Get Busy Living
WE ARETHE 7%.
Life might kind of suck right now.
Zoom out.
One draw among 117 billion
WHERE WOULD YOU LAND?
Almost every ticket changes what “lucky” means.
It doesn’t make today easy.
IT CHANGES WHAT “IMPOSSIBLE” IS ALLOWED TO MEAN.
A note worth opening
ONE STORY.
ONE REASON TO GET BUSY LIVING.
See the math
THE NUMBERS ARE THE POINT.
The draw weights each era by estimated births, then weights region within that era. The further back we go, the wider the uncertainty, but the central result does not move: the typical human life was pre-modern, agrarian, and precarious.
Birth totals follow the Population Reference Bureau’s widely cited estimate. Historical living conditions are grounded in long-run data assembled by Our World in Data.
The 7% is the share of everyone ever born who is alive now. The roughly 1.5% chance of drawing the present era reflects births since 2010. They answer different questions.