[dmoy]

If some terrorist nuked NYC, there wouldn't be 15m deaths (there could be well over 1m deaths). The chance of a terrorist attack killing 15m is probably much closer to 0.000001% than it is to 1%.

The estimated immediate casualties from another nuclear state air-burst nuking every major US city simultaneously is only like 60m. A terrorist attack would be able to achieve significantly less.

I get your general point, but what I'm going for is roughly: humans are total crap at properly estimating, predicting, and gauging the risk of crazy anomalous events like that. (I think if we weren't so bad at it, less people would play the lotto for one...)