this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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One extra death a day wouldn't even move the needle, it sounds terrifying but there's lots more likely ways to die.
Humans are awful at probability, so yeah - there would be an entire highly-profitable industry centred on hand detection and protection products.
Yup. I just looked up car fatalities in the US. It's 120 people per day. Source
I think it's funny how if this was caused by a giant floating hand that only targets people in cars, people would be absolutely terrified to get on the road. But since it's caused by cars, people are just like, "meh, that's just the way it is."
It’s the illusion of control. We all know logically that the best driver in the world can still be killed by a really negligent fellow driver, but people don’t really internalize that. If there were a giant hand that sometimes killed people on staircases, people would be more worried about staircases than they are now, even though plenty of people already die on them (about a tenth as many die on the stairs as occupants of cars die in accidents). We know what the risk factors are, and we can reduce our own risk by using a bannister, carefully clearing snow or ice from outdoor steps/making sure there isn't a loose carpet on indoor steps, and arranging our homes to use stairs less frequently as we get older. Doing those things makes us feel like stairs are less dangerous, even though our statistics reflect a world in which people already know to do those things.
It’s why aneurysms are so scary to some people- we don’t really know how to diagnose what causes them until they’ve already happened, so they feel random to people
But knowing humanity it would be a spectacle
It would be the single most active gambling economy.
I suppose you would gamble on location? Country/state. Age and gender of victim? And then they read it on the nightly news like lotto numbers? “Male. 40s. Mexico.” You win the Hand Jackpot.
the size isn't that big if its index can crush one person and nothing else around, so you're in luck if you see it once in your lifetime I think
Does it pick one person randomly on the planet then travel there in one day? Then you'd probably see it a few times moving from person to person. Especially in high population areas. It would be a fairly common sight traveling between China and India. It would definitely be unusual to witness a crushing or to know anyone who was crushed.