The holidays are a time of happiness, families, food and DEATH.
You heard me.
Death happens, it's an inevitable part of life.
Some holidays, like Dia de Los Muertos and Halloween celebrate the dead; and others,
like the running of the bulls, in Pamplona, seems to invite death!
The most dangerous holidays however, might be a surprise.
The Running of the Bulls, for example, only see Two to three hundred injuries, most of
those being bruises and scrapes.
In San Miguel, Mexico a sledgehammer firework festival takes place, where they strap fireworks
to the end of sledgehammers and swing them at the ground really hard.
When the plastic explosive hits the ground, the molecules are compressed and the friction
causes heat and an explosion…
Though there aren't stats for how much death this has deathed…
It is totally…
Yeah.
Wow.
50 people were injured in 2008 alone.
Holidays can be dangerous, even without exploding sledgehammers.
The American Automobile Association or Triple A, uses auto crash statistics to estimate
which holiday is the most dangerous, and though Thanksgiving is bad, with 50% more drivers
on the road and a lot more alcohol consumption.
The winner is the Fourth of July!
The National Safety Council estimates around 540 deaths and 58,000 serious injuries from
drinking and driving, and surely from people letting the fireworks blow up in their hands.
*eye roll* // Protip: put it down BEFORE you light it.
// According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, 240 people EVERY DAY OF JULY head
into their local ER for fireworks-related injuries; with 36 percent of those being hand
or finger injuries and 22 percent being head injuries.
7 percent is trunks or…
Other…
I hope it's not…
You know.
*shudder*
But, the deadliest holidays according to science?
Christmas and New Years; says a A 2010 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine!
Researchers looked at 57-and-a-half million death certificates from 1979 and 2004 and
found that 42,325 natural deaths occurred during that time, and a SPIKE happens in the
two weeks trailing Christmas.
Death the halls, everybody!
In fact, more people die in hospitals on Christmas, Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) and New
Year's Day than any other day.
Essentially increasing your chances between 3 and 9 percent overall; 6 percent more on
Christmas.
alone!
There's no one cause for the increase, which is puzzling; they hypothesize it could be
psychological stress, substance abuse, cold weather, winter travel, and even simply overcrowding
in emergency rooms.
In the end, the biggest killer is going to be nature, but we sure are okay with helping
it along at times.
What do you think of all this?