What is the worst way to die?

Vultures won’t kill you – they’ll wait for something else to get you then scavenge the remains.

I don’t think I can answer this question, not having experienced even one method of death. They all sound equally bad to me, old age excluded, for different reasons.

To throw a new one into the discussion, how about being stabbed after you’re raped? Sounds pretty damn miserable to me.

For me, it would be drowning. I don’t do water & I know I’d panic & drown.

I think starving to death… very slow. Or most anything where you see it coming for a long time.

@lilikoi You don’t think if you saw them circling overhead in the desert they wouldn’t start taking bites once you were too weak to defend yourself?

Grizzly bears and sharks.I had to quit wearing porkchop necklaces because of this fear.;)

Drowning is bad, but will only last several minutes tops. Quicker if you just start inhaling to get it over with. Having a shark take a big bite and circling for a bit would be really awful.

Without dignity.

@cockswain I’m not totally sure, but I think they would wait. They are pretty eerie. I’ve seen them devouring dead wildebeest and perched atop trees watching everything. Creepy. Most likely something on the ground would get you before long…probably easier and safer for the birds if they let something else take the risk of killing. I guess maybe it depends on how hungry they are. When animals get desperate for food they tend to be willing to take on much greater risks.

I don’t think you’d be able to inhale purposefully to cause yourself to drown. I think I’ve heard that’s impossible to do. I’ve been stranded in open ocean before, and have seriously contemplated what it would be like to drown and it seems pretty bad. But maybe not as bad as death by dehydration at sea, which would probably get me first in all but the worst weather. Indeed, an hour out there and my head was already throbbing.

Crucifixion

With a lifetime of regrets.

“but ripped apart and eaten by the huge beak of a giant squid would be pretty horrible too”

Yeah… that did it. This is it for me. Oh my god.

@wtfrickinfrack squids have beaks?

Drowning and being burned alive would both be extremely traumatic (up until the time you died, of course). These would be my top picks for the worst way to meet your maker.

As an old man in your sleep, like an honourless p’tahk.

The key to a horrible death in my opinion is slowly and painfully.

Having my lungs slowly fill with my own bodily fluids so I drown in them slowly and where nothing I do or anyone else does makes any difference other than to prolong to process of dying!

Alone

Being buried alive and slowly dying. I’d take drowning over that.

Suffocation is last on my list of choices. That might be because I’ve come closer to it than I enjoy remembering. I have not been tied to a stake, shown a pool of piranhas, or suspended over a cauldron of boiling oil. Experiences like that might influence my thinking.

They say drowning is actually fairly pleasant once you stop struggling. I would think that’s better than something painful.

I have gone on record with an express wish to die laughing. That’s my exit of choice.

Apparently Radiation poisoning is a particularly gruesome and agonizing way to die. My Wife is an RT and was telling me about it and I can’t bring myself to write it down here. Suffice it to say parts of your innards get cooked and die, while other parts don’t know and try to use the dead parts and ooh baby the conflict and smell.

Disembowelment and burning alive hit the top of my list.

For some reason to me the scariest way to die would be getting beaten to death by a gorilla although im not sure why.
I think the worst way to die though would be one of the various forms of execution involving baiting and exposing the body to insects or small animals. They do it all different ways but all of them sound horrible

I think rate of death is what makes it the worst. That combined with intense psychological horror and pain. For example, being shoved through a wood chipper over 20 seconds is bad, but being shoved a couple inches, then having the wound cauterized with a blowtorch, then being inserted a few more inches and re-cauterized, all over the course of several hours, seems even worse. Toss a couple tarantulas and scorpions into the mix and you’ve got yourself a really unpleasant death.

I think these would fit somewhere into the equation for the men anyway :(

Brokenhearted.

@jaketheripper Now THAT is twisted. Any contender for worst death would have to include some form of genital mutilation.

Wood chipper!!! Oh my god! You have added a new fear into my realm of awareness.
* shudder *

Drawn and quartered or flayed alive ae pretty high up on my list. Also, being burned at the stake. Gotta love them Dark Ages.

I would say, but most of the folks who do so will probably die the way they say is most horrible.

Ergo, I’m not saying. (Didn’t you ever read 1984)?

Immolation sounds pretty horrible to me. I’d rather get eaten by ants.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: woodchipper, feet first.

Being eaten by a small group of cannibals, who keep you alive to keep the meat fresh.

@filmfann GA for making me cringe. The way you worded it….(shudders)

Well, I’ve never seen that documentary about the guy who thought he understood bears for one reason, and that’s to not hear the audio recording of this idiot being eaten by a bear.

So much attention being paid to the worst way to die and so little attention given to the best way to live.

I’ve also heard Radiation poisoning was among the worst. I once heard a true story about a man who was captured and filleted alive. That vision’s never really left me as the worst way to die.

Roommate Farts.

The worst way to die? That’s quite a debatable question. Given the extraneous variables of individual differences and preferences the most valid method (of those that occur to me) with which to discover this answer would be to deduce the death which involves the greatest deal of pain, be it physical, emotional or otherwise, and the period of time taken for this pain to cause said death. With this considered, my immediate thoughts are drawn to being stripped and starved in a cold dark enclosed space which disallows one enough room to sit comfortably and being taken from this room at random intervals (but still reasonably regularly) then blindfolded, gagged and tortured in a dark silent room by a multitude of people who have the mutual objective of inflicting as much pain as possible without killing the individual.

The worst manner to die for me personally would be naturally (old age) while alone. I can endure physical pain and/or a loss of bodily functions but loneliness is all too often shadowed by feelings of hopelessness and self-resentment. To die believing that the world is so intensely cold and that you are responsible for it with no person there to reassure you otherwise. Alongside this is the fact that I would deem my life to have been purposeless if so few cared for me that I died without company.

Being buried alive, as @jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities previously mentioned, is also a method i’m not especially fond of.

@TheThrelkeldKult I find it difficult to conceive a death in which there isn’t some degree of dignity seized from the individual in question. One can live with dignity but it’s difficult to die similarly no?

@Captain_Fantasy Not dying horrifically is definitely a start

Onstage during open mic night.

Eben Byers found something close to it: massive chronic radium poisoning from drinking a quack patent medicine like it was bottled water. He suffered through two years of being radiation burned from his own bones.

Anything that would cause my last moments of life to be filled with horror. All I can think of when I hear details about some murders is that that person’s last moment on this earth, last thought, was filled with terror.

Don’t know if it’s true or not, but…

In the wake of overthrowing Iraq, I’ve heard two stories about Saddam and his Sons.

Supposedly, Saddam would capture entire families that threatened him, then one by one, starting with the children, he would run them feet first through a commercial tree branch wood chipper machine. The father would be forced to watch his entire family butchered before he was killed.

Supposedly, Saddam’s two Son’s would pick up girls at the night clubs, have their way with them, invite the guards to rape them, and then the next morning, they would all go out to the alligator garden in the rear of the palace, where they would snip off the nipples of the girls and toss them to the alligators one by one, laughing and taunting the girls as they were eaten by the gators.

One more…

I’ve also heard, that when Iraq invaded Kuwait, that the Iraqi soldiers would capture young Kuwaiti boys and take them to the local gas station, where they would shove the tire air hose up the ass of the boys until their rectums burst, leaving them to bleed to death on the parking lot. Apparently the new victims would see a pile of dead friends and be taunted and jeered during the process, only to hear cheers from their tormentors when their rectums burst popping like a thick rubber balloon.

Oh dear god.

For me, it would have to be being boiled alive or deep-fried alive in hot oil.

@jaketheripper That would hurt a lot, but would it kill me? I’d only be mutilated.

I’ve given this more thought already in my life, and hesitate to say anything for fear that it would come true, but being ripped apart by zombies is right up there in the top ten. Sharks or other toothed, clawed large mammals bother me. The fact that a shark will come up to you and start eating you without so much as a by-your-leave is beyond irritating.
Fire and radiation poisoning sound unpleasant as well.

ya know…

If you count the entire process of the death methodology from the Alien movies… that would be a pretty rotten apple.

First you’re attacked by a big ugly alien. Then they spit acid glue ya to the walls of their inner sanctum. Whereas upon reviving, you notice a small pod blooming open in front of you. Larry the lobster jumps out and fucks you in the face for a few minutes before he keels over and dies. And just as the space marines come to save the day, you notice a slight tingle in your chest. Probably just a little heartburn or stomach growling from the ordeal… right? Before you know it, you’re giving birth to an alien asshole from your chest cavity…

@Trillian
“The fact that a shark will come up to you and start eating you without so much as a by-your-leave is beyond irritating”
Hahahahaha, I love that rather than this being horrifying, cringeworthy or even painful, it’s merely ‘beyond irritating’. It sounds as though you’re more annoyed at the shark for their lack of courtesy.

@Nially_Bob If the shark weren’t bigger and stronger than me, my reaction would be one of annoyance and “Just who the hell do you think you are?” I’d probably add a punch in the face, or flip it upside down like an Orca does to kill it. It just seems, I don’t know, presumptuous to me.

@Trillian
I blame the parents. Teaching their cubs no discipline probably because they’re too busy attacking smaller marine creatures or watching Mexican soap operas.

Unloved and unremembered.

I always thought being impaled on a spike (like Vlad the Impaler did) would seriously bite it big time. You are alive while a huge stick slowly slides up your hoohaa, and your body weight makes it unstoppable and achingly slow

Drawn and quartered . . . they hang you till you’re on the edge of death, then slit open your stomach and fill it with hot coals, then tie each limb to a different horse, and . . . you’re quartered, and hopefully dead.

I also once read about this conquistador that was captured by natives, whereupon they tied him to a pole and cut out chunks of his flesh and ate them in front of him. Took him three days to die.

I sound slightly sadistic? on a deeper note, dying friendless would suck.

Unloved.

http://ansblog.com/2009/12/saddest-picture-of-the-century-vulture-waiting-child-to-die/

This is an easy one for me, being buried alive…. I’m really claustrophobic, even busses & trains can make me freak-out if I loose concentration.

Being a Cylon trying to commit suicide.

All the deaths in Hellraiser were really bad.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies I’ve heard similar stories about Saddam’s sons. There was a fear in the country about what would happen when they were in full power. At least their deaths were a good thing that came out of that situation so far. To die just for the sick amusement of some sadists is beyond words.

@Vunessuh “The mouth is equipped with a sharp horny beak mainly made of chitin and cross-linked proteins, and is used to kill and tear prey into manageable pieces” according to Wikipedia

Without Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior .

Feeling abandoned and/or in pain.

My Gran died of lung cancer, it took a little over 8 months and she suffered terribly. I love her so much and I couldn’t do anything. I wanted so desperately for me to have it instead. She was a wonderful woman who didn’t hurt anybody and its not fair. I was with her when she died and while it was a very peaceful death, she was so tired and it got too hard for her to breathe, so she went to sleep, everything she had to endure in the months before was awful. losing her beautiful hair and being so weak that she had to be washed and dressed each day, no one should die like that.

This have to be near the top of my list.

@thorninmud See above