A U.S. Soldier’s Odds of Dying in Historic Wars

By Robert Quigley Mar 2nd, 2011, 10:19 am

According to Nicholas Hobbes’ Essential Militaria

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, what follows are the odds of death that U.S. soldiers faced in eleven wars throughout history. No one talks much about the Mexican War today, but on a person-by-person basis, it was four times as deadly as Vietnam.

• War of Independence: 2 percent (1 in 50)
• War of 1812: 0.8 percent (1 in 127)
• Indian Wars: 0.9 percent (1 in 106)
• Mexican War: 2.2 percent (1 in 45)
• Civil War: 6.7 percent (1 in 15)
• Spanish-American War: 0.1 percent (1 in 798)
• World War I: 1.1 percent (1 in 89)
• World War II: 1.8 percent (1 in 56)
• Korean War: 0.6 percent (1 in 171)
• Vietnam War: 0.5 percent (1 in 185)
• Persian Gulf War: 0.03 percent (1 in 3,162)