The article makes a good point, and one that can be somewhat confusing to people.

The problem is that while the probability of the single event is low, when you do the math for a lot of events, the chance that it will happen at least once can be significant.

A simple example: a coin toss is 50/50. Now flip the coin say, 10 times. How often to you get all 10 results the same? Pretty rarely.

The one in a thousand event works the same; eventually, with enough tries, the chances of it happening to you, become significant.

And if the bad thing that happens is bad enough, it is totally rational to take extra precautions every time.

I think recognizing this is at the core of much of the attitude toward "prepping" of the folks on this forum: that unlikely events can and do occur almost daily (like the trees falling in the forest every night as described in the article). The odds of winning the local "million dollar" lotteries are 10's of millions to one. Yet, someone wins almost every week.

We all have decided that it is worthwhile to prepare for the unlikely event when and if it happens to us.