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When Col. Douglas Mortimer says 'I reached almost 50 years of age with my system, not many men last long in these parts. How long do you expect to last?' so you start researching about life expectancies 👍:

Okay so basically, based on this statement (or quote or whatever) I decided to do some random research about life expectancy, and how long Mortimer would've been expected to live at birth. So like, verify

1. If, yes, men do not last long at this point of time, and him reaching almost 50 years of age is wow

2. How long can Manco (the 'you' of the dialogue) expect to last?

So life expectancy is the average period that a person may expect to live, and it varies from decade to decade. For example, according to the cdc's website, the life expectancy at birth for men in the US, in 2021, is 73.5 years. So if mortality patterns stay the same, you'll die around 73.5 years. I think.

Anyways, so there's lots of data about life expectancy and stuff, but this one is focused on Mortimer from 'For A Few Dollars More' aaaaaand unfortunately the movie does not give a clear date as to when the action takes place. Also, the data for life expectancy during the 19th century... it's confusing.

So the movie is a western right, so it's gotta take place around the 19th century or something. It features trains (which appear like, after the 60s?) and we see Mortimer flipping through the 'El Paso Tribune', papers that are dated back to june 1875 (or 1873 or even 1879, numbers are hard to read).

Okay so they've got to be around late 70s, and Mortimer mentions his age, so that would mean that he was born in the 20s. 'Almost fifty years of age' would mean that he is somewhere in his late forties? So that brings his birth somewhere between the late 20s and very early 30s.

So what was the life expectancy then? Well according to the ncbi's website, taking in all the info for life expectancy for white men between the 20s and 30s, and getting the average... that's around 40,6 years. Probably way less. Since, you know. There were wars. And stuff.

This whole thing clarifies (in my opinion) the first and second part of Mortimer's statement, so the whole 'I reached almost fifty years of age with my system, not many men last long in these parts', as he has successfully outlived the life expectancy.

That brings us to part 3! Which is 'how long do you expect to last?'.

So that's the tricky part. Kind of. Because the problem is... I have no idea how old Manco (Clint Eastwood's character) is supposed to be. However, we see Mortimer call Manco 'boy', and Mortimer is supposed to be in his late forties, so we can assume, based on the nickname and on Clint Eastwood's age at the time of the movie's release, that Manco is more or less thirty-five years old, or is in his thirties.

Okay, so that means that he would've been born somewhere between the 30s and 40s. And so the life expectancy at birth is around 41 years... yeah.

Life expectancy as a whole is only an estimate, if your country's life expectancy is 81 that does not mean you'll necessarily die at 81 years old, but this is just... fun activity for me.

So Mortimer's life expectancy was around 40,6 years -he outlived it, congrats-, and Manco can reply with 'oh yeah my life expectancy is up to 41 years' -even if that's kind of a weird reply-. Yay.