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Is there a worst way to die? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: from How Stuff Works dot Com? Stuff you should know
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  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Josh and Chuck. Here a couple of
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  Speaker 1: staff writers at how stuff works dot Com. How's it coming, Shuff,
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  Speaker 1: It's going good, Josh, so Chuck. I hate to tell
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  Speaker 1: you this, but there are people who are setting themselves
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  Speaker 1: on fire all over India right now. Have you heard
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  Speaker 1: anything about this right now? Possibly very lately. By right now,
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  Speaker 1: I mean lately. No, I didn't know that. It's it's
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  Speaker 1: becoming something of a widespread trend, actually terribly. UM. I
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  Speaker 1: read about one guy who's a tea vendor. You know,
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  Speaker 1: he just sells tea like you know, you buy a
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  Speaker 1: hot dog right on the streets of New or This
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  Speaker 1: guy just sells tea. Um. And apparently he fell in
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  Speaker 1: the bad graces of a local representative of the local government. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And the guy was kind of being abused by this guy,
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  Speaker 1: the the government official. Um, and in retaliation, he doused
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  Speaker 1: himself in kerosene and set himself on fire in front
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  Speaker 1: of the guy's house. That'll show him, yeah, pretty much. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Now the guy lived, but he has burns like over
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  Speaker 1: his body. And at this point you kind of wonder
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  Speaker 1: that all right, well, which is worse? You know? Right?
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  Speaker 1: It sounds like a terrible way to go. And and
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  Speaker 1: the whole thing, uh kind of reminded me that of
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  Speaker 1: an article i'd written into called is there a Worst
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  Speaker 1: Way to Die? When I was I love this article.
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  Speaker 1: It was like, uh, it was really interesting to write.
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  Speaker 1: I talked to um, a funeral director, I talked to
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  Speaker 1: a an E. R. Doctor, and I also spoke with
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  Speaker 1: the guy who is the director of the Ernest beck
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  Speaker 1: R Foundation. We'll talk about that in a minute. But um,
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  Speaker 1: because there's no there's no quantifiable way to say, yes,
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  Speaker 1: there's definitely a worse way to die, and here it is,
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  Speaker 1: it's all subjective and even worse, there's um, there weren't
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  Speaker 1: any you know, nationally recognized poles out there. I actually
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  Speaker 1: contacted Gallop to find out if they'd ever asked that question. No.
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  Speaker 1: I I wanted to find out what the data was
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  Speaker 1: if they'd ever taken that poll, and they said that
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  Speaker 1: they never had. I found one that was pretty close,
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  Speaker 1: a gallop pole that was about UM, fear of dying,
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  Speaker 1: not the worst way to die, and um. Astoundingly only
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  Speaker 1: of the people polled said that they were afraid to die. Interesting,
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  Speaker 1: and I think a really logical follow up question would
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  Speaker 1: have would have been, how often do you actually think
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  Speaker 1: about your own death? Maybe we should have conducted our
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  Speaker 1: own pole. Maybe we will, we will, We'll get it
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  Speaker 1: up on the site in no time instead of quiz
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  Speaker 1: corner fear of death corner. Um. But while I was
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  Speaker 1: researching it, I came across the impromptu poles about the
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  Speaker 1: worst way to die. Immolation is usually ranks up pretty high. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I would say, so burning to death not good, not
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  Speaker 1: good at all. I would say drowning is probably up
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  Speaker 1: there too. Drowning is up there too. Um. Yeah, they're
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  Speaker 1: usually uh, they're usually interchangeable at the top. What's your
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  Speaker 1: what's your worst way to die? Boy? Uh? I don't
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  Speaker 1: know if I could say the worst method of death,
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  Speaker 1: but I think that anything where I died alone would
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  Speaker 1: be the worst way. That is very funny that you
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  Speaker 1: bring that up, because I was doing extra research for
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  Speaker 1: this podcast and there was a British pole um from
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  Speaker 1: April this past April, and uh, the majority of the
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  Speaker 1: respondents said that their worst death was a dying alone. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Like Isaac ky Is, God rest his soul. He just
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  Speaker 1: passed a few days ago and I think they found
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  Speaker 1: him in his home jam with a treadmill going and
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  Speaker 1: something is mundane said. It just seems like the most
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  Speaker 1: depressing way to go. You know, you're lying there, your
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  Speaker 1: treadmill still alive right next to you, and there you are,
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  Speaker 1: right and and surrounded by no one. Right. Or Elvis Presley,
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  Speaker 1: as you know, I have Elvis on the brain after
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  Speaker 1: writing about Graceland and uh, you know Elvis famously died
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  Speaker 1: in his bathroom reading a book and no one found him,
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  Speaker 1: you know, for hours, So he was just laying there
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  Speaker 1: in his bathroom. Yeah, so this the second worst aspect
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  Speaker 1: of death that people came up with was not enough
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  Speaker 1: access to pain relief, right, which is a big thing
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  Speaker 1: to like if you basically there there's a really good
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  Speaker 1: way to answer this question is by changing the wording. Uh,
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  Speaker 1: is there the best way to die? I think you
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  Speaker 1: would find across the board dying um in your sleep
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  Speaker 1: would probably be the best, most highly rated way to go.
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  Speaker 1: People don't want to feel pain now, people don't want
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  Speaker 1: to be afraid or alone. Now. My worst death kind
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  Speaker 1: of combines all these except for the pain part. I
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  Speaker 1: don't think pain would be involved. Um plane crash, right,
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  Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm flying to Malta a week or so
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  Speaker 1: from now, and yeah, I'm not looking forward to the
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  Speaker 1: to the plane ride. Uh. In My big problem with
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  Speaker 1: with dying in a plane crash is if you're at
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  Speaker 1: thirty thousand feet or something like that, it doesn't happen instantaneously.
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  Speaker 1: A good minute or two headed straight to Earth at
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  Speaker 1: like eight hundred miles an hour. But even that takes
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  Speaker 1: a minute, maybe two, maybe three, depending on how high
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  Speaker 1: up you are. And buddy, you're totally aware of what's
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  Speaker 1: going on the whole time, right, You've got a solid
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  Speaker 1: minute to three minutes to think about you know, hey,
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to die, right, And the panic and the
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  Speaker 1: hysteria just I would say with everyone on the plane,
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  Speaker 1: it's not If you're by yourself, it would be bad enough.
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  Speaker 1: But you have hundreds of strangers that you were probably
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  Speaker 1: annoyed with just moments earlier for one reason or another,
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  Speaker 1: and you're all going through this. So at least you're
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  Speaker 1: not going to die alone. But I'll tell you what,
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  Speaker 1: if George Gallup asked the people on a plane that
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  Speaker 1: was going down if they fear death, I'm pretty sure
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  Speaker 1: that the percentages would skyrocket that had to be hastily performed. Pole. Yeah, exactly. So, UM,
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  Speaker 1: you know, basically, check our our our approach to death,
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  Speaker 1: our fear of death, um, and some theorist size uh
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  Speaker 1: is a result of a kind of sanitizing of death.
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  Speaker 1: Of UM, basically, our our desire to not look death
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  Speaker 1: in the face, not think about death. UM. Becker Becker
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  Speaker 1: and the anatology A lot of Ernest Becker's views his
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  Speaker 1: his whole field was called the psychology of death, right
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  Speaker 1: and UM. In Becker's opinion, UH, culture, every aspect of culture,
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  Speaker 1: from our lazy boy recliners, to Nascar, to whiskey to
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  Speaker 1: guitar hero to the climbing the corporate ladder, whatever it is,
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  Speaker 1: it all serves to distract us from thinking about our
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  Speaker 1: own mortality. So culture, as has been created to distract
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  Speaker 1: us so we can throw ourselves into it. Um. That's
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  Speaker 1: Becker stands. The problem is, is we In Becker's opinion,
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  Speaker 1: he he died many, many years ago, UM at age
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  Speaker 1: forty nine. Sadly, I wonder if he saw that one coming.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'll bet you if there was
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  Speaker 1: ever a human who is walking the earth who was
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  Speaker 1: cool with it, or it was Becker and he died
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  Speaker 1: of cancer too, So I mean he knew it was coming. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But in Becker's opinion, we we know that death is coming.
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  Speaker 1: We're distracting ourselves. So the unconscious mind UH has to
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  Speaker 1: find an outlet somewhere, and usually that outlet is violence
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  Speaker 1: or aggression or war. So in Becker's opinion, if we'd
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  Speaker 1: all just go ahead and accept the fact that we
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  Speaker 1: are going to die someday and we don't know when
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  Speaker 1: it's gonna happen or how it's gonna happen, we'd all
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  Speaker 1: be a lot better off. We'd all basically chill, right.
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  Speaker 1: And I know, along those same lines of how we
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  Speaker 1: UH insulate ourselves from death as how, there's not as
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  Speaker 1: many open casket funerals these days. And I know back
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  Speaker 1: in the in the olden times, as they say, well
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  Speaker 1: as recent is the nineteenth century. Yeah, people would sit
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  Speaker 1: up with the dead. I know. That's a Southern tradition
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  Speaker 1: where you would literally have the body in your house
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  Speaker 1: or wherever they died, and uh, you know the family
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  Speaker 1: is just hanging out, yeah, for for days on it. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And one of the points of that was to socialized
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  Speaker 1: children to death public viewings, right, Yeah. And plus another
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  Speaker 1: aspect of it was, um, usually it wasn't the home
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  Speaker 1: because most people died in the home because modern medicine,
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  Speaker 1: you know, just kind of went, you know, good luck
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  Speaker 1: with that pal see see in hell, that kind of thing. Um.
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  Speaker 1: And uh, nowadays, you know, in nineteen hundred, the average
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  Speaker 1: life expectancy was, um, it was like forty nine years old.
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  Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, it's seventies seven, creeping up
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  Speaker 1: on seventy eight. If it's not, they're already. So that
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  Speaker 1: extra you know, twenty almost thirty years has really kind
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  Speaker 1: of um strung us out right. We are really interested
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  Speaker 1: in in squeezing every last minute out of it, even
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  Speaker 1: sadly beyond the time when the quality of life has diminished.
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  Speaker 1: So what are he's saying, Well, I'm saying, we have
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  Speaker 1: all these machines to keep us alive, to breathe for us,
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  Speaker 1: and we know that they're out there. Um, so we
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  Speaker 1: have thrown ourselves even further into this denial of death.
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  Speaker 1: It right, So the very things that keep us alive
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  Speaker 1: or distracting us from the obvious pretty much and the inevitable. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and there was there was another aspect when you brought
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  Speaker 1: up nineteenth century that I found really interesting. There was
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  Speaker 1: a trend. Have you heard a bereavement photography? Uh? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: that was um Like, have you seen the movie The
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  Speaker 1: Assassination of Jesse James? I have not. Yeah, he was
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  Speaker 1: famously a photographed and his casket uh you know, and
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  Speaker 1: the whole town came out. They had him on a
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  Speaker 1: block of ice. The whole town came and viewed the
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  Speaker 1: body and had their picture made with picture made were
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  Speaker 1: from the South picture had their picture made with the
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  Speaker 1: body of Jesse James. This is that what you're talking about? That? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's it's a photograph of a
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  Speaker 1: dead person. Um. For usually though it was of a
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  Speaker 1: loved one, and oftentimes they'd be on a couch sitting
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  Speaker 1: up looking like they were sleeping or in bed looking
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  Speaker 1: like they were sleeping. Sometimes their eyes were propped open
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  Speaker 1: to make it look like they were awake. That's really uh,
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  Speaker 1: it was kind of odd, but it actually still continues today.
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  Speaker 1: There are there is bereavement photography. Usually it's um used
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  Speaker 1: by parents whose child was was stillborn or died at
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  Speaker 1: a very very young age and this will be the
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  Speaker 1: only photo that they ever have of them. Is this
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  Speaker 1: the United States mainly, Yeah, it's um, it's you don't
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  Speaker 1: want to stay time, because clearly they're they're getting something
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  Speaker 1: from it, like I'm sure it poses like it creates
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  Speaker 1: a sense of catharsis or finality to it. And and
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  Speaker 1: plus they and say, well, this is what my baby
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  Speaker 1: looked like is for a short time as he or
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  Speaker 1: she was on earth, you know, Um, and it's a
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  Speaker 1: it's very sad, but I imagine that you can get
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  Speaker 1: something out of it. Who am I to judge exactly?
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  Speaker 1: And and photography in general kind of has since it
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  Speaker 1: since it was created, has always had kind of this
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  Speaker 1: fascination with death, like breathment photography or outlaws. Um. Even
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  Speaker 1: even Pablo Escobar, you know there's that famous photo of
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  Speaker 1: him all bloated and dead on that rooftop and meta
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  Speaker 1: ying or a famous photo of Lizzie Borden's father, uh,
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  Speaker 1: you know, kind of sideways on the couch. Yeah, face
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  Speaker 1: mashed in And what is it about as humans that
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  Speaker 1: wish that that photo wasn't so greeny, that you could
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  Speaker 1: make it out a little more, you know. But at
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  Speaker 1: the same time we kind of lets the imagination run. Well,
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  Speaker 1: we're a sick, sick, twisted species. We're afraid of her
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  Speaker 1: own death, and yet we love morbid photography of dead people,
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  Speaker 1: or at least you and I we don't want to.
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  Speaker 1: I guess we shouldn't speak for the rest of humanity,
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  Speaker 1: although you know, I'd say we're fairly typical. Um. But
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  Speaker 1: but back to the photography part. There's, um, there's this
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  Speaker 1: really cool exhibit uh by a German photographer named Walter Shells, right,
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  Speaker 1: and uh. He did this series called Life Before Death.
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  Speaker 1: And what he did was he went and visited people
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  Speaker 1: who were terminally ill, spent the last you know, a
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  Speaker 1: couple of days of their lives with him, got you know,
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  Speaker 1: took series of photographs of him, got like the one
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  Speaker 1: he's looking for, and then arranged to take another photo
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  Speaker 1: of them right after they died, and he juxtaposed them
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  Speaker 1: one right next to the other, and there's actually a
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  Speaker 1: really great spread on the Guardian the Guardians UK site.
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  Speaker 1: What he find it was it was it uplifting or
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  Speaker 1: was it depressing? It's very subjective. It's death. You know,
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  Speaker 1: there's no objectivity with death. We have no idea what's
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  Speaker 1: coming after this. It's all subjective. You're scared of it,
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  Speaker 1: you're not scared of it whatever. Um So it's definitely
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  Speaker 1: one of those things where you know you're going to
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  Speaker 1: take what you want out of it, and some are
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  Speaker 1: more startling than others. But it's it's really it's odd
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  Speaker 1: and it's oddly comforting. Yeah, i'd like to see that. Yeah,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: well you can see it on the Guardians side. But
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: first don't forget to go to how Stuff works dot
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  Speaker 1: com and read is there a Worst Way to Die?
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool article if I do say so myself,
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  Speaker 1: and stick around to find out which article makes me
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: pretty excited. It scares the hell out of chuck. Right
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  Speaker 1: we're back. I know this. Uh, this article scares the
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  Speaker 1: hell out of you. I like it. Tell us about it.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: What's the missiplicity project? You want to tell everybody? Yeah,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: it has to do with dog cloning, cloning your pets
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  Speaker 1: and h kind of creeps me out. I know that
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  Speaker 1: you love your dogs like I do, but you want
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  Speaker 1: of three? Well, my dogs are never going to die,
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  Speaker 1: not if I have anything to say about it. But
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