"On a long enough time-scale the survivability rate of everyone drops to essentially zero..."
---quote from Archean days, "Information" age, re-translated at least ten or twenty times so some exact meaning might be lost.
However, essentially does not mean Zero.
There are exceptions to every rule and over enough time and frequency an unlikely event occurs more than a few times.
Some fictional and one perhaps non-fictional examples:
In this age far into the future there are more than a few "Immortals" - beings that simply do not die on a regular timescale. They are all unique with rich tapestries of stories on why and how they lasted beyond their natural lifespan and then the eons that followed. A few simply won a 'genetic lottery' and whatever trigger in Man's pattern of life that causes eventual death is off. These are rarer amongst immortals for every thousand years it is near certainty of some fatal event even in civilizations and worlds of very low war and personal danger. Others are more special but more believable - they were blessed or cursed by what Gods there be to not die and when killed they regenerate or reappear by some ancient divine Magick. Some have bodies enhanced by man's magick and occasional bouts of enhanced knowledge of natural law called "Technology" and they have tiny clockwork inside of them or are some kind of tiny clockwork in their entire body and will rebuild any wound and not age in appearance. Others are constructs of light, sound, energy, altered tissue that pretends to be a form of man or like man or woman.
Does this mean they are lucky?
A society in man's pre-dawn days had a curse - "May you live forever" - they were supposedly the best warriors in Man's history and while this certainly has been surpassed in the near thousand-thousand years hence of the Far-Tomorrows, the legend of their valor and sayings do remain. They had no 'Valhalla' to reward warriors, their religion had a gray and depressing afterlife and the best warriors got merely a gravestone to remember they ever lived if they died in battle. Yet even far back and living such a harsh life they knew that Immortality was not a boon but could be a curse. Thus this phrase would only be uttered to their worst traitors or the most wretched failures and cowardly amongst them.
