4 ms·

Is 1:5000 an actually good assessment? I'd suspect it's very much not, especially if you avoid obviously dead trees and maybe move if a storm comes.

OscarCunningham 5y ago
You could calculate it by taking the average lifetime of a tree and dividing by the length of time slept and the number of trees in squashing distance.
- sfink 5y ago
  Only if tree death is uniformly distributed over a tree's lifetime for some bizarre reason. And it isn't. The logic in the story is BS. First, you would never, ever get into a car with that logic. Second, trees just aren't that ephemeral. People who live in a forest would be very aware of when they do or don't fall (or more problematically, drop large branches.) It's not as straightforward as just avoiding storms or dead-looking trees. Sustained wet weather, especially after a period of dry weather, is a common cause. As is the opposite for some trees (eg oak trees drop limbs in sustained hot dry weather.) As for disease or other causes, an experienced hunter in a familiar area could tell at a glance. The message I got from the story is that they probably did have a very good reason. They either thought it would be too hard to communicate, or they were themselves cargo-culting the falling tree excuse when the reality was more likely to be... I dunno, snakes or nasty bugs or annoying sticky sap or whatever.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    I think your explanation is pretty plausible, I wonder why people are downvoting it. Like these guys probably have homes, with bedding of some sort, maybe they'd rather sleep next to their wives than some caterpillars. If I was giving somebody from a far-off place a tour of my workplace and, on the bus ride home, they suggested it was getting dark and we should camp on the sidewalk I'd probably not go for it. If they were really insistent I'd probably amplify the danger of sleeping on the sidewalk to shut them up.
  - wutbrodo 5y ago
    > First, you would never, ever get into a car with that logic. The logic isn't applicable to any set of risks. As deadly as cars are, the risk of car crash death is much, much lower than 1/5000 per trip. It's probably closer to applicable to being a drunk driver, and "you would never operate a car drunk" is pretty accurate for many people.
gpm 5y ago
1:5000 would suggest an average lifetime of 13.7 years for a grown tree (i.e. not counting the years where it's too young to sleep under), and that's before the ability to avoid trees that look more likely to fallover. I don't know anything about trees around there, maybe they're really short-lived? For forests around here, it's a gross overestimate.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Somehow I suspect trees in Papa New Guinea are different than the trees where you are
  - ccalloway 5y ago
    or perhaps the main difference between Papua New Guinea and the GP's location is that people feel entitled to make up weird questionable stories about PNG and not about their place.
- chillfox 5y ago
  Don't know about Papa New Guinea, but where I live we have had lots of healthy trees fall over from a bit of wind when the ground is soaked.
- mort96 5y ago
  Remember that the relevant set isn't the set of all trees, but the set of trees old enough to be large enough to sleep under. That means the average lifetime would be: (number of years it takes for a tree to become big enough to sleep under) + 13.7. I would still guess that the number is wrong, I suspect that trees have a longer life on average from becoming what we would consider "big" until they fall over. But it's still an important detail.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    I mean “big enough to sleep under” is around 50+ years for most hardwoods IIRC. Also, you have to consider groups of trees that can fall on you in the surrounding area. So it’s really the probability that a tree falls within any given 50m radius, towards the center. I think the stated probability is pretty accurate. Also as humans, we tend to pick trees that provide the best shelter, thus older. From experience, if one of those big older branches decide to fall, you don’t want to be underneath. As a kid, a huge oak tree lost a huge branch right in front of me. It scared the crap out of my 8yr old self, so much that I still remember it quite vividly, it would have killed my brother and I if we hadn’t just moved out of the area. The limb looked perfectly healthy btw, green and all. There was no indicating factors, according to the adults at the time.
mongol 5y ago
I think most trees fall when there is stormy weather. A wind free day, I think much less than one in 5000 trees fall.
robocat 5y ago
If the story is based on Jared Diamond’s story, the tree was dead, and the estimate was 1:1000. https://www.openculture.com/2015/08/jared-diamond-underscores-the-real-risks-in-everyday-life.html https://www.openculture.com/2015/08/jared-diamond-underscore...
quickthrower2 5y ago
Not an expert on this, but I suspect you wouldn't want to move camp during the night if you can avoid. Especially in the rain.
strken 5y ago
PNG has a lot of eucalyptus trees, and some species drop their branches with zero warning, which originated as a mechanism for surviving droughts. I don't know enough to tell whether that's what's going on in the estimate.

OscarCunningham 5y ago

You could calculate it by taking the average lifetime of a tree and dividing by the length of time slept and the number of trees in squashing distance.

sfink 5y ago
Only if tree death is uniformly distributed over a tree's lifetime for some bizarre reason. And it isn't. The logic in the story is BS. First, you would never, ever get into a car with that logic. Second, trees just aren't that ephemeral. People who live in a forest would be very aware of when they do or don't fall (or more problematically, drop large branches.) It's not as straightforward as just avoiding storms or dead-looking trees. Sustained wet weather, especially after a period of dry weather, is a common cause. As is the opposite for some trees (eg oak trees drop limbs in sustained hot dry weather.) As for disease or other causes, an experienced hunter in a familiar area could tell at a glance. The message I got from the story is that they probably did have a very good reason. They either thought it would be too hard to communicate, or they were themselves cargo-culting the falling tree excuse when the reality was more likely to be... I dunno, snakes or nasty bugs or annoying sticky sap or whatever.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I think your explanation is pretty plausible, I wonder why people are downvoting it. Like these guys probably have homes, with bedding of some sort, maybe they'd rather sleep next to their wives than some caterpillars. If I was giving somebody from a far-off place a tour of my workplace and, on the bus ride home, they suggested it was getting dark and we should camp on the sidewalk I'd probably not go for it. If they were really insistent I'd probably amplify the danger of sleeping on the sidewalk to shut them up.
- wutbrodo 5y ago
  > First, you would never, ever get into a car with that logic. The logic isn't applicable to any set of risks. As deadly as cars are, the risk of car crash death is much, much lower than 1/5000 per trip. It's probably closer to applicable to being a drunk driver, and "you would never operate a car drunk" is pretty accurate for many people.

gpm 5y ago

1:5000 would suggest an average lifetime of 13.7 years for a grown tree (i.e. not counting the years where it's too young to sleep under), and that's before the ability to avoid trees that look more likely to fallover. I don't know anything about trees around there, maybe they're really short-lived? For forests around here, it's a gross overestimate.

thehappypm 5y ago
Somehow I suspect trees in Papa New Guinea are different than the trees where you are
- ccalloway 5y ago
  or perhaps the main difference between Papua New Guinea and the GP's location is that people feel entitled to make up weird questionable stories about PNG and not about their place.
chillfox 5y ago
Don't know about Papa New Guinea, but where I live we have had lots of healthy trees fall over from a bit of wind when the ground is soaked.
mort96 5y ago
Remember that the relevant set isn't the set of all trees, but the set of trees old enough to be large enough to sleep under. That means the average lifetime would be: (number of years it takes for a tree to become big enough to sleep under) + 13.7. I would still guess that the number is wrong, I suspect that trees have a longer life on average from becoming what we would consider "big" until they fall over. But it's still an important detail.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I mean “big enough to sleep under” is around 50+ years for most hardwoods IIRC. Also, you have to consider groups of trees that can fall on you in the surrounding area. So it’s really the probability that a tree falls within any given 50m radius, towards the center. I think the stated probability is pretty accurate. Also as humans, we tend to pick trees that provide the best shelter, thus older. From experience, if one of those big older branches decide to fall, you don’t want to be underneath. As a kid, a huge oak tree lost a huge branch right in front of me. It scared the crap out of my 8yr old self, so much that I still remember it quite vividly, it would have killed my brother and I if we hadn’t just moved out of the area. The limb looked perfectly healthy btw, green and all. There was no indicating factors, according to the adults at the time.

mongol 5y ago

I think most trees fall when there is stormy weather. A wind free day, I think much less than one in 5000 trees fall.

robocat 5y ago

If the story is based on Jared Diamond’s story, the tree was dead, and the estimate was 1:1000. https://www.openculture.com/2015/08/jared-diamond-underscores-the-real-risks-in-everyday-life.html https://www.openculture.com/2015/08/jared-diamond-underscore...

quickthrower2 5y ago

Not an expert on this, but I suspect you wouldn't want to move camp during the night if you can avoid. Especially in the rain.

strken 5y ago

PNG has a lot of eucalyptus trees, and some species drop their branches with zero warning, which originated as a mechanism for surviving droughts. I don't know enough to tell whether that's what's going on in the estimate.