English: The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) – the most comprehensive database of terrorist incidents to date – was founded and is currently maintained from programmes in the United States. This, combined with the fact that terrorist incidents would have been covered extensively in the US media dating back to the 1970s makes it likely that it has the most complete record of terrorist attacks in recent decades.

In this visualization we show the annual death toll from terrorism in the US since 1970. The September 11 attacks in New York stand out as the most fatal terrorist event in the world in recent history. In fact, claiming the lives of nearly 3000 people, the death toll in 2001 was almost four times higher than the combined deaths from terrorism in the US since 1970.

Based on fatalities we see terrorism was relatively high in the 1970s, then comparably ‘quiet’ – with exception of major outlying years, 1995 and 2001 – in the decades which followed. Over the last five years there has been a small but steady increase in terrorist deaths in the US.

In most years terror attacks caused fewer than 50 deaths per year, and in many years no one died from attacks. With exception of 2001, terrorism accounted for less than 0.01% of all deaths in the US in every year since 1970. For comparison, around 120 people die in road accidents in the United States every day. This means the annual death toll from terrorism in most years is equivalent to half a day or less on the country’s roads.

When we look at the number of terrorist attacks we see a marked decline since the early 1970s.