How Americans Die

By Brian Anderson

via Matthew Isabel\\http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-americans-die

Is it seasonal vibes? Is it because death is having a moment? Whatever it is, this new mortality-rate geographic is as grim as it is fascinating.
The visualization comes by way of New York City based software developer Matthew Isabel, a former Microsoft project manager who pulled numbers from the CDC's 2013 National Vital Statistics Report. The full CDC analysis (pdf), which is definitely worth a look, plumbs the depths of mortality in 2010. That's the most recent year for which we have comprehensive domestic death data, which Isabel adjusted for age and to reflect rates per 100,000 citizens.
Think of it as the broad post-mortem on a range of factors—deaths, death rates, life expectancy, infant mortality, and trends by selected characteritics like age, sex, Hispanic origin, state residence, and cause of death—that the CDC gleaned from death notices "completed by funeral directors, attending physicians, medical examiners, and coroners." From cancer to stroke, diabetes to influenza, alcohol to HIV, and beyond, memento mori hasn't ever looked this neat, tidy even, or been so easy to stomach.
You have to be careful to not extrapolate too much from this sort of thing. But Isabel's visualization—call it the Great American Death Map—does nevertheless bring a number of morbid realities into sharp relief.
Mississippi is the death capitol of the US. With an "overall" mortality rate of 962, the Magnolia State also holds the unsavory distinction of being the country's heart-related death capitol (251). Hawaii (589.6) is the least death-y state (the most alive?) in the union.
Suicide outranks both gun-related deaths and murder. What the CDC calls "intentional self-harm" sits at a nationwide ("overall") rate of 12. That's just on the heels of the combined nationwide rate of firearm injury and homicide (10 and 5, respectively).
Here's where it gets interesting. The US suicide capitol (22.8) likewise boasts the highest rate (20.4) of firearm-related deaths: Welcome to Alaska, the Final Frontier. And you'll maybe never guess which state enjoys the lowest rate of suicide. It's New York (7.7), home to what the World Health Organization says are some of the safest streets in the world, or at least in New York City. On that note...
The bloodiest roads are in Wyoming. Maybe it's all those two-lane highways? Or a Big Truck culture that still flouts open-container laws.
Drug-related deaths are higher than alcohol. Again, we have to be careful here. A considerable percentage of drug deaths come at the hands of legal prescription medications, not controlled substances like heroin or cocaine or, God forbid, the Devil's cabbage. But nevertheless, there it is: Drugs - 12.9, Alcohol - 8.
Is it all a bit dark? Absolutely. But in a moment of peak visualization, with today's web cluttered with infographics whose crispy presentations can't hide the fact that they don't say much of anything, that they're not adding anything of value to the discussion, mortality may breathe new life into making sense of publicly-available data.
To hear Isabel tell it, death datasets make for provocative visualizations that are actually, you know, instructive slash revealing: they "generally have a nice plus in that they can be conveyed both spatially and chronologically in ways an audience can quickly grasp," Isabel writes.
Which certainly never killed anyone.