Asia.
Home to the two biggest countries in the world and over half the world’s population.
And among those billions, there are some people without the sense or luck needed to avoid
an unfortunate death.
Here are some of the dumbest ways people died in Asia.
Sometimes all it takes to get killed is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like
happened to Agus Syaiful Rochmad.
The fifty-eight-year-old man was out for a walk in his village in East Java and stopped
for some exercise.
At the same time, an elementary school boy was playing with a kite not far away.
The kite got jammed, the boy yanked on it - and it went flying, along with the block
of wood it was attached to.
The block of wood came to a hard stop upside the unfortunate Mr. Rochmad’s head, killing
him instantly from blunt-force trauma.
But how does someone get killed by...an office chair?
Across China, there were disturbing reports in 2009 of office chairs suddenly exploding.
The famous spinning chairs use a pneumatic gas cylinder to control their elevation, but
the pressure was apparently building up too much.
Several people were injured by the explosions - and one unfortunate teenager was hit with
chair shrapnel when his chair exploded, fatally wounding him.
An investigation began into the construction of these chairs in China, and it was enough
to make office workers everywhere think about bringing their own beanbag chair to the office.
Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease.
It was 2013 when Japanese man Takuya Nagaya began acting very oddly.
The 23-year-old began crawling on the floor and insisting that he was a snake - and obviously
his parents were very concerned.
But Nagaya’s father didn’t take the sensible step of calling for mental health help.
Instead, he decided his son was possessed by a snake and he had to get it out of him.
His methods involved repeatedly biting and head-butting his son.
This led to two days of a bizarre exorcism ritual - that eventually left Nagaya dead
and his father under arrest.
But prosecutors will have to ask the question - who was truly the mentally ill one here?
To avoid death, sometimes the key is location, location, location.
A festival was approaching, and a Turkish man bought a sacrificial goat to slaughter
with his family.
But he didn’t have the land needed to corral the goat on the ground - nor was there room
to keep it in his apartment.
So he came up with an unconventional solution.
He built a small fence on the roof of his apartment building and penned the goat in
there.
But the fence wasn’t high enough for a determined goat - and it promptly leaped the fence, fell
off the six-floor apartment building, and landed directly on the goat-owner’s son,
killing him.
The lesson of this next story - don’t tempt fate.
Mount Fuji is a dangerous climb in the best of times, which is why Japan only allows it
to be climbed to its peak between July and September, when the climate is at its least
harsh.
Other times, the trails and huts are closed - but that doesn’t stop daring climbers
like Tetsu Shiohara, who not only climbed it in October, but livestreamed it.
And viewers got a show at the top of the mountain as he admitted he was in rough shape and the
trail was slipperier than he expected.
Then, viewers watched in horror as he started tumbling down a slope feet first, his livestream
coming to an abrupt stop - and his fate unknown until his body was found weeks later.
Social media can be dangerous in more ways than one.
Ms. Yeah was quickly becoming a social media sensation in 2019, as her unconventional cooking
videos won fans among office workers.
She showed hacks for how to cook using everyday tools without a kitchen - including one of
her most famous videos, cooking popcorn in a tin soda can.
But unfortunately, some people did more than watch.
Two girls decided to try the stunt out for themselves - and put alcohol directly in the
tin can.
The can exploded in their face, killing one and burning the other.
While Ms. Yeah denied responsibility, she eventually paid out a settlement to the two
families.
Social media deaths may be a modern concern, but not even historical figures are immune
to dumb deaths - nor are royalty.
Qin Shi Huang was a powerful man.
Not only was he the founder of the Qin dynasty, but he was the first emperor to rule over
a united China.
He fended off assassination attempts and embarked on elaborate tours of China.
But there was one thing he feared he couldn’t conquer - death.
Even the most powerful die, and the emperor was desperate to prolong his life.
He visited shady mystics promising to extend his life with elixirs, but some of these magical
cures may have ended his life.
He had reportedly taken mercury pills made by his court alchemists, and his death may
have been caused by mercury poisoning.
He wasn’t the only emperor to fall prey to too much of a good thing.
Shah Safi of Persia was the sixth Safavid king of Persia, and he was known for being
a ruthless ruler who eliminated anyone who was a threat to his reign.
His run was chaotic, but he successfully expanded trade to Persia and invited diplomats from
Europe to his kingdom.
And one of those may have been his undoing.
He loved to drink, and one of his honored guests was Scedan Cilaze, a famous Georgian
drinking champion.
Shah Safi decided to engage in a drinking contest with the champ - and soon found out
that royalty doesn’t mean victory, as he died from alcohol poisoning.
But in the modern day, there’s one cause of dumb deaths more common than any other.
Hey, wanna take a selfie?
Snapping pictures of yourself may be a fun activity, but there’s a time and place.
And as one unfortunate Filipina vacationer found out in 2015, it’s definitely not at
the side of a busy highway.
Liezle Waga was riding in a vehicle when she asked her driver to pull over and let her
out near a scenic overlook.
As she was snapping a picture, a speeding motorcycle raced down the road and hit her.
She died at a nearby hospital, while the motorcycle driver barely survived the crash.
But it doesn’t take speeding bikes to create a fatal selfie experience.
Five engineering students decided that a water reservoir in Telangana, India would make a
great place to take a group picture.
But maybe they should have been a little better at swimming first.
When trying to take a photo on a rock, one girl slipped and fell into the water.
Another student jumped in to save her - and started drowning as well.
In a panic, all five entered the water and all wound up drowning.
Local authorities increased security around the reservoir and urged people to obey all
the safety signs - and maybe find a safer place to take their selfies.
That safer place would not be on top of a hotel.
Malaysia is known for its tall buildings and luxurious hotels, and one restaurant worker
decided he would like to get to see that up close and personal.
At a massive tower in Genting Highlands, the man decided to climb outside of the sixteenth
floor of the hotel to get a unique vista of the city below.
Unfortunately, he slipped, and proceeded to plunge down nine floors to the roof of the
seventh floor, killing him instantly.
Police ruled out foul play and confirmed that it was a daredevil selfie attempt gone horribly
wrong.
But few selfie disasters were bigger than this one.
Java Island is known for its beautiful sights, and a group of boat tourists wanted to get
a picture as they toured a local reservoir.
There was just one problem - they wanted to get everyone in one picture.
So all twenty passengers decided to move to one side of the boat to make it easier - and
they proceeded to capsize the boat and dump the entire group into the water below.
While rescue teams arrived on the scene and were able to rescue eleven of the twenty,
seven were soon found dead with two still missing.
They say patience is a virtue - but sometimes it can be life-saving.
Mr. Lee was a wheelchair-user, and relied on elevators to get around the shopping center
in Daejon, South Korea.
As he was approaching an elevator, the woman on board rudely pushed the button to close
the door rather than waiting for him.
Mr. Lee became enraged and, instead of waiting for the next lift, began slamming his scooter
into the just-closed doors.
The first two slams made dents in the door, and as Mr. Lee reversed for one last assault
on the door, it worked - a little too well.
The door opened, and the unfortunate Mr. Lee and his scooter plunged down the elevator
shaft to his doom.
Rage can lead to unfortunate ends, especially if time’s not on your side.
It was 1999, and there was progress in the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
A peace agreement had been signed - but militants on both sides were furious.
Four Palestinians were angry enough to plan a series of car bombings in the cities of
Tiberias and Haifa, and set the bombs to go off at 6 PM.
There was just one problem - Israel’s clocks changed earlier in the week, something that
didn’t happen in neighboring countries, and the bombers failed to account for the
one-hour change.
Their timers went off an hour early, blowing the group up while they were en route to plant
the bombs.
Sometimes, time isn’t enough to keep you safe.
Chef Peng Fan was known throughout Guangdong Province, China for his daring cuisine.
One of his most unique dishes?
A soup made from the deadly Indochinese spitting cobra.
He deftly cut the venomous snake’s head off and made its body into soup.
Then, twenty minutes later, he grabbed the head to throw it into the garbage - and the
snake’s head bit him.
Apparently snake heads can still bite up to an hour after being decapitated, as Chef Peng
found out the hard way.
The venom acted quickly, and by the time help arrived, the chef had already gone the same
way as the cobra.
Speaking of cobras, they say the show must go on - but this is a bit much.
Across Indonesia, Irma Bule was a fast-rising star.
The pop singer was known for her offbeat stage performances - including ones featuring live
venomous snakes.
At a party, Bule was performing when she accidentally stepped on a King Cobra.
The snake hadn’t been defanged and it bit her, prompting the handler to offer her anti-venom.
But Bule refused - not wanting to interrupt her performance!
Unsurprisingly, as the performance went on, she got sicker and sicker.
Soon she started vomiting and having seizures.
She was rushed to the hospital, but by then the Cobra venom had done too much damage and
she died - bringing an end to a promising music career.
How far would you go to get out of trouble with the law?
Two best friends went too far.
Zafer Kuzu wasn’t known for his good choices, and the Turkish man had just been sentenced
to community service for injuring another man.
He wanted to get out of his sentence, so he came up with a brilliant plan - he just needed
to get hurt and wind up in the hospital.
He asked two friends to shoot him with a shotgun while he had two pillows strapped to his back.
But playing with guns is never a good idea, and when one of his friends shot him at close
range, the buckshot penetrated the pillow and wounded him fatally.
His two friends were placed under arrest, but hey - Zafer got out of community service
permanently.
But some deaths are a lot...larger in scale.
In Sri Lanka, elephants are a way of life.
The gentle giants can be inconvenient, but as long as you don’t disturb them, they’re
rarely aggressive.
But that wasn’t good enough for one man in 2019.
Seeing a stray elephant coming towards their car in Kataragama, the man jumped out of the
vehicle and attempted to hypnotize the large animal with his hand.
This worked about as well as you would expect, as the startled elephant charged the man,
knocked him to the ground, and stepped on him.
“Don’t bother the elephants” remains a good rule of thumb for staying alive.
For more bizarre deaths, check out “Dumb Ways to Die - USA Edition”, or check out
this video instead.