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**Kepler** · 01-07-2015, 10:07 AM

Re: He's dead, Jim.

Originally posted by Hammer View Post

Bernice Madigan, 115.

I only mention that to say this: we are down to 5 people, all women, still living that were born in the 1800's.

Is that just Americans?

Aren't there about 100,000 Japanese > 100? Even if the falloff curve looks like a continental shelf that would give us a few dozen > 115.

In the same vein, raise a glass to this fine girl.

**Hammer** · 01-07-2015, 10:48 AM

Originally posted by Kepler View Post

Is that just Americans?

Aren't there about 100,000 Japanese > 100? Even if the falloff curve looks like a continental shelf that would give us a few dozen > 115.

In the same vein, raise a glass to this fine girl.

3 Americans
1 Japanese
EDIT: 1 Italy

I think I read a while back that at age 114 there is over a 99% mortality rate before birthday #115. Only Calment has been documented to hit 120.

**Kepler** · 01-07-2015, 10:52 AM

Re: He's dead, Jim.

Originally posted by Hammer View Post

3 Americans
1 Japanese
I forget the other.

I think I read a while back that at age 114 there is over a 99% mortality rate before birthday #115. Only Calment has been documented to hit 120.

Interesting.

Question is, is the first person to hit 130 alive today?

Here's a wonderfully low production value site.

The other one is Italian.

And here's how you get from 1200 110-year olds to just 5 114-year olds.

**Hammer** · 01-07-2015, 10:53 AM

Originally posted by Kepler View Post

Interesting.

Question is, is the first person to hit 130 alive today?

Perhaps. I don't know what to make of those odds. That would theoretically put us out to 2145.

We've had, what, roughly 10 billion people walk this earth and we've confirmed exactly 1 that got to 120, with an effective upper limit of 115-117.

**Kepler** · 01-07-2015, 11:04 AM

Re: He's dead, Jim.

Originally posted by Hammer View Post

Perhaps. I don't know what to make of those odds. That would theoretically put us out to 2145.

We've had, what, roughly 10 billion people walk this earth and we've confirmed exactly 1 that got to 120, with an effective upper limit of 115-117.

Confirmation is part of the problem, since trustworthy record-keeping for anybody but a royal is less than 150 years old.

The other question is are we really moving the upper limit or are we just cramming more and more people into the race, both at the birth end and at each subsequent age due to improvements in medicine?

And eventually there's going to be a definitional issue.

**dxmnkd316** · 01-07-2015, 02:10 PM

Re: He's dead, Jim.

Originally posted by Kepler View Post

In the same vein, raise a glass to this fine girl.

From Wiki:

--At age 85 (1960), she took up fencing
--continued to ride her bicycle up until her 100th birthday.
--Calment smoked cigarettes from the age of 21 to 117

**dxmnkd316** · 01-07-2015, 02:12 PM

Re: He's dead, Jim.

Regarding age maximums, I had a biochem/biomolecular prof back in college that I think said the maximum theoretical age that someone could reach was in the neighborhood of 140. Again, the details are hard to remember, but I think he said it had to do with the number of times a cell can split before it dies off.

**FreshFish** · 01-07-2015, 02:21 PM

Re: He's dead, Jim.

Originally posted by dxmnkd316 View Post

Regarding age maximums, I had a biochem/biomolecular prof back in college that I think said the maximum theoretical age that someone could reach was in the neighborhood of 140. Again, the details are hard to remember, but I think he said it had to do with the number of times a cell can split before it dies off.