Since we've recently learned that the value of a lost life is inversely proportional to the population of the country, we need a way to concisely and conveniently discuss tragedies and their relative values. Using 9/11 as the defining constant, we define one (1) Bush as the death of 3000/285,000,000 ≈ 0.00105% of a nation's population. Perhaps easier to remember, 1 kB (kiloBush) is approximately equal to the death of 1% of the population.

Some examples for reference:

  • 9/11 is 1 Bush (of course)
  • total annihilation of a countries population is 100 kiloBushes (the largest value possible under relativistic models)
  • 1 man in Vatican City choking to death on a hotdog is approx. 124 Bushes.

These changes will be voted on in the 2024 General Conference on Weights and Measures and are expected to pass unanimously.

  • MF_COOM [he/him]
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    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I know this is a bit but honestly I genuinely like this idea. Yes at the moment Israel is using proportional deaths as a cudgel, but generally in is very useful to look and rhetorically powerful to look at this metric and gives the savagery of US invasions of Korea, Vietnam etc a unique potency.

    It's not the only useful lens for comparing tragedy, but to say that The Korean War inflicted 20 kBu is an extremely damning statistic.

    • BeamBrain [he/him]
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      1 year ago

      It's not the only useful lens for comparing tragedy, but to say that The Korean War inflicted 20 kBu is an extremely damning statistic.

      Whenever I tell a lib about this, I like to put it into perspective by comparing it to the Nazis, who killed 25% of Russia's population in WW2. The US did 4/5 of a Generalplan Ost to Korea.

      • MF_COOM [he/him]
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Whoah I genuinely didn't know Russian deaths from the Nazis were so large. I mean, I knew it was around 25 million but I didn't realize how many kBu that was.

        This metric is already demonstrating its utility

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, Russia's total population at the start of Barbarossa was around 100 million.

          • Knedliky@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Wikipedia puts the population of the USSR in 1941 at 190-200 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union. Are you talking about Russia specifically? Doesn’t the 25 million number include people from other SR as well?