How many people (strangers) have to die... before you consider it a tragedy?

I guess that strictly depends on the situation/circumstances. If it's someone you're close to and that person dies ... then the lost of that one person is a tragedy.

As for deaths involving people you're not emotionally attached to, it's hard for me to decide how many deaths constitutes as a tragedy because personally, I think one death alone is a tragedy ... that is if that person dies other than from natural causes. So I'll just vote for one person.

I understand the philisophical aspect of one being a tragedy... but when is it justified to oublish TRAGEDY in Bold face CAPS type in your personal newpaper. Stangers only... no attachments.

hmmmm .... so i seemed to miss the "strangers" portion of the original question. For some reason im still leaning towards the thought that it still depends on the circumstances. Death through illness isn't usually portrayed as a tragedy unless it's a very large number of deaths from one deadly illness (like maybe hundreds of people dying because of SARS for example) . If people die because of terrorism, then the number of deaths doen't have to be as high to be seen as a tragedy (like maybe only 15 people in a car bombing, for example).

Also I guess it depends on the time frame those people die. If you take 20 people and they all die simultaneously, then it's seen as a tragedy but if it's the same number dying in a period of 48 hours ... then it may not be viewed as a tragedy by the media. I'm not sure how to expand on this further.

But if I had to pick a number representing the number of deaths of strangers before it is seen as a tragedy ... then I would have to say 20 people ... minimum, before it should be published in the papers. [Too bad I can't change my vote to reflect that point of view]

one death is a tragedy, thousands a statistic.

"One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." - Stalin

It would depend how they died. If it was some Darwin Awards shit, I wouldn't care if it was 6,000 ... fuck 'em.

if were talkin americans then about 300m anyone else 5-10

StarofEight you beat me to that quote. :D

yes, poor you. ;)
its all raeltive, there we go.

haha yes, it's all relative AND subjective

I agree with The Singularity, it depends on personal perspective, emotional attachment, time frame, and dying rate.

It really does depend on the circumstance. If someone gets stabbed by some maniac in Sunnyville Happyoak USA, then it is a tragedy because it is unfathomable to the local people. If 90 people are killed in Somalia by a machete gang, its expected.

Yeah ... look at the reaction to Columbine.

Every time there's a plane crash, etc. the Canadian media feel report how many Canadians were involved. Apparently, one Canadian is as important as a whole planeload of "foreigners".

The American media always reports the number of Americans, and I'm sure the Mexican media always reports the number of Mexicans.

Circumstances, locations, age and types of death define the quality of the tragedy, and judging by the same criteria, the more deaths there are, the bigger the tragedy. By the same token, the bigger the potential, that is lost by a single death, can make even that one death extremely tragic (Hendrix, Lennon, Marley etc).

How many people die of smoking related sickness every day in the world? Any how many would consider that tally a tragic?

well it depends like it said earlier. But for goverment standards of a tragedy i think it has to be 15,000 and over.

death from old age, though sad. shit happens.
but any other death, is a tragedy.
one is far too many.
if it's self inflicted, then it's frigging stupid

762

According to Stalin...one.

Death from GW Bush ("so what's the difference"), or perhaps Henry Kissinger (Dr. Death) counts are at least in the tens of thousands, and that's nothing compared to a certain Pope exterminating Cathars, of which that church and of those which the likes of GW Bush and Henry Kissinger affiliate with, as such they don't seem to see anything "tragic" whatsoever, just a whole lot more of the global energy resource and thus global domination pie for the rest of us.

Regards, Brad Guth (BBCI h2g2 U206251) http://guthvenus.tripod.com/update-242.htm