It is shown that only a small fraction of the many supernovae in the Galaxy produces observable supernova remnants; this fraction, which is found to depend weakly on the lower mass limit of the SN progenitors, and more strongly on the specific characteristics of the associated interstellar medium, decreases from about 15% near the galactic center to 10% at R(gal) of about 10 kpc and drops nearly to zero for R(gal) greater than 15 kpc. Whether an SNR is detectable is determined by the density of the ambient interstellar medium in which it is embedded; it is found that SNRs are detectable only above some critical density (about 0.1 per cu cm). The presence of large low-density superbubble cavities around stellar associations due to the combined effects of stellar winds and supernova shells strongly suggests that a large portion of the detectable SNRs must have runaway stars as their progenitors.
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Kafatos et al. (1980) studied this question.