Orders of magnitude

I received some interesting pieces of snail-mail this morning (for a change). As well as my weekly subscription to New Scientist (more about that later), and a letter from NTL informing us that we will soon be subscribed to their services (sorry BT), there was my monthly Amnesty International newsletter.

Together with the (aptly timed, considering that a state of war has just been declared) newsletter is a poster:

The figures quoted on the poster are:

• 50'000 civilian deaths


• 500'000 civilians injured


• 2'000'000 refugees and displaced people


• 10'000'000 in need of humanitarian assistance

They are quoted to have come from "estimates by humanitarian organisations and leaked UN draft planning documents."

However, I feel that the figures are somewhat conservative. Do those numbers include those people who will killed due to cancer from the radiation exposed by the Uranium depleted artillery (Agent Orange for the 21st century) being used by the coalition forces? Or the number of people who will undoubtedly be arrested and detained after the war is over, requiring humanitarian assistance (cf. post-Afghanistan)?

Moreover, I wonder, do people (i.e. the general public) really understand figures like those quoted above? I find it impossible to picture 100's of human deaths, let alone orders of magnitude greater. It scares me.