> that less than 100 people died because of ... Such claims are usually meaningless if the deaths are not immediate, because the causes that contribute to a pe

> that less than 100 people died because of ... Such claims are usually meaningless if the deaths are not immediate, because the causes that contribute to a person's death are manifold. If you smoked a single cigarette in your life, this single cigarette might change something in a single cell in your lunges, which gives you cancer and you die from it a couple of years later. You just will never know. It is possible. But how likely is it? If a single beam from a radioactive decaying atom from Chernobyl hits a single cell of you, this might give you cancer and you die from it a couple of years later. You just will never know. It is possible. But how likely is it? If you smoked a single cigarette in your life and were hit by a single beam from a radioactive decaying atom from Chernobyl, and die a couple of years later from cancer: what killed you? The cigarette, Chernobyl, something else? Instead of talking about absoluted numbers here, we should talk about statistics, in other words: reduced life-expectancies. Aside of immediate casualties, this is the really reputable number of interest. So the question is: To what extent have how many people been exposed (so far and into the future) to radioactivity from Chernobyl and by how much did (and will) their life expectancy decrease in each case (depending on their rate of exposure)?