How many people died? (Death Note theory)

Greetings, dear humans and fellow aliens!

This was going to be a theory about L’s real name, based on statistics and such things. While doing my research, I stumbled across “The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases”. In order to get some more information about who L might be, I read it.

It wasn’t in vain, even though the term “thumb turn lock” is stuck in my head. I learned a new thing!

So, back to the main topic, I was going to make a theory about L’s real name but not anymore. The “Los Angeles BB Murder Cases” states that L had so many names and pseudonyms that even he didn’t know what his name was.

You might think that’s weird, but it works really good. That guy had hundreds of alternative names (I’m not kidding, it’s written, it’s a fact).

Therefore, I decided to try and determine how many people were killed by the Death Note.

In “Death Note 13”, we see that Light was active as Kira from November 28 of 2003 and May 25 of 2004, before he passes the notebook to Higuchi.

In the first episode, we see the open notebook. It has four columns of names and 38 lines, in two pages. Those killings occurred only during five days. In those two pages, are five days of killings.

Do you realize how much that is?

He killed 304 people in five days. That is 61 people per day, more or less.

From November 28 to May 25, it’s 179 days. In that period, he murdered 10919 people, plus Lind L. Tailor, Naomi Misora and the twelve FBI agents. If you add those numbers, you get a total of 10933 people.

Just to give you an idea, the deadliest serial killer of all time, a man named Luis Garavito, murdered around three hundred victims and only 138 were proven.

Light exceeded that in less than a week.

Meanwhile, Misa held the notebook for only thirty-six days, killing only 400 people (you know it can only go downhill when you combine the words “only”, “four-hundred” and “killed” in the sentence “she only killed four-hundred people”). She wasn’t really focused on being Kira, she just wanted to meet Light and help him.

While both Misa and Light are under arrest and while they have no memories, Higuchi is active for 136 days. As you can see in the picture, he kills as many people as Light every day: 61 people, plus some businessmen Yotsuba wants to get rid of, along the way. If you multiply that for the number of days, you get the number 8296 people.

Afterwards, Light retrieves his notebook and so does Misa, on October 28 of 2004. He continues with the same amount of killing every day, until l’s Death, on November 5 (I guess that’s another reason to remember the fifth of November). That’s just eight days or 488 dead criminals.

After L’s death, the killing double, making it 122 deaths every day. In the period of time before giving the notebook to Mikami, which is five years and twenty-one days, he murders 225334 criminals.

On November 26 of 2009, Teru Mikami becomes the second Kira.

I must say I admire his will to help his God and his tiny calligraphy. I mean, seriously! Where can I buy that pen?!

Anyways, he uses seven columns of names divided into seventy-six rows. He has a really tight handwriting. Which means that, in total, he kills 532 people every day. He kills a total of 33516 people in sixty-three days.

The series ends on January 28 of 2010, either with Light and Mikami’s death (in the anime) or Light’s death, followed by Mikami’s a few days later (in the manga). After that, there are no more victims.

If we add up all of the numbers, we get a total of…

… 76149 criminals dead in a total of six years.

The amount of people wrongly convicted every year is around 4,1 percent of the total of convicted criminals. That means that roughly 3123 of the people that Kira killed were actually innocent.

But let me give you something to think about.

Every year, around 437000 people are murdered, excluding other crimes, like rape, robbery and such.

In the last episode, Light states that worldwide crimes have decreased 70%. If that’s true, then, by killing 76149 people in six years, he also stopped 1835400 other people from dying, apart from others who have suffered violent crimes.

Light, Misa, Higuchi and Mikami, by killing 76149 people, 3123 of them being innocent, saved the lives of 1835400 other people. Basically, they saved 1759251 lives if you subtract the number of victims of the Death Note.

Is it good? Was it worth it?

Or was it bad? Did they waste lives?

Were they justice?

I don’t know, what do you think?