Plus (or rather times)...
...multiply that by the number of people who are on B3TA, also rather a lot (especially those who live or work in That London).

Then multiply that by the number of different ways you can define "near miss", I'm not that surprised by the number of people who "nearly" ended up in a highly public disaster.

And we have a number of disasters to choose from. My nearest involvement is that my Dad went through Kings Cross the day before the horrific fire. But then so did 100,000 other people and that's just one of the 100-or-so people I know personally. And he wasn't anywhere near 7/7, the Twin Towers, the announcement of a second series of Deal or No Deal, etc.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 11:11, 1 reply)

It's the number of ways you could define "near miss" that's crucial here.
So, yeah.

Some of the near misses of which I've heard over the years have not, I'd say, been all that near at all.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 11:22, closed)

I agree
I travelled to and from work in London by public transport that day* so I could technically claim it was a "near miss" but of course it was actually a very distant miss.

I'm tired of people embellishing weak stories of a coincidental interaction with something that was later involved in a disaster. However, given their apparent appreciation of statistics, they're probably also big fans of the Lottery.

*I travelled home a lot later than usual on the 7th July as I did the same as lots of other Londoners that day: met friends in a pub, shared concerns and sympathies and then got incredibly drunk.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Fri 20 Aug 2010, 14:29, closed)