[epolanski]

I feel like one very important factor in mortality is simply cultural.

The things that stand out more to me are:

- Russians tend to be much more prone to risky, dangerous or violent behavior. From reckless driving, silly behavior to unhealthy relationships with alcohol and drugs you really get lots of extremes. Those extremes further fuel tragedies and thus more of this behavior.

- at the same time, Russians are culturally less individualistic. In some sense we in the west care less for the state and more about ourselves. In Russia this balance is slightly different. This impacts the value and care people have for their own lives.

- Russians are a traumatized population imho. WW2 is still a major collective trauma. Another very major source of trauma is corruption. Most Russians I've met are borderline resigned that things can't get good. They can get better, happier for some time, but it's like there's always a huge cloud looming on their lives. I believe their culture of corruption and centuries of endless autocracies makes them negative further pushing violent, risky and unhealthy behaviors.