Microlife: The unit of life

Microlife: 30 mins of TV soap, 2 cigarettes, 7 units of alcohol

A microlife is thirty minutes of your life expectancy. You can use it up by chilling for 30 minutes or you could start to speed through them by smoking a few cigarettes or having a few drinks.

A simple way to bring difficult-to-grasp long-term, slow-burn risks into a unit that can motivate you and a handy way to compare risks.

Even better, you gain a microlife with 2-3 cups of coffee. Win!

Also see, micromort, the unit of death

Interesting? See Microlives: A lesson in risk taking, by Cambridge University Professor of risk David Spiegelhalter . Or see his 15 min TED talk: Motorbikes, Terrorism, Heart Attacks, Sausages: Professor David Spiegelhalter at TEDxOxbridge , or the full paper .

Published 21 Oct 2015

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Micromort: 1 day of living, 20 miles by bike, 250 miles by car

Micromort: The unit of death

A micromort is a one in one million chance of sudden death during the activity. You get a day of regular living for one micromort (though clearly that probably depends on what your average day is). Turns out you get a lot further per micromort by car, and that motorways are by far the safest form of road. You’ll experience 7 micromorts from running a marathon and 39,427 from climbing Everest. Introduced by Stanford Professor, Ronald Howard. Also see: Microlife, the unit of life…A micromort is a one in one million chance of sudden death during the activity. You get a day of regular living for one micromort (though clearly that probably depends on what your average day is). Turns out you get a lot further per micromort by car, and that motorways are by far the safest form of road. You’ll experience 7 micromorts from running a marathon and 39,427 from climbing Everest. Introduced by Stanford Professor, Ronald Howard. Also see: Microlife, the unit of life

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