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#ukrisnewarcasualties I love input and interaction from readers. Vic Abadie earned a BS in Geology from Rice University and an MS in Geology from Stanford University. He has spent decades as a petroleum geologist helping companies prospect for oil and gas around the world. To say that he is quite good at "number crunching" would be an understatement. Vic and I talked in person yesterday. He was quite interested in my statistics about loss of lives, etc. in the Ukraine conflict. He had no serious criticism of my formulas or methods.
Let us take this analysis one step further. The current conflict in Ukraine has gone on for 10 months. Deutsche Welle goes on the record and says that both Ukraine and Russia (with its allies) have suffered 100,000 dead each. At the one-year anniversary of the conflict, one could predict that each side would have lost 120,481 military personnel. Using the formula that there are three casualties for each death in a military conflict, each side will have suffered a possible 361,445 casualties with total casualties on both sides projected to be 722,891. Total civilian deaths can be projected with the formula of 8 civilian deaths for every military death. Just using the Russian death rate, we get a figure of 963,848.
Let us assume that the war continues for another year until February 2024. An accurate computation at this point would require the skills of someone like Vic Abadie or Dr. Pedro Peres, neto. I will simplify it with a linear computation.
Russia will have some 240,962 dead military personnel, Likewise, Ukraine will have roughly 240,962 dead military personnel. Each side will have a total of roughly 722,000 casualties for total casualties of 1,445,772. The projected civilian death rate at the end of year two of the war will be 1,927,696. The total projected deaths will be 2,409,620.
The US fought in Vietnam from 1961 to 1975. The Vietnamese government gives statistics for total military and civilian deaths during those 14 years as 3.25 million. If the Ukraine war goes on for three years, the death toll will exceed the death toll that took 14 years to achieve in Vietnam.
Let us go back to those wounded. As I stated yesterday a wound could be anything from a minor shrapnel wound or bullet graze up to a person who is totally disabled with the loss of both arms and both legs. No one does follow-up statistics on the number of wounded people who die earlier due to complications from their wounds. No one looks at veteran suicides except in the US. No one talks about all the mentally wounded people who emerged from these wars except in the US.
My readers, the moral of this story is that war is bloody; it is very expensive; it hurts a lot of people. War is always to be taken seriously and only the absolute last resort.