It's an endlessly dangerous world out there, and deaths of infinite variety could lurk
around any corner. That being said, there are surely some ways to go that are more terrifying
than others. Here are the absolute worst ways to die, according to scientists.
What's more horrifying than dying? Try being incorrectly pronounced dead, and then waking
up trapped in a coffin 6 feet under the ground. According to Popular Science, the length of
time one can survive being buried alive ranges from one and a half days to a paltry 10 minutes,
depending on available air and body size. For instance, a larger individual would take
up more space, leaving less room for oxygen.
If you try to dig your way out, you'd get crushed and suffocated by the sudden rush
of dirt and soil. Conversely, if you do nothing, the carbon dioxide levels would eventually
render you comatose as you gently slip into death's embrace.
FearOf.Net presents an actual term for the irrational fear of this sticky situation:
taphophobia. Curiously, this fear led to some chillingly creative coffin "upgrades" in the
late 1800s and early 1900s, from breathing tubes and glass panels to hey-I'm-still-alive-in-here
alarm systems. Think we're past the point where things like this happen? In 2010, the
New York Daily News published an article about a 76-year-old beekeeper who would have suffered
this fate, had the funeral director not detected his pulse as he lay in his coffin.
No, this isn't about the kind of radiation that cell phones or microwave ovens emit:
Non-ionizing radiation isn't strong enough to harm the human body in small doses, according
to the FDA. The kind that can really mess you up is ionizing radiation, which you'd
get from things like nuclear power plants, weapons tests, or outer space.
Ionizing radiation is powerful enough to charge your atoms by removing their electrons. As
Popular Science explains, this can seriously damage your DNA, rendering your cells incapable
of replicating and triggering their deterioration. The type and degree of suffering you'll endure
depends on how you got blasted — whether internally or externally — and how much
radiation you got blasted with, among other factors.
We measure radiation exposure in sieverts. The CDC's Radiation Thermometer provides some
perspective: A chest X-ray emits about 0.1 millisievert (or 1/10,000th of a sievert),
while a flight from New York to Los Angeles emits roughly a third of that. 500 millisieverts
can make you nauseated, and 700 millisieverts can cause hair loss within half a month. Meanwhile,
1,000 millisieverts can cause hemorrhaging and diarrhea, while increasing your cancer
risk. A dose of 4,000 millisieverts can kill you in two months. 10,000 millisieverts can
wreck your intestines and end you in a week, and 20,000 could kill you in mere hours. So
yeah, no superpowers for you, only death.
Humans have gotten quite used to living on land. Sadly, we don't fare as well in the
air or underwater, partly because of the differences in pressure. To protect ourselves during travel,
we stay inside sealed chambers with consistent pressure. But when pressure abruptly changes
due to punctures or damage, uncontrolled decompression happens. Regardless of whether you're flying
or diving, it's both ugly and deadly.
According to the Smithsonian Museum, commercial flights reach altitudes of 30,000 to 40,000
feet. Atmospheric pressure gets lower as altitude increases, making your lungs work harder to
get oxygen. To prevent this, a plane's artificial altitude shouldn't exceed 8,000 feet. However,
any cracks or punctures during flight could cause decompression. At best, oxygen deprivation
could happen. At worst, and with a big enough hole, people can get sucked out of the plane,
like in the 1988 Aloha Airlines incident.
Meanwhile, divers experience increased pressure as water pushes down on them. Divers who ascend
too quickly can experience decompression sickness: The decreased pressure causes nitrogen and
other gases inside their bodies to bubble, leading to unbearable pain, internal damage,
mental impairment, and even death.
The most horrific decompression accident is, perhaps, one that occurred in 1983 in a compression
chamber on the Byford Dolphin oil rig. An error resulted in explosive decompression,
instantly killing several divers.
Ever wonder what lies at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? Given how more people have
walked on the Moon than explored Earth's deepest oceanic trench, there aren't a lot of folks
who can give a comprehensive answer based on firsthand experience. What experts can
tell you with certainty, though, is that this 36,070-foot-deep formation would be an absolutely
terrible place to die.
No one in their right mind would want to dive into the Mariana Trench unprepared and unprotected.
Remember, the deeper you dive into the ocean, the greater the pressure. Down there, an unprotected
person wouldn't just drown. According to National Geographic, every single air-filled cavity
in their body would be instantly crushed like paper by roughly 16,000 pounds per square
inch of pressure, and they'd sink instead of floating to the surface. If it's any comfort,
though, they'd still be recognizably human since the body's water can't be compressed,
as San Francisco Exploratorium physicist Paul Doherty explained in a Reddit AMA thread from
2017.
"Thank goodness for elevators," you think to yourself as you board one on your way up
to the 40th floor. Otherwise, you'd have to take the stairs every day. By the time you
make it to your office, your legs would probably already be killing you. The smile on your
face disappears, though, as the elevator stops just before the 39th floor. Suddenly, your
world literally starts crashing down, and you realize what's likely going to happen
next: You'll die alone, painfully, at the bottom of an elevator shaft.
There are a number of ways being inside a free-falling elevator could go horribly wrong
for you. For starters, you would almost certainly die upon impact, and in the worst possible
way. Just ask the "MythBusters" team, who reported that a crash-test dummy ended up
in pieces after a nine-story, 53 mph elevator drop. Gravity isn't your only problem here,
though.
According to LiveScience, you could just as easily be killed by all the parts and debris
knocked loose inside the elevator. Oh, and your internal organs will likely shift around
inside you as you're falling. As Dr. Brad Sagura of the University of Minnesota's Amplatz
Children's Hospital explained to CBS Minnesota, the fluid inside your organs, plus the fact
that your intestines are "relatively mobile," contributes to how they behave during sudden
drops.
Fortunately, today's elevator safety features make it highly unlikely that you'll find yourself
in this grisly predicament.
Deaths directly related to volcanoes will always be extremely unpleasant. You don't
even need to be within range of one to verify this: Just read the story of how Mount Vesuvius'
unbridled fury wiped out the ancient city of Pompeii.
To satisfy everyone's curiosity, here's what would happen if, say, a researcher observing
a volcano from a helicopter accidentally took what would undoubtedly be the worst dive of
their soon-to-end life.
According to Universe Today, freshly ejected lava can reach temperatures of up to 2,200
degrees Fahrenheit. By the time the person actually hits the surface of the volcanic
pit, they'd be an unconscious fireball. Upon impact with the extremely viscous magma, most
of their skeleton would shatter. Before long, the person would be ashes. Hiking around a
volcanic peak presents a different kind of danger: If the hellishly high temperatures
and toxic gases don't kill you, asphyxiation probably will.
Volcanic geysers or hot springs aren't any better. In 2018, LiveScience reported the
case of a man who fell into one of the Norris Geyser Basin's pools at Yellowstone National
Park. Long story short, the near-boiling, incredibly acidic waters dissolved his remains
completely within less than a day. Experts say that he probably didn't feel much, though,
as the water would have obliterated his nerve endings within a very short period of time.
Frankly, you don't need to fall into a volcano to get a firsthand demonstration of extremely
hot danger and destruction. On its own, being burned to the point of death is pretty terrible,
simply because there are many different ways to get hurt or killed from burning.
When people hear about burns, either first-, second-, or third-degree burns come to mind.
"So remember kids, there is nothing more painful than third degree burns."
Third-degree burns even destroy hair follicles and pain receptors. Here's what many don't
realize, though: that's only halfway through the scale of pyric peril. According to the
National Institute of General Medical Sciences, fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-degree burns cause
serious damage to a victim's fat, muscle, and bone, respectively. The human body is
predominantly water-based and isn't easy to burn. Hence, someone being burned to death
would actually feel themself burning until they can't feel anything anymore.
Of course, the "fire" part of being set on fire isn't the only thing that can kill a
burn victim. Damage to the nervous system, blood loss, dehydration, and even burn infections
can all cause death. If you're trapped with other people in a burning building, inhaling
carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and other toxic components of smoke can be lethal to
your tissues — or you could simply suffocate or lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen.
History's most famous crucifixion victim is, without a doubt, Jesus Christ. Even non-Christians
know that the religious figure died by this ancient form of capital punishment. The "how"
part gets left out of the narrative, though, for understandable reasons: The science behind
crucifixion isn't for the squeamish.
As physiologist Jeremy Ward told The Guardian, different factors could explain how death
by crucifixion happens — and having nine inch nails driven through the victim's wrists
and feet is the least of them. Once the cross is upright, the victim would have to bear
their weight on their bent legs — or arms, if their executioner broke their legs beforehand.
Eventually, gravity would win, dislocating the victim's shoulders and stretching them
out of their sockets. At this point, the victim's chest would have to do all the heavy lifting,
literally. And if suffocation due to a, quote, "perpetual state of inhalation" doesn't do
them in, multiple organ failure would be more than happy to finish the job. A 2006 paper
listed other possible causes, including heart failure, blood loss, and simply losing the
will to live.
A person nailed to a cross wouldn't live longer than a day, though someone tied to a cross
might last for a few days. For more severe crimes, victims were crucified with their
arms straight above their heads, cutting their survival time to just 30 minutes, tops.
Considering the barbaric nature of execution methods from ancient times, you might be feeling
relieved at the fact that they're no longer being practiced. As it turns out, however,
the methods of capital punishment used today aren't always as swift, effective, and merciful
as they're purported to be.
Take the electric chair, for example. In theory, electrocution should be a quick and painless
form of execution. According to ABC Science, it was popular with ordinary citizens in the
late 1800s because it seemed like a less cruel alternative to hanging. Unfortunately, it
doesn't always work how it should in real life. LiveScience recalled how convicted murderer
William Kemmler became the first criminal to die by electrocution in 1890. It actually
took two massive electrical jolts to kill him, with journalists reportedly writing about
how Kemmler's dead body was, quote, "charred and smoking."
And then there's lethal injection, a method that uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze,
and cause cardiac failure in inmates sentenced to death. According to NPR, researchers who
examined post-lethal injection autopsy reports saw evidence that more than 75% of inmates
were experiencing pulmonary edema —fluid in the lungs — and left, quote, "gasping
for air" as they were executed. In other words, the first injection didn't always work — and
the inmates actually died slow, agonizing deaths.
Given how humans are nearly three quarters water, it's not surprising that the dangers
of dehydration can quickly escalate all the way to death.
Popular Science breaks down the journey from dehydration to death into four stages. It
starts with thirst. Under extreme heat or fatigue, the body can lose up to 2% of its
weight in water through sweating. Without fluid replenishment, bodily systems will start
to go haywire as the person's blood volume drops. When the person stops sweating, they'll
begin overheating. This is the second stage, where the person will start to lose consciousness,
and their skin will dry up. At stage three, kidney and liver failure will kick in, seriously
damaging organs and poisoning the person from the inside until the final stage — death.
Children are particularly at-risk for dehydration-related death, which can come within hours. Meanwhile,
a healthy adult can last up to a week with minimal water intake. That's no reason to
tempt fate, though, so please get up and grab yourself a glass of water, now.
Decapitation, whether purposeful or accidental, may seem straightforward. The brain controls
various bodily systems and functions, and it needs oxygen to do so. Thus, it makes sense
that physically separating it from its oxygen supply would shut it down. That's why beheadings
have been around for thousands of years, possibly as far back as the early Holocene epoch. Sadly,
such executions don't always go smoothly, leading to gruesomely uncomfortable situations
for both the executioner and the victim.
According to Scientific American, decapitation via bladed weapons occasionally required repeated
blows, prolonging the victim's agony by a few minutes and making the whole procedure
wince-inducing. This led to the development and adoption of the guillotine in the late
1700s, a mechanism designed to sever the victim's head swiftly. However, there's rather disturbing
evidence that the brain can actually live on for a bit post-decapitation, based on tests
involving smaller animals. Consciousness may even continue for up to four seconds.
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