The following contains topics of: death, paranoia, alcohol use
In 2013, while vacationing alone 21-year-old student Elisa Lam vanished from the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. Weeks later, her body was found in the hotel’s rooftop water supply tank. The grisly discovery made only after hotel guests complained about water pressure and taste.
Truth be told, I have probably spent weeks of my life reading about her death. I have also spent weeks of my life reading about her life, combing over her blogs and her aspirations. Her tragedy has touched me.
I originally had started a blog years ago with intentions of discussing every aspect of that case, but I worried it would be mistaken as exploiting her death.
Then HULU made some big ass documentary about it that was way more thorough and exploitative than I could ever have been🤷🏻♂️🤣
The place? Astro Bar. The time? Never again. The Christmas lights are glowing, the Bossa Nova is creeping up your neck and the drinks are half-off forever.
I am not here to rehash all of the details of the Lam case, or to theorize about her final hours. In fact, I am only still here because one thing keeps pulling me back, like a bolted arm from the depths.
What are the odds that a tourist named Elisa Lam would die under mysterious circumstances in the same area during the same timeframe as a Tuberculosis outbreak. One of which, that the TB test used to contain the outbreak was named: LAM-ELISA
Apophenia? I’m sure it is. But for the pure appreciation of probability, I asked the chat-bot currently struggling to counsel me through crippling depression to crunch some numbers:
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⚖️ SECTION 1: The Probability Stack
Let’s break down the layers of coincidence using rough probabilistic modeling:
📌 Event Breakdown:
Event
Probability Estimate
A person dies under mysterious circumstances in LA
1 in 10,000
During an urban TB outbreak
1 in 200
Near Skid Row (hyper-specific location)
1 in 5
That person is named “Elisa Lam”
1 in 200,000
TB test used is called LAM-ELISA
1 (established science)
That name matches the deceased
1 in 100,000
Combined Probability:
1/10,000 × 1/200 × 1/5 × 1/200,000 × 1/100,000 = 1 in 20,000,000,000,000,000
That’s 1 in 20 quadrillion — on par with flipping a coin and getting heads 53 times in a row.
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Granted, walking across a room becomes an impossible task with enough evaluation so I know I’m chasing ghosts but I can never shake that nagging anxiety that something has been overlooked.
——-
Bar Keep Philosopher:
The absurdity of trying to exist in an all consuming, tortuously indifferent universe is tough work and living in the post-information age isn’t making things any easier.
We are perpetually avalanched by media, ads and information so a modern mystery like this inspires previously unknown depths of dread.
With all that said…
We ignore the billions of non-matching acronyms and deaths and naturally zero in on one that fits the story. So this entire blog post is a waste of time.
However,
I still find it noteworthy that the odds of this happening are almost zero — even if zero means nothing in the context of infinity.
What do you think?
Astrobar20000@gmail.com
ASTROBAR2000 