Guns, germs, and a steeled knife

We showed in a prequel article that middle-age White men worldwide are committing suicide at a high rate, and this rate of increase varies in relation to the amount of uptick for any demographics’ unemployment.[i]  Stock market volatility, and losses to savings, don't help.  Ironically the same Eurasian population, who in the bestselling book was noted to have economically succeeded via guns, germs, and steel, are now seeing their men –post financial crisis- commit suicide through similar methods: guns, poisons, and a steeled knife.  In this promised sequel, we will continue on the theme of understanding suicide.  But this time instead of focusing on the demographic and economic factors, we will here deepen our understanding of the attributes and frequencies of many dozens of suicide mechanisms possible (e.g., gunshot to the head, gunshot to the abdomen, overdosing on non-prescription drugs, etc.).  Among the myriad take-aways from this article is that fatalities (both from suicides and homicides) by drowning have been a less used method, relative to its brutality and success rate.  And for murders specifically, we see that Americans have a penchant for the gun technique, even though it is expensive and doesn’t provide the prolonged agony a malevolent character would otherwise prefer.  Modern state executions even consider it less “humane”.  The data sets used are from various official government health databases, around the industrial world.

What we’ll show later is that a hanging death is similar, on multiple attributes, to a gunshot death.  Of course they differ however, and we see that among celebrities in recent years, hanging has been the suicide mechanism of choice.  For example, the following celebrities were all (sometimes secretly) down-on-their-luck and chose hanging versus acquiring a gun: Robin Williams, Simone Battle, Sean O’Haire, Lucy Gordon, Alexander McQueen, Aaron Schwartz, and possibly David Carradine.  On the other end of the spectrum, as we’ll see, poison was rarely used.  Though in one popular case, Brad Delp, did this method become employed.

Studies have shown that there are essentially 3 attributes to death systems, which can be quantified and probabilistically grouped.  An American study concentrated onto these dimensions to analyze death: lethality, time, and agony.[ii]  Among a few dozen of the specific suicide mechanisms studied, several quality clusters were identified based on the attributes shown here:

1.     Gun

a.     Hanging (this is not its own separate cluster but statistically it is associated with a gun death and hence listed before physical)

2.     Physical (e.g., drowning, suffocating)

3.     Poison

4.     Fire, and knife

We chart below the typical position for each of these 5 major mechanisms above, along the three attributes.  Again among many specific forms, using any general mechanism (e.g., gun, poison, etc.), results vary.  For example, a gunshot to the abdomen is unequivocally more painful and more protracted, versus aiming the gun towards one’s heard one's heart.  Additionally, suicide by non-prescriptions is unlikely but possible, whereas normal household toxins are far more decisive.

The blood color map shows that the most lethal method (ranked 1 and blood colored), which is also the most quick and painless, is therefore shown to be the most "efficient" for suicides.  Those data dimensions are shown on the top-back of the cube.  Conversely, the front-bottom of the multi-dimensional cube is least attractive for suicide (and hence ranked 4 and whitish colored)!  It is of interest that modern executions consider death by a firing squad as less humane, versus death by lethal injection.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control uses many of the same labels, over the past decade, associated with suicide means.[iii]  They show for example the following shares of suicide counts, among these mechanisms:

What we also notice of course that generally the most frequent method employed is also the most effective (e.g., gun), but for the case of poisoning.  So we inexplicably see much greater poisoning, among lay people.  This mechanism contains a lot of pain, and room for mistakes, leading to many failed attempts particularly among middle-aged people.  And this suicide function is one of the reasons the topline successful suicide rates are capped.  One would need to enjoy KGB-grade poison, catered from a heinous government leader, in order to pull it off successfully.[iv]

Besides these static shares of suicide method frequencies, in the United States, there is a torrid pick-up in hangings in recent years.  This converges with the rest of the post-industrial world, where in some large developed countries (e.g., United Kingdom), hangings account for more suicides than all other methods combined.  This article is not about the advocacy of any suicide method, which we’ll note later is an unfortunate decision if one makes it.  This article is only about mortality analysis impacting a key segment of the population, particularly after this tumultuous economic crisis.

Now homicides are also an interesting idea worthy of scrutiny.  They account for roughly an equal magnitude of deaths as do suicides.  And while an evil spirit would prefer the same high lethality as someone contemplating suicide, the former may elect a slow and agonizing death.  In such a case, the statistical rankings change for the homicide clusters as from the suicide clusters shown int he cube above.

For much of our data, the less desirable suicide methods now become the most desirable homicide mechanisms! Fire, and knifing therefore would go from weakest choice, to the most preferred choice for murderers (as anyone can see this modern and demented ISIS video, or the ancient 凌迟 -lingchi- portrayal below)[v].  And with the exception of poisoning and a small pick-up in knifings, all the other ranks flip-flop.

So in the data cube we showed earlier, the X (time) and Y (agony) axes on the bottom-plane need to invert, and then all the vectors would point away from the origin (front-bottom) to the direction of greatest utility (back-top)!  Yet looking at the share of murders, guns oddly continues to be the means of choice here as well.  This is one of the reasons President Obama recently performed executive actions to make gun-access more backbreaking so that inner cities across the U.S. that have not economically revived, don't now devolve into irreparable war zones.[vi] 

It should be clear that we are not advocating the assistance of anyone’s death.  These morbidity statistics are a fact of our life, and an interesting case study for engaged probability students.  The ecosystem of thinking and attempting death is an excruciating system (including for one’s broader families and communities), once we include the vast majority of failed attempts into the statistics.

Suicide is a severe enough topic that in both this (and our antecedent) article, I would be remiss to not strongly admonish you to seek help if this is something you are considering.  The International Association for Suicide Prevention is a notable starting resource for people anywhere in the world.[vii]   Take a step back and reflect on the things that you enjoy doing with your life, and aim to constitutionally and opportunely live for the very long haul.[viii]

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[i] http://statisticalideas.blogspot.com/2015/12/suicide-after-financial-crisis.html , and http://statisticalideas.blogspot.com/2015/12/smoldering-markets.html

[ii] CE Rhyne, “Dimensions of Suicide: Perceptions of Lethality, Time and Agony”, in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 1995

[iii] http://www.cdc.gov/injury/index.html

[iv] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-implicated-in-fatal-poisoning-of-former-kgb-spy-at-posh-london-hotel/2016/01/21/2c0c5052-bf92-11e5-98c8-7fab78677d51_story.html

[v] http://video.foxnews.com/v/4030583977001/warning-extremely-graphic-video-isis-burns-hostage-alive/#sp=show-clips

[vi] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/04/fact-sheet-new-executive-actions-reduce-gun-violence-and-make-our

[vii] https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

[viii] http://statisticalideas.blogspot.com/2015/07/centenarian-risk.html