On the human consequences of terrorism

Abstract

Terrorist attacks are regarded as low-probability, highly consequential events. What, exactly, are the significant effects of terrorism? This paper presents a cross-sectional depiction of the death and injury profiles for nine of the most violent terrorism tactics: six types of bombings, mass shootings, combined shootings and explosions, and intentional vehicular assaults. By constructing a composite injury and death profile for each tactic under study, terrorist incidents can be ranked in terms of the number of disability adjusted lives lost and disability adjusted life years lost. In addition, the human consequences of terrorism as a whole (on an annual basis) are placed in context relative to the global burden of disease and counterterror expenditures.