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

Episode Date: September 2, 2008

But there's no consensus among professionals about which method of death is the least desirable. A person's fears may factor into his own personal worst way to die. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about the worst way to die. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot who would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Brad Pacheco. Join me for murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Josh and Chuck here, a couple of staff writers at HowStuffWorks.com. How's it going, Chuck? It's going good, Josh. So Chuck, I hate to tell you this, but there are people who are setting themselves on fire all over India right now. Have you heard anything about this? Right now? Possibly. Very lately. By right now, I mean lately. No, I didn't know that. It's becoming something of a widespread trend, actually. Terribly. I

read about one guy who's a tea vendor. You know, he just sells tea like you buy a hot dog on the streets of New York. This guy just sells tea. And apparently he fell in the bad graces of a local representative of the local government. And the guy was kind of being abused by this guy, the government official. And in retaliation, he doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire in front of the guy's house. That'll show him. Yeah, pretty much. Now, the guy lived, but he has burns like over 95% of his body. Wow. And at this point, you kind of wonder, all right, well, which is worse, you know, right? And it sounds like a terrible way to go. And the whole thing kind of reminded me that of an article I'd written, it's called, is there a worst way

to die? Right. It's a good one. When I was, I love this article. It was like, it was really interesting to write. I'd talked to a funeral director. I talked to a, an ER doctor. And I also spoke with the guy who is the director of the Ernest Becker Foundation. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But because there's no, there's no quantifiable way to say, right, yes, there's definitely a worst way to die. And here it is. It's all subjective. Right. And even worse, there's, there weren't any, you know, nationally recognized polls out there. I actually contacted Gallup to find out if they'd ever asked that question. Did you request a poll or no? No, I wanted to, to find out what the data was, if they'd ever taken the poll. Right. And they said that they

never had. I found one that was pretty close, a 1991 Gallup poll that was about fear of dying, not the worst way to die. And astoundingly, only 25% of the people polled said that they were afraid to die. Interesting. And I think a really logical follow up question would have, would have been, how often do you actually think about your own death? Right. Maybe we should have conducted our own poll. Maybe we will. We will. We'll get it up on the site in no time. Right. Instead of quiz corner, fear of death, you know, corner. Right. But while I was researching it, I, I came across some impromptu polls about the worst way to die. Emulation is, it usually ranks up pretty high. Yeah, I would say so. Burning to death. Not good. Not good at all. I would say drowning's probably

up there too. Drowning's up there too. Yeah, they're usually, they're usually interchangeable at the top. What's your, what's your worst way to die? Boy, I don't know if I could say a worst method of death, but I think that anything where I died alone would be the worst way. That is very funny that you bring that up because I was doing extra research for this podcast. And there was a British poll from April. It's past April. And the majority of their respondents said that their worst death was a dying alone. Yeah. Like Isaac Hayes, God rest his soul. He just passed a few days ago. And I think they found him in his home gym with a treadmill going. And something as mundane as that, it just seems like the most depressing way to go, you know?

Yeah. You're lying there. Your treadmill's still alive right next to you. And there you are. Right. And surrounded by no one. Right. Or Elvis Presley, as you know, I have Elvis on the brain after writing about Graceland. And Elvis famously died in his bathroom reading a book and no one found him for hours. So he was just laying there in his bathroom. Yeah. So the second worst aspect of death that people came up with was not enough access to pain relief. Right. Which is a big thing, too. Basically, there's a really good way to answer this question is by changing the wording. Is there a best way to die? Right. I think you would find across the board dying in your sleep would probably be the best, most highly rated way to

go. People don't want to feel pain. No. People don't want to be afraid or alone. No. My worst death kind of combines all these except for the pain part. I don't think pain would be involved. Plain crash. Right. I'm actually, I'm flying to Malta a week or so from now. And I'm lying, buddy. Yeah. I'm not looking forward to the plane ride. And my big problem with dying in a plane crash is if you're at 30,000 feet or something like that, it doesn't happen instantaneously. Yeah. I know where you're headed here. It's probably a good minute or two headed straight to earth at like 800 miles an hour. Right. But even that takes a minute, maybe two, maybe three, depending on how high up you are. And buddy, you're totally aware of what's going on the whole time. Right. You got

a solid minute to three minutes to think about, you know, hey, I'm going to die. Right. And the panic and the hysteria just, I would say with everyone on the plane, it's not, if you're by yourself, it would be bad enough, but you have hundreds of strangers that you were probably annoyed with just moments earlier for one reason or another. And you're all going through this. At least you're not going to die alone. Yeah. But I'll tell you what, if George Gallup asked the people on a plane that was going down, if they feared death, I'm pretty sure that the percentages would skyrocket. Right. That has to be a hastily performed poll. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know, basically check our approach to death, our fear of death, in some theorist's eyes,

is a result of a kind of sanitizing of death. Right. Of basically our desire to not look death in the face, not think about death. Which brings you back to Becker. Correct. Becker. Becker anthanatology. Right. A lot of Ernest Becker's views, his whole field was called the psychology of death, right? Right. And in Becker's opinion, culture, every aspect of culture from our lazy boy recliners to NASCAR, to whiskey, to a guitar hero, right, to the climbing the corporate ladder, whatever it is, it all serves to distract us from thinking about our own mortality. Right. So, culture has been created to distract us. So, we can throw ourselves into it. That's Becker's stance. Right. The problem is, is we, in Becker's opinion, he died many,

many years ago, at age 49, sadly. I wonder if he saw that one coming. I don't know, but I'll bet you, if there was ever a human who was walking the earth who was cool with it, that was Becker. And he died of cancer too. So, I mean, he knew it was coming. But in Becker's opinion, we know that death is coming. We're distracting ourselves. So, the unconscious mind has to find an outlet somewhere. And usually that outlet is violence or aggression or war. Right. So, in Becker's opinion, if we'd all just go ahead and accept the fact that we are going to die someday and we don't know when it's going to happen or how it's going to happen, we'd all be a lot better off. We'd all basically chill. Right. And I know along the same lines of how we insulate ourselves from death is

how there's not as many open casket funerals these days. And I know back in the olden times, as they say. Well, as recent as the 19th century. Yeah. People would sit up with the dead. I know that's a southern tradition where you would literally have the body in your house or wherever they died. And you know, the family's just hanging out. Yeah. For days on it. Yeah. They eat around it. Yeah. And one of the points of that was to socialize children to death. Right. Public viewing. Right. Yeah. And plus another aspect of it was usually it was in the home because most people died in the home. Right. Because modern medicine, you know, just kind of went, you know, good luck with that, pal. See in hell. That kind of thing. And nowadays, you know, in 1900,

the average life expectancy was, it was like 49 years old. Right. In 2008, it's like 77 creeping up on 78 if it's not there already. So that extra, you know, 20, almost 30 years has really kind of strung us out. Right. We're really interested in squeezing every last minute out of it, even sadly, beyond the time when the quality of life has diminished. So what are you saying? Well, I'm saying we have all these machines to keep us alive, to breathe for us. Right. And we know that they're out there. So we have thrown ourselves even further into this denial of death. Exactly. As Becker called it. Right. So the very things that keep us alive are distracting us from the obvious. Pretty much. And the inevitable. Yeah. And there was another aspect when you

brought up 19th century that I found really interesting. There was a trend. Have you heard of bereavement photography? Yeah, that was like, have you seen the movie The Assassination of Jesse James? I have not. Yeah, he was famously photographed in his casket, you know, and the whole town came out. They had him on a block of ice. And the whole town came and viewed the body and had their picture made with picture made. We're from the south. Picture made. They had their picture made with the body of Jesse James. Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. I mean, it's a photograph of a dead person. Usually, though, it was of a loved one. And oftentimes they'd be on a couch sitting up looking like they were sleeping or in bed looking like they were sleeping. Sometimes

their eyes were propped open and make it look like they were awake. Yeah, that's really odd. It was kind of odd, but it actually still continues today. There is bereavement photography. Usually, it's used by parents whose child was stillborn or died at a very, very young age. And this will be the only photo that they ever have of it. Right. Is this the United States mainly? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's, you don't want to say it's odd because clearly they're getting something from it. Like, I'm sure it poses like it creates a sense of catharsis or finality to it. And plus, they can say, well, this is what my baby looked like for a short of time as he or she was on earth. Right. And it's very sad, but I imagine that you can get something out of it.

Yeah. Who am I to judge? Exactly. And photography in general kind of has, since it was created, has always had kind of this fascination with death, like bereavement photography or outlaws. Even Pablo Escobar, you know, there's that famous photo of him all bloated and dead on that rooftop in Medellin. Right. Or the famous photo of Lizzie Borden's father, you know, kind of sideways on the couch with his face mashed in. And what is it about us humans that wish that that photo wasn't so grainy? Yeah. That you could make it out a little more, you know? I know. But at the same time, it kind of lets the imagination run wild. We are a sick, sick, twisted species. We're afraid of our own death, and yet we love morbid photography of

dead people. Or at least you and I. We don't want to speak for everyone. I guess we shouldn't speak for the rest of humanity, although, you know, I'd say we're fairly typical. But back to the photography part, there's this really cool exhibit by a German photographer named Walter Schells, right? And he did this series called Life Before Death. And what he did was he went and visited people who were terminally ill, spent the last, you know, couple of days of their lives with them, got, you know, took a series of photographs of them, got like the one he was looking for, and then arranged to take another photo of them right after they died. And he juxtaposed them one right next to the other. And there's actually a really great spread on the Guardian,

the Guardian's UK site. What do you find? Was it uplifting or was it depressing? It's very subjective. It's death, you know? There's no objectivity with death. We have no idea what's coming after this. It's all subjective. You're scared of it. You're not scared of it. Whatever. Right. So it's definitely one of those things where, you know, you're going to take what you want out of it. And some are more startling than others, but it's really, it's odd and it's oddly comforting. Yeah, I'd like to see that. Yeah, well, you can see it on the Guardian site. But first, don't forget to go to HowStuffWorks.com and read Is There a Worst Way to Die? It's a pretty cool article if I do say so myself. And stick around to find out which article makes me pretty excited

but scares the hell out of Chuck right after this. So Chuck, we're back. I know this article scares the hell out of you. I like it. Tell us about it. What's the misoplacity project? You want to tell everybody? Yeah, it has to do with dog cloning, cloning your pets. And it kind of creeps me out. I know that you love your dogs like I do, but you want to clone yours. You want to have nine instead of three. Well, my dogs are never going to die, not if I have anything to say about it. But if they do, I feel comforted knowing that I can bring them back. Well, you better get a second job, buddy. It ain't cheap. No, I know it's not. I'm saving up already actually. It's like put kids through college or, you know, bring dogs back

to life, right? And we want to give a shout out to HowStuffWorks freelance or Julia Layton for creating a really cool article. You can check it out on HowStuffWorks.com. Just type in what's the misoplacity project. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mt. Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter, Josie Deffie Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls

changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. The cartels, they just killed everybody that was home. Setting an aspiring private investigator on a collision course with corruption and multiple murders. The detective agency would turn out to be a front for a drug pilot. Would claim he did it all for this CIA. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for Murder in Miami. Talk about walking into the devil's den. Listen to Murder in Miami on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.