Secondary Effects

The December 4, 2006 issue of Time Magazine has an article titled, Why We Worry About The Wrong Things. In the process of discussing the irrationality of choosing to drive instead of fly the article mentioned that during the days following 9/11 approximately 1000 more people died in car accidents than did during the same period the previous year. So if you factor that in, the terrorist attacks can be said to have killed approximately 4000 people instead of the estimated 3000. You could go further and add the number of deaths (both military and civilian) from combat and sectarian violence in Afghanistan and Iraq. This makes the total number of deaths caused by the events of 9/11 higher still. So while this analysis is backward looking it still makes us painfully aware that we must consider just not the immediate effects of our decisions but also every link in the chain of events that follow.