What’s the yearly death rate for a U.S soldier, and how does that compare to other profession’s rates of death and injury on the job?
The question is way to broad. You need to specify what job the soldier has. There’s a huge difference between an infantryman and communications guy.
There is a common misconception by civilians that being in the military in and of itself puts you at an elevated risk of getting killed. The overwhelming majority of jobs in all branches of the military are very safe and rarely exposed to higher risk than the guy working at best buy.
Infantry.
I remember reading an article a couple of years back that said eightteen year old men serving in the armed forces in Iraq have a lower deathrate than eightteen year old men living in Los Angeles.
Back of the envelope calculation…
The most dangerous year in Iraq for US troops in Iraq was 2007, when 900 troops died. That year there were 146,000 US troops in Iraq. So that is a fatality rate of around 20 per 1000. That is far more than than mortality rate in the general US population ages 15-24 (0.9 per 1000).
But this doesn’t take into account things like:
- Only a small percentage of the US army was in Iraq at any given time
- Any given soldier was only in Iraq for a limited length tour of duty
- Most of the troops in Iraq would be cooks, administrators, etc, not front line troops (though this of course would make the death rate for those front line troops much higher).
Plus, you are looking only at soldiers in Iraq, not soldiers generally. And you have picked the worst year in in Iraq.
The OP isnt about US soldiers in a combat theatre, or even about US soldiers serving at a time when the US is engaged in a major combat. It’s just about US soldiers.
My guess is that the death rate is highly variable, depending on whether their happens to be a major combat during the period surveyed and, for any individual, whether he or she is posted to the combat zone and in what capacity.
In the long run, you’d expect the death rate to be somewhat higher than for the civilian population. At least some of the time the US is engaged in major combats, and soldiers are much more likely to find themselves in combat zones than the rest of the population.
When I was in the Army, the biggest risk to my health was misunderstanding the tower over the radio and almost getting hit by a UH-60 as I crossed the runway.
But that was only a single occurrence. These days, I have to worry about robots killing me.
My room mate (a Latino male in his late 50’s) joined the Army when he was 17 and went to Vietnam because he thought it was safer than going to high school in east Los Angeles.
To be fair most of the military is men so to be more accurate you’d have to compare the mortaily of men or at least weight the average. Then you’d also have to compare it by race. Black males of that age group are significantly higher than average.
Then you’d have to figure out a scheme to weight the numbers so it’s a better comparison.
Dude, Fallout: New Vegas is just a game. Honest!
My brother served in the military during peacetime, mostly in/around Turkey. I was surprised at the number of non fatal injuries he related. Then again, he was jumping out of planes.
What I’m getting is that the OP is interested in the relative difference in the danger (of injury and death) of being a US infantryman vs. being a cop, firefighter, high-rise construction worker, miner, race car driver, or other position that is often seen as “dangerous” to some significant degree beyond that of a normal 9-5.
Sign me up!
Yes.
I don’t understand your calculation. (900/146000)*1000 = 6.
However the OP specified all infantry. I do not know how many infantry were in the Army in 2007 nor do I know how many infantry were in Iraq in 2007.
Care to explain the 20 per 1000? how did you arrive at that number?
In the Wiki article on the battle of Stalingrad, it says that an incoming soldier could expect to be killed w/i one day of battle.
Apples/oranges.
Servicemen aren’t admitted to duty unless they are in pretty good physical condition, and training involves further toughening. Army troops are not a random selection of any population, even for their age.
And the life expectancy at Omaha Beach was measured in seconds.
I believe being a farmer is the most dangerous job in America.
The same sum you did, only you got it right 
There’s a lot of websites on the subject. The ones I checked had timber cutter and fisherman at numbers one and two, but the order varied.