Powerball: Why getting eaten by a shark is more likely than winning the $1.73 billion jackpot (2024)

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Powerball: Why getting eaten by a shark is more likely than winning the $1.73 billion jackpot? ›

The odds of matching all five numbers and the Powerball to earn the jackpot is roughly 1-in-292 million. You're more likely to get bitten by a white shark if you're a surfer at 1-in-17 million, finding a four-leaf clover at 1-in-10,000 or getting struck by lightning at less than one in a million.

Powerball drawings are broadcast live every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday from the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee. Powerball drawings are also live streamed on Powerball.com. The overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.9. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.

To put those numbers in perspective, the chances of getting eaten by a shark are 1 in 264 million. (The chances of simply being attacked by one are higher: 1 in 5 million.) The chances of being struck by lightning are about 1 in a million.

Lottery officials say the chances of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350. With the Powerball, the odds of taking the grand prize are 1 in 292,201,338. Numbers that big are impossible to wrap your brain around, though. So let's put that into a bit of context.

To better your chances of winning any lottery, you have to buy more tickets, he said. The more tickets, the more chances of choosing the right combination of numbers.

Getting struck by lightning

According to the National Weather Service, you have a 1 in 15,300 chance of being struck by lightning, meaning you have a better chance at that than winning Powerball. In fact, the NWS reports that the U.S. averaged 43 reported lightning fatalities per year from 1989 to 2018.

Lightning strike

Your odds of dying from lightning are 1 in 161,856, compared to about 1 in 3,748,067 for a shark attack.

In the United States, the likelihood that a person who goes to beaches will be attacked by a shark is 1 in 11.5 million, and a person's chance of getting killed by a shark is less than 1 in 264.1 million. However, in certain situations the risk of a shark attack is higher.

The chances of being bitten by a shark are very small (1:3.7 million) compared to other animal encounters, natural disasters, and ocean-side dangers.

Has anyone ever won both Mega Millions and Powerball? ›

Apart from Jackpots, there are other small prizes in each of these games. there are some serious lottery players who won smaller prizes in both Powerball and Jackpot. But as per the official records, there is no single person who won both Mega Million and Powerball.

“The lottery always makes money. Just like Vegas, the house wins,” Lefton said. “Otherwise it would not be a business.” In fact it's even harder to win Mega Millions and Powerball than it used to be because recent rules make the odds even longer so lottery games can sell more tickets, Lefton says.

But, as Chen and other mathematics experts have said, there are no numbers, combinations, or methods to give you a better chance at the Mega Millions jackpot. You can, however, increase your chances by simply buying more tickets.

Despite the mass fear surrounding the deadly animals, the chances of being attacked and killed by a shark are one in 3.75 million, according to the International Wildlife Museum. The chances are lower than the possibility of dying by a lightning strike, a firework accident, or a stroke.

You might think you're safer on land than in the water on your next tropical vacation, but you'd be wrong. Getting killed by a falling coconut is 30 times more likely than getting attacked by a shark. And are responsible for an average of 150 deaths annually.

While it's true that a shark's sense of smell is powerful and that menstrual fluid contains blood, there's no scientific evidence that women swimming in the ocean while having their period are more likely to be bitten by a shark.