This article was published on July 3, 2017

This weird simulator uses your sex, race and age to predict how you will die


This weird simulator uses your sex, race and age to predict how you will die

Time for your daily dose of existential dread. You’ve previously had a chance to calculate how long your diet will take to kill you, but did you know you can also find out how you will die?

Developed by Nathan Yau, ‘How you will die’ is an oddly beautiful graphical simulator that will guess the approximate time and cause of your death based on your sex, race and age.

The bleak app sources data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to predict the circumstances of your demise, breaking down all possible causes of death in 15 separate categories.

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Here’s how Yau explains how the app works:

Enter your sex, race, and age. Each dot represents one of your simulated lives, and as each year passes, more of your simulated selves pass away. Color corresponds to cause of death, and the bars on the right keep track of the cumulative percentages. By the end, you’re left with the chances that you will die of each cause.

Previously, Yau has built other similarly gloomy apps like this calculator that tells you when you’ll kick the bucket and this simulation that compiles the most common causes of death.

Curious to know how and when you’ll meet your maker? Head to this page and have a go with the ‘How you will die’ simulator.


TNW originally published this piece in October of 2016. We sometimes update and/or re-publish articles from our archives that are fun, informative, or highly-relevant… like this one.

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