Vietnam Vet Death Rate
It is apparently based on an estimate that 800,000 Vietnam-era veterans had died by 2000. That number was reasonable: About 9.2 million Americans served in the military during the Vietnam era (1964-75), so that would mean about 8 percent of them had died and 92 percent were still alive.
The problem arose when someone applied the 800,000 figure to a different denominator: 2.7 million, the estimated number of veterans who actually served in Vietnam, rather than at home or in some other theater. This made it appear that nearly one-third of those veterans were dead in 2000 and that they were dying at a rate of almost 400 a day. That would have meant more than 100,000 deaths a year, or nearly two million between 2000 and 2015: a path to near-total disappearance.
In reality, the death rate for Vietnam-era veterans in recent years has been comparable to or lower than that of other men in their generation, according to the CDC.
Of the men with the age distribution of Vietnam-era veterans who were alive in 2000, about 12 percent had died by 2010, with about 1.5 percent of the survivors projected to die each year since then.
(I don’t know if I believe these figures because there is a lot of room for mistakes and unknowns. Plus, it doesn’t show the percentage of actual in-country veterans still alive.)
There is no real way to know how many of us are left. Phony in-country Nam vets are everywhere. The DOD probably has an accurate count of who actually served in Vietnam, but I don’t know if they have an accurate count of how many of us have died.
I try not to worry about it anymore. I thank God every morning I wake up still breathing and ask him to give me twenty more years because I’m not finished with all the things I want to do in this life. That may sound silly to some people, but I believe attitude has a lot to so with long term survival.
When I think back on how PTSD had control of me ever since Nam, and how much I have fought it off and made strides to correct the symptoms inside me, I realize there is hope for us. We can adjust and live with it and become better people at peace with ourselves in our twilight years.
