food-poisoning series: zero or one death a year. In 2025 the table shows no deaths.

If you want the arithmetic behind the counters rather than the context around them, the methodology page has every figure the site uses and how each is calculated. Terms on the atlas are defined in the glossary. Every page, including these, is listed on the index.

Last reviewed: 6 October 2026