They hold hands as the carriage moves up the steep ascent, their heartbeats quickening
to the chugging sound coming from below their feet.
As the car reaches the summit, he squeezes her hand tightly, giving her some assurance.
He had to coax and beg to get her on to this ride.
She smiles at him nervously as the car moves along the top of the ride.
The vast panorama of the amusement park lies in front of them.
She tenses, and he laughs.
Whoosh, the car flies down.
G-force pushes their heads back.
They’re both screaming now.
The car makes the second ascent, only on the upwards trajectory they both hear a loud bang.
Before they know what’s happened, they are hurtling through the air towards a nexus of
steel bars.
They look at each other for the last time.
And that, dear viewers, has to be one of the worst ways to die.
In the US alone, from 1987 to 2000, there were 4.5 ride deaths in amusement parks every
year, which might not sound like much to you, but it’s enough.
You also have to consider that as far as safety goes, the US has pretty strict standards.
The deaths weren’t all on rollercoasters, of course.
Just to give you more variety of deaths, today we’ll include other kinds of incidents that
happened when people sat in a carriage and went for a ride at an amusement park.
But before we look at the US, let’s first swing by Europe, the continent where the precursor
to the modern roller coaster was invented.
We’re actually going to start with something quite recent.
No one died in the incident, but what happened will give you a good idea of how human bodies
deal with hitting things on the track.
The accident happened at a theme park called Alton Towers in England, one of the country’s
favorite places to go for a day out.
The ride was “The Smiler”, but trust us, no one was smiling on that ride on June 2
at about 1.50 pm.
An empty safety carriage first set off on the vast network of labyrinthine rails.
The thing was, it just stopped on the track.
That didn’t bode well for the full carriage that was next to go.
Luckily, it wasn’t traveling at its top speed of 52mph (85kph) when it made contact
with the other carriage.
In case you’re wondering, some rides can go as fast as 149 mph (240.0 kph).
The 16 riders hit the stationary carriage traveling at 20 mph (32 kph), but just think
how it would feel to have your legs hit a steel train at that speed?
Five people at the front were seriously injured, with two young women both losing a leg.
The accident was partially blamed on strong winds that prevented the test carriage from
completing its journey, but the park was also to blame and had to pay out about $6.8 million.
We told you this story just to give you an idea of what happens when things go wrong.
The downside to rollercoasters is that when accidents do happen, people tend to hit very
hard things going very fast.
A rollercoaster is really no place to fall, either, as you’ll now discover in one of
the worst tragedies of all time.
The accident happened in England, too, but way back in 1972.
It was the kind of accident many of us have panic attacks over when we are in the queue
about to get on a ride.
The ride was called the Big Dipper and the theme park was called Battersea Park.
There are survivors in this tale, too, and some of them told the story of what happened
on that fateful day.
31 people paid about 20 cents to ride the dipper, advertised as the “thrill-a-minute
joy-ride where you pay to be scared.”
Most of those folks on the ride were just young teens, many of whom were on a school
trip.
As per usual, as the cars climbed up the track, everyone was laughing and screaming, and some
were trying not to pee their pants.
It went up, and up, and up…and then the cars disconnected from the track.
They were now in free fall.
Suffice to say, a few bladders broke.
A survivor later recounted that just as the carriage disconnected everything seemed to
go in slow motion, and then whoosh, they flew back.
People spilled out, hanging on to anything they hit.
One survivor said they will never forget the panicked expression of one young girl as she
lost her grip and fell to her death.
Their carriage has somehow stuck up there, but to say the least, it was on shaky ground.
The woman said, “This girl screamed that she wanted to get off, but she leant on a
wooden barrier and it collapsed.
I tried to grab for her, but I saw her fall to the ground in front of me.
I looked up, and next to the carriage people were hanging out over the tracks.
There was blood everywhere.”
Five kids died that day from the trauma of hitting the ground or the ride.
13 others were injured.
The park never paid anything out, but the ride was closed after that.
As for the cause of death when you fall, a doctor was once asked about it and this was
his reply:
“Most people who fall from a height die because they fracture their spine near the
top and so transect the aorta which carries blood out of the heart.”
It’s usually a quick death, especially from a great height, but then the falling part
must be a bit weird.
Survivors of falls have said their only thoughts were, damn, I’m going to die.
One woman who survived a big fall said she didn’t think about much at all and just
listened to the “whispering of the wind.”
Ok, so that’s how you die when you free fall.
We’ll discuss later the nightmare of being flung from a carriage, which, let’s face
it, we’ve all worried about, but let’s now look at a completely different way to
die.
You can tell us in the comments if you’d prefer your bones to be smashed or dying this
way.
It happened in Australia back in 1979, and to this day is the worst amusement park disaster
the country has ever seen.
You are all grown up now, so we expect if your friend asked you to go on the ghost train
you’d turn your nose up.
Ghost trains aren’t very scary and they are not usually thought of as being dangerous.
Well, the one in Sydney’s Luna Park was on one particular day.
You don’t want to be riding a ghost train when there’s a fire for the simple reason
being that these sorts of rides are generally in covered tunnels.
So, when a blaze got going on this ride in the morning of June 9, the tunnel filled with
thick smoke.
The carriages actually kept moving, but it seems some people got off and tried to get
out as fast as they could since they were choking.
Of the 35 people on the ride, 28 of them came out of the tunnel crying and coughing.
Nonetheless, a father and his two kids died in there, as did four other kids.
Most of them died from smoke inhalation, although some of them were burned to death.
As for how that must have felt, you all know very well that burning hurts like hell.
Until your nerves are burnt through, you will feel the most excruciating pain you’ve ever
felt.
Dying from smoke inhalation would be better because once there is no oxygen you’d pass
out before the flames got you.
This really is a living nightmare, being trapped in a fiery tunnel.
As for how it happened, electricity was blamed, and a cigarette was blamed, but it was most
likely arson committed by an organized crime group.
Apparently, it was related to one gangster wanting to take over the park.
As you’ll now see, even out in the open floating on water can be deadly.
You’ve all seen those rides that consist of people sitting in a round raft and traveling
down some rapids.
You don’t generally have many concerns about getting on such rides.
That’s because they are usually as safe as houses, but in October 2016 in Australia’s
Dreamworld amusement park, things went wrong on the Thunder River Rapids Ride.
Basically, a pump failed, and that meant a sudden drop in the water level.
This led to one of the empty rafts getting stuck on the conveyor that moves the rafts.
The raft behind that, carrying six people, hit it at speed.
What happened next was awful.
The raft with the people in it was pushed into a vertical position, causing its occupants
to fall out.
Worse, some of them were pulled down into the moving components of the ride.
Four adults died and two kids survived.
Paramedics later said that the best doctors in the world couldn’t have helped the victims.
While those kids were thrown into the open water, the adults were trapped in the components
under the water.
We can’t find the cause of death, but it was either on impact with the machinery or
drowning, none of which are pleasant.
The park was at fault and had to pay out $3 million.
Is drowning the worst way to die?
One person that drowned and was later resuscitated said, “I was terrified out of my mind, I
didn’t have any air to breathe.”
She then said at one point she accepted her death.
She added, “I tried kicking with my legs.
And then everything went black.”
Basically, at some point, your brain will make you take a breath.
It’s actually called the “Break Point.”
Water then floods the lungs and the person, still alive, can’t fight due to the lack
of oxygen in their blood.
Some people have described this as torture, although one survivor said, “I just let
go, and my flaccid body just floated in the water for a few seconds.
My lungs had more or less given out, and there was no pain, just comfort.”
Ok, now for something you’d never expect to happen in a million years.
It happened in 2019 on a pendulum ride at Kankaria Amusement Park in Ahmedabad in India.
A round carriage rotated as a pendulum moved the carriage up and down.
It started off quite slow, with many of the 30 occupants looking like they were not scared
at all.
But when the pendulum started swinging really high, people started screaming.
For good reason, too, because the pendulum arms snapped and the carriage bashed into
the ride’s triangular frame.
Looking at it, you would expect that many people died and even if they didn’t, you’d
think a lot of those folks would have suffered some very serious injuries, similar to how
a fly might end up after you’ve hit it with a newspaper.
Fortunately for some people, their side of the carriage didn’t make an impact and they
were kept safely in their seats and didn’t suffer any serious physical injuries.
But two people died whose side of the carriage did make an impact.
They were basically crushed to death, while many others were critically injured.
As for how the ride’s main arm could just break like that, one expert had this to say
about the tragedy:
“India has a long-standing problem which allows the use of inferior, unauthorized copies
of rides made by either local companies or rides sourced from other countries, often
with fatal results.”
Again, no one really expects that kind of thing to happen, but there’s one thing we
all fear when we get on a fast ride, and that is being flung out of the carriage.
Does that really happen?
The answer is yes, and it’s happened quite a few times.
But, seeing as we are doing a round-the-world trip today we’ll now head over to China.
In 2017, a girl was strapped into the “Travel Through Space” ride at Chaohua Park, close
to the city of Chongqing.
Information is scant, but it seems as the ride was in full flight she went into full
flight, except not in the direction the other passengers were going in.
She was flung into metal railings and died later in hospital.
What’s shocking is that her seatbelt had not been working and the bars supposed to
hold her in were not tight enough.
How it would feel to die this way is hard to say, because once she made the impact she
was very likely knocked out.
Perhaps the worst part of this death was the few seconds flying through the air.
We’re going to stay with China just because this next accident was totally insane.
It happened in 2010 at an amusement park in Shenzhen.
The ride was called “Space Journey” and it was supposed to simulate what it’s like
taking off in a rocket.
Basically, a circular carriage was lifted up in the air and spun at a high velocity,
giving the people the feeling of experiencing double gravity.
That was all well and good until one of the carriages disconnected and went flying into
the other carriages.
It fell to the ground in flames, looking like a real space rocket when things go terribly
wrong.
No cause of death was given, but we expect the 50-foot fall might have led to serious
trauma.
On top of that, the carriage was in flames when it landed.
They didn’t stand a chance.
They might not have had much time to think, but this next victim certainly did.
He was an operator at a ride at Naudières theme park in Sautron, France.
The ride was actually one of those kids’ rides that you see going very slowly, often
made to look like a big caterpillar.
This kind of ride should be very safe indeed, but the operator decided to get out of his
booth while the carriages were still slowly moving by.
He then slipped in the gap between two of the carriages and his legs fell through the
holes in the track.
Since the ride was still going, you can only imagine the pain as his body was pushed by
the carriage.
Someone managed to turn the ride off, but the man was so badly hurt that to save his
life doctors had to amputate both legs at the scene.
The guy still didn’t survive.
He wasn’t actually trained to control that ride so the park owner spent 6-months in prison.
As for how it would feel to die this way, it certainly deserves to be on the worst ways
to die list.
We’re not sure how long the guy was conscious for, but we guess he had some time to think
about what was happening.
The cause of death was likely due to being crushed, which can lead to what are called
lysis, ischemia, and vascular compromise.
In laymen’s terms, cells die when a part of the body is crushed.
Lactic acid is released and blood vessels are compressed, and that can lead to death.
Prior to this, if the person is conscious, the injury of course is about as mentally
traumatic as you can get.
The strange thing is, there is something called reperfusion syndrome.
This is when the person is released from the thing crushing them.
They suddenly get lots of oxygen to the tissues and this can have a paradoxical effect that
puts the person in a rather good mood.
Soon after, they usually drop dead, that’s why it is sometimes called, “smiling death.”
Let’s hope the French dude had the last laugh.
Now over to the US, where either the most accidents happen at amusement parks or there
are just more reports available for our researchers to find.
It’s hard to say what the worst disaster in the US was, but the Haunted Castle disaster
at Six Flags Great Adventure park in 1984 has to be up there.
In short, a 14-year old lit a cigarette for some light after a bulb went out.
The place caught fire, a little too easily we should say, and eight teens lost their
lives.
We’ve already covered fire, though, so we’ll add another US tragedy to this story, something
a bit more unique.
It’s unique, sad, and shocking, that’s for sure.
In 2016, a group of people set off from the top of a ride called the highest water slide
in the world, and man, it looked scary.
It was called the “Verrückt” which can be translated as “insane” in German.
It was located at the Schlitterbahn Kansas City amusement park and since its opening
in 2014, it has attracted a lot of attention from enthusiasts of extreme sports.
Of the three people that rode it that day, one of them was Caleb Schwab, the 10-year-old
son of Kansas state representative Scott Schwab.
The others were two women.
They went on their downward trajectory from a height of 168 feet 7 inches (51.38 meters),
traveling at around 70 mph (110 km/h), which really is insane for a water slide.
Literally insane, given a lifeguard at the park had noticed how dangerous it was, once
saying, “I told my friends and family it was only a matter of time until someone died
on Verrückt.”
Prior to the fatality, there were at least 13 pretty serious accidents, mostly down to
the sheer speed people traveled at.
Some folks got off and had to be treated for facial injuries, concussions, or slipped discs.
What happened is they were thrown at high speed into the netting around the ride.
That happened to Caleb and the women with him after the raft went airborne on the second
hill.
One woman hit the net and some metal rings and broke her jaw.
The other woman ended up with a fractured face and cuts that needed stitching, but Celeb
hit the support of the netting and he was decapitated.
The raft should not have gone airborne like that.
It was speculated that the reason it did was that the little boy, light in weight, sat
at the front.
The women were on the heavy side, weighing 275 pounds (125 kg), and 197 pounds (89 kg).
That apparently was the problem, as was the entire setup of this dangerous ride.
We are not blaming the victims, of course, just pointing out what happened.
The ride was closed down in 2018 and the Schwab family settled for $20 million.
No one went to prison, although they almost did.
As for this being on the list of worst ways to die, that depends on how you look at it.
For the family, it had to be one of the most traumatic experiences a human can face, more
so when they were asked to view the body of the deceased.
The death itself must have been painless for the victim, but with oxygen still in the brain,
it’s likely that a person who has lost their head remains conscious for a while.
For how long, we don’t know.
Scientists have talked about this and no fixed time has been stated.
It is possible that the young boy’s last thoughts when he was hurtling through the
air were, “What is going on?”
That makes it at least a very weird way to die.
Now you need to watch, “Totally Messed Up Things That Have Happened at Walt Disney World.”
Or, have a look at...