What Is the Color of Sudden Death?

Everything you thought you knew about Star Trek was wrong:

Although Enterprise crew members in redshirts suffer many more casualties than crew members in other uniforms, they suffer fewer casualties than crew members in gold uniforms when the entire population size is considered. Only 10% of the entire redshirt population was lost during the three year run of Star Trek. This is less than the 13.4% of goldshirts, but more than the 5.1% of blueshirts. What is truly hazardous is not wearing a redshirt, but being a member of the security department. The red-shirted members of security were only 20.9% of the entire crew, but there is a 61.9% chance that the next casualty is in a redshirt and 64.5% chance this red-shirted victim is a member of the security department. The remaining redshirts, operations and engineering make up the largest single population, but only have an 8.6% chance of being a casualty.

We’d like to see this broken down further into away team deaths, deaths caused by clouds of fake sparks rising from consoles, deaths from extremely cheap “invisible monsters,” deaths from extremely cheap “brain-destroying hums,” deaths from red-and-green-wobbly-circles, and deaths from those guys who look like black and white deli cookies.

(Via The Mary Sue)