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[–] lodro ago 

...

Sure, it's possible to meet a serial killer. Of course it's possible. Hell, its possibility is established by the definition of a serial killer alone - they've got to meet people to kill them, right?

But that isn't the claim. The claim is that it's a certainty, or is extremely likely. The only way to establish that as a fact would be to produce data. There won't be any data, because it isn't true.

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[–] pm_me_firearms ago 

Well, no. There is data. How many serial killers there are. How many people do you meet in a lifetime. Do some maths that I'm too lazy to figure out, and there you go.

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[–] lodro ago  (edited ago)

Yeah. My back-of-a-napkin calculation came up with a big fat nope.

Example:

Average lifespan of ~7 decades

Average 20 U.S. serial killers emerge per year. Assume all are dead or in prison in exactly 10 years, and that they're on average 30 years old when they start (giving you 40 years to meet them).

This gives about 800 current or future serial killers available in the general population at any given time for you to meet.

US population ~325,000,000

New people met daily on average: 2

New people met per lifespan less early childhood: ~40,000

Odds that any particular person you meet is a current or future serial killer: 800 / 325,000,000 = .0000025 = .00025%.

Probability you will meet a current or future serial killer in your lifetime: ~9%.

Every time I had to make an assumption - several dozen times - I made the most generous, serial-killer-meeting-promoting assumption that I reasonably could. For example, I assume that you meet newborn babies at the same rate you meet 20-somethings and so on. I assume that serial killers meet strangers at the same rate as average people. Etc.

And the best I could get was about 9%, which is probably unrealistically high.