[ccalloway]

It seems like 1:5000 is not an accurate probability, but just a number which he chose in order to convince himself that sleeping under a tree was not a risky activity. But he chose a bad number and later realized that an argument based on that number was not convincing.

If the chance was actually 1:5000, the longevity of trees would be similar to that of hunters sleeping under them - or lower, since hunters can sometimes avoid the hazard, but trees are exposed to it every night (and all day as well). Actual data on tree mortality seems to indicate that the chances are much lower than this. Almost certainly they do not make sleeping under trees a significant risky activity.

[lelandfe]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6502774/

There’s a real dearth of info around coconut fatalities. This 1984 paper examined a 4 year timespan of all trauma-related admissions to one hospital in Papua New Guinea. 9 of them (2.5% overall) stemmed from coconuts. In 3 of the cases, all children, the patients slipped into coma.

From what I’ve read elsewhere (no good links, sorry), coconut injuries worldwide seem to have fallen significantly due to better harvesting practice - the age of a coconut and their chance of falling appear to be linked. While I can’t find a good paper saying this, I do buy it.

So, perhaps not 1:5000, but (at least at one point in time) definitely a risk.

[notahacker]

Takes the whole tree collapsing to kill the tree. A large enough branch (or a coconut, if we're on Papua) should suffice for a hunter.

[ccalloway]

The hunters said 'a tree might fall on you and kill you'? This is supposed to be a nugget of ancient wisdom. Now it turns out it's actually a coconut falling out of the tree? Are you providing this extra information? Or was it somehow implicit in the original telling?

Is it possible that both the original teller, the reteller and you too, are starting from the (unfounded) assumption that the hunters know what they're talking about, and are adapting the facts to fit this assumption?

[Timpy]

I read somewhere that the Mongolians believed flowing water was sacred and they had a taboo about defecating near it. For the wrong reasons they accidentally prevented cholera. If avoiding sleeping under trees prevents tree falls, lightning strikes, coconut comas, snakes from dropping on you, and whatever else then it doesn't really matter why the hunters don't sleep under them does it? Not having coconuts to worry about is just a happy bonus to the survival statistics.

[NoPie]

Even if it is, no one suggested that local hunters sleep every night in the forest. If they happen to sleep under the tree once in a year, it won't increase their risk of death significantly.

There could be another reason why sleeping in the forest was dangerous – e.g., poisonous snakes or dangerous animals etc. Also if the temperature drops at night and they didn't have enough clothing, they could get hypothermia and so on.

[krick]

How did he even come up with these numbers, anyway?