With a Powerball jackpot of $460 million, the country is once again coming down with lottery fever.
There was no winner of the jackpot in the most recent drawing on Jan. 3. And while the big prize isn’t quite as big as it was last August (when it topped $750 million), that’s not stopping people from dreaming of what could be. But even the most optimistic players realize they’re probably not going to win it all.
As of Wednesday morning, the odds of winning the lottery stood at one in 292.2 million. How does that compare to other unlikely events? Short answer, it’s not good news…
To put things in context, consider this: The 1980 U.S. Men’s hockey team victory over the U.S.S.R—the “Miracle on Ice”—only had odds of 1,000 to one. But it gets much worse from there.
For instance, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, your odds of being struck by lightning this year are 1 in 1,083,000 – and, over the course of your lifetime, those drop to about 1 in 13,500.
Speaking of things falling from the sky, you’ve got a one in 1,600,000 chance of dying from a local meteorite, asteroid, or comet impact, according to a 2014 paper by Tulane University earth sciences professor Stephen A. Nelson.
The odds of being killed by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067. And that’s nothing compared to your odds of dying in a Grand Canyon flash flood, which stand at 1 in 14,270,000, according to The Book of Odds.
And even if you really show up the oddsmakers and make three consecutive holes in one the next time you hit the links, it still won’t put you close to your chances of winning Powerball. Your chances of such a successful day on the Greens currently stand at ‘just’ 156,250,000 to 1.
