How do you want to go out of this world? Probably resting peacefully,
slipping away in your sleep completely unaware of it happening. That makes sense,
since most people are afraid of death so what better way of crossing over to the other side
than when you aren't aware? Us though, we'd prefer to go out in a giant explosion, perhaps battling
terrorists or a giant gorilla at the top of the Empire State Building- maybe even giant gorilla
terrorists. We just think it'd be kind of weird to be asleep one moment and the next be sitting in
the afterlife, but if you die in an explosion it's quick, painless, you're fully aware of what just
happened, and bonus points for going out killing a bunch of terrorists/rampaging giant gorillas.
But what's science have to say about the absolute worst ways to die?
Let's dig deep and answer yet another of life's most pressing questions.
EATEN ALIVE
Alright, we didn't exactly consult any scientists on this one, we just figure
that dying while being eaten alive has to be one of the worst ways to go there is.
We're not talking about getting chomped on by an animal and then bleeding out and dying,
we're talking about being alive for the entire- or at least a large portion- of the experience.
And there's several ways this could happen to you... even in the safety of the big city.
Most large predators will kill their prey with a single bite or blow to a vital area.
Lions, cheetahs, and tigers all have an innate instinct to go for the jugular
and suffocate a victim to death. Bears and mountain lions share this instinct as well,
and it exists for the protection of the predator rather than some sense of mercy for prey.
Being a predator is all about taking risks, and every hunt involves the risk of injury-
which can be fatal for a predator who needs to hunt daily to survive.
That's why most predatory animals have evolved to find the most efficient way to kill,
rather than wound prey and risk them fighting back.
Some animals though show little regard for their own safety in bringing down, and eating prey.
Enter the hyena, one of the most savage predators in the world, and the last animal you'd want to be
eaten by. Hyenas typically hunt in packs, but can often go on solo hunting expeditions. Unlike other
pack animals, hyenas though don't suffocate their prey- hyenas start eating their prey alive before
it's dead. Prey will find themselves swarmed by hungry hyenas who bite and tear into their flesh,
often consuming large quantities of it before the animal finally dies from massive blood loss.
Typically this means disemboweling the prey and going for the soft bits around the stomach area,
while lesser ranking members rip the legs from the body so as not to risk angering the senior
hyenas who feast on the soft stomach bits. By the time any vital organs are finally consumed,
the prey animal has been watching itself be eaten alive for a significant amount of time.
Even worse though is when solo hyenas hunt. While a pack may tear prey apart in a minute or less,
a solo hyena follows the same feeding strategy, but that can drag death out over many minutes.
Even more terrifying is the fact that hyenas have attacked many
campers out in the African bush, eating them alive within their tents.
If you think you're safe in the city, think again.
Just last year, a toddler was eaten alive by ants, and only saved from her fate after authorities
investigated claims of abuse and neglect by neighbors. By the time that the police arrived,
the child was completely covered by ants, who had consumed parts of her body. In 2015,
a former beauty queen was eaten alive in her nursing home after her body became infested by
hundreds of thousands of mites. Staff not only neglected the woman, but were warned to not
touch one of her hands for fear it would simply fall off. The coroner who performed her autopsy
said that it must have taken her months or years to die, and it must have been horribly painful.
Slow deaths are probably the worst ways to go, and our next worst way to die is all about going slow.
BURNING ALIVE
Fire hurts, trust us on this one, we've researched it. But the good thing about burning alive is
that typically you either die from the extreme heat before your body is consumed by flames-
like happened with many people burned at the stake- or you're consumed by fire so quickly
that it sears off your nerve endings before you can register much of the pain.
But what if the fire was slow to spread, and not particularly large?
In that case the fire won't generate so much heat and smoke that it makes breathing difficult,
leading to asphyxiation, nor would it spread fast enough to consume large parts of your body
and sear off the nerve endings. A slow burning fire starting at the feet would move slowly enough
that while any nerves in direct contact with flames would die, all the nerve endings remaining
along the length of your body would very much be alive and transmitting pain signals to your brain.
Some ancient societies used this particularly brutal method of execution regularly,
letting victims be consumed by a controlled fire from the feet up. But today if you're caught in
a particularly nasty vehicle accident you could suffer a similar fate. Imagine being
trapped in a cage of broken metal, good samaritans unable to pull you out as your car slowly burns.
The incredible heat would roast your body as flames slowly consumed you.
Our next method of death will have you begging for sweet release,
and was experienced by one man who was kept alive for 83 days against his will.
RADIATION
Death by radiation is a grim prospect, and probably one of the most gruesome ways of
passing away. When your body is blasted by radiation, the high energy particles
zipping through your body can destroy cells or damage your DNA, causing harmful mutations.
We're not talking superpowers here, unless your superpower is to get cancer.
If exposed to a high enough radiation dose, your body's cells and even your DNA can be so
badly affected that you simply start to break down physically. Typically a person starts exhibiting
radiation sickness after an exposure of about 200 rem- for comparison a chest x-ray is equivalent
to about .02 rem. At 200 or higher rem, the risk of cancer is dramatically increased and odds of
survival begin to plummet. You can look forward to a slow lingering death in a hospital bed that
can take weeks or months, and unlike regular cancer which has a chance of being treated,
the damage caused by radiation is so severe that the resulting cancers are simply unstoppable.
The only way to save you would be to repair your DNA- something we're currently unable to do.
What if you had no DNA left in your body though,
like a Japanese man in 1999 who became the only human in history to have no DNA.
Hisashi Ouchi was a technician at a nuclear power facility who suffered the greatest direct
radiation exposure of any person to date. The accident occurred when too much uranyl nitrate
solution was dumped into a precipitation tank, pushing the uranium content to a level that caused
the fuel tank to go supercritical and temporarily become a makeshift nuclear reactor. This resulted
in Ouchi, who was the one pouring the liquid, to be blasted with an incredible 17 sieverts
of radiation- that's the equivalent of being blasted with 85,000 chest x-rays all at once.
Typically 8 sieverts are considered fatal, and Ouchi had received twice that dosage,
so needless to say his outlook seemed grim. Doctors were shocked to discover that the
damage to his body was so extensive that they discovered no DNA left in his blood,
and soon after the accident his body began to decompose from the inside out.
Incredibly, Ouchi would survive for 83 gruesome days.
As his body broke down, doctors found it increasingly difficult to draw blood, which
was itself becoming thick, brackish and brown. Ouchi's flesh began to fall off his body and
nurses were forced to wrap him in bandages just to keep him from bleeding through his own flesh
and dying to blood loss. Doctors desperately tried to keep Ouchi alive by pumping him with
multiple blood transfusions a day, but after just a week Ouchi begged that he be allowed to die.
His doctors however knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study
the effects of radiation on the body, and refused his request.
The blood transfusions continued, and were the only thing keeping
Ouchi alive as his own body became unable to produce new blood cells.
The bandages his body was wrapped in were keeping his flesh from falling off the bone,
and in a small act of mercy Ouchi was placed in a medical coma. Ouchi's right leg eventually
simply fell off at the knee, and within a few weeks he resembled a living skeleton.
Finally, Ouchi passed away from a heart attack on day 83, weighing less than a
quarter of his original weight and mostly just a skeleton wrapped in a thin layer of flesh.
Our next way to die is not just very possible in our modern world, but incredibly painful.
DEHYDRATION
Compared to slowly falling apart due to radiation, dehydration seems like a rather easy way to die-
that's only because you don't know the science of one of the worst ways to die.
Whether you're lost in a desert or simply trapped in an elevator for several days,
you have about three days before dehydration will kill you.
Dehydration starts at losing two percent of your body weight's worth of water,
which you can do by nothing more than rigorous exercise for an hour or a long walk on a very
hot day. This effectively makes you thirsty, and as your body begins to panic about water loss,
it shuts down any ways of losing water that aren't completely vital to your survival. You'll begin
to sweat far less, which is bad news because sweating is one way we keep from overheating.
Your urine will also become very dark as your body sends less water to the bladder,
and the smell will be much more pungent.
After two days of no water, your blood thickens in your veins,
leading to greatly decreased blood flow. This in turn causes your skin to shrivel up on your body,
and with the loss of blood pressure you become prone to fainting. Your body will
no longer waste water on sweating, which puts you at great risk of overheating.
Shortly after, your body kills the flow of blood to non-vital organs in an attempt
to keep you alive. This means that organs within your body begin to wither and die,
and toxic waste begins to build up inside of you. At this point your insides slowly start
to become a toxic dump. Your muscles also begin to cramp from lack of water and salt,
leading to incredible pain- imagine the worst charlie horse you've ever experienced,
but all over your body instead of just one of your legs. Then imagine it lasting for a day or more.
Eventually your body simply can't continue functioning without water,
and the buildup of toxic wastes inside of you will become fatal. Unable to expel waste,
your breaking down organs poison you from the inside out, and your blood thickens even
further becoming more a sludge-like paste than the free-flowing red, red kroovy you're familiar with.
At this point if you don't start drinking water immediately, you'll be dead within the day.
Turns out there's a lot of incredibly painful and horrifying ways to die,
though for us being eaten alive by wild hyenas or even ants in our own home is
probably the most terrifying. If this video has scared you, just remember: death is inevitable
and it comes for all of us. But some of us will experience more horrifying deaths than others.
Now to find out more terrible ways to die check out Worst Punishments In The History of Mankind.
Or check out this other video instead!