You joined the military and had a much lower chance of being injured or killed than the person of your parent's generation who was forced to join the military whether they wanted to or not?
I have no idea what you're talking about here. 25-35 years ago there were virtually no wars, there was a near zero chance of getting killed in the military.
Whereas now, there are very reasonable chances for soldiers to get shipped to fight "terror" and get injured.
I was implicitly assuming his parents generation is the same as mine (my dad was of vietnam age). However, after some thought, I realize I'm an edge case (I'm at the high end of the 20-somethings, my dad was 32 when I was born). My mistake.
While quite possibly the least cheerful film ever made - it was based on a UK military planning exercise (Square Leg) that was actually pretty optimistic. In the optimistic version - only 90% of the population of the UK is killed, in the realistic ones it is much worse.
That's not clear. US military deaths in the 1980s were higher than in the 2000s, in spite of the fact that the active military in the 2000s was considerably larger.
The active military was ~2.1 million in the 80's as opposed to ~1.4 million now. The death _rate_ in the early 1980's was slightly lower than the death rate today.
Of course, the active military in the early 1980's had a ridiculously high accident rate. It would be a fairer comparison to look at the mid-to-late 90's. In the link below you can see that the death rate for active duty soldiers was about half of what it is today.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. 25-35 years ago there were virtually no wars, there was a near zero chance of getting killed in the military. Whereas now, there are very reasonable chances for soldiers to get shipped to fight "terror" and get injured.