How many ways are there to die?

[cerebrum]

I heard there are "6 million ways to die choose 1" some where....

Was just wondering if there really ARE that many ways to end someones life?

[Cisco]

Originally posted by cerebrum
I heard there are "6 million ways to die choose 1" some where....

Isn't that Snoop Dogg?

Anyway, there are so many technicalities there is pretty much an infinite number of ways to die. If you shoot someone in Paris is that the same as shooting someone in Phoenix? If you stab a guy today is that the same as stabbing someone tomorrow? See what i mean?

[The Devil's Grandmother]

As WAG of general categories, humans can die by suffocation, starvation (dehydration), hypothermia, blood loss, and blunt trauma (I’m including gunshots, landing after a fall and blows to the head), poison and heart failure (pretty much anything).

Personal variants are limited only by your creativity, I suppose.

[pulykamell]

i'm sure there are. depends on what you call a way to die.

does being crushed by a boulder vs being crushed by a meteorite vs being crushed by an elephant count as three different ways or just one?

if you count them as three, then there's probably a near infinite number of ways you can die. it all depends on how narrow or wide your definition is.

I mean, you could get as wide as you die from lack of a functioning brain.

[cerebrum]

Cisco: u made a good point...thats basically what I was wondering also...Do they(whoever THEY are) that sounds like another thread... anyway... Do they count jumping from the 33rd floor as dying in one way and jumping from the 50th floor as another? I seriously doubt that though.

Makes you wonder how people manage to stay alive everyday doesnt it?

[Amok]

Cisco wrote:
Isn't that Snoop Dogg?

Yes, it does appear in one of his songs. Specifically, the song "Serial Killa", on the "Doggystyle" album, begins with a man (not Snoop himself) saying "Six million ways to die, choose one" in a Jamacian accent. However, I believe that is a sample of Cutty Ranks from his song "A Who Seh Me Dun (Wake De Man)", where that phrase begins the first verse. That song was released as a single in 1993, a year or so prior to "Doggystyle". Whether Cutty Ranks was the first to use it, or whether he got it from an older source, I don't know.

As for the question itself, I think it's unanswerable.

[Nenders]

Perhaps a medical professional could weight in. I have noticed they always say people die of renal failure, heart failure or the like. But there are only a limited number of these things. Doctors can keep us alive on machines after lots of organs shut down. What are specific things that kill you? I guess lack of circulation either by the heart stopping or bleeding out. Poisoning either by reanal failure, arsenic or other toxic build up. Blunt trauma, I would say that is crushing or otherwise destroying. Asphyxiation, either through suffocation or otherwise lack of oxygen in the blood. If your heart stops, you die from lack of oxygen to the brain. Is that officially asphyiation or lack of circulation? So I think there is a short list of things that will kill you. Kill you meaning to stop brain function.

[Patty O'Furniture]

Originally posted by Nenders
Kill you meaning to stop brain function.

If a functioning brain is the measuring stick, then the streets are already littered with corpses.

[Sofa King]

So you might be able to say that there is only one way to die--the (complete, in deference to Attrayant) cessation of brain function--but there is a near infinite number of ways to get killed.

I like xtal's categories.

[panamajack]

Back in 1986, there were 8 Million Ways to Die. Thanks to medical science, that number dropped 2 million by 1993. It is estimated that by 2012 there will only be 4 million ways to die.

The cause of death at the most basic physiological level could be said to be a lack of oxygen to cells. This can be expanded into almost as many categories as you wish -- lack of circulation, lack of brain activity, lack of oxygen entering the body, etc. I would guess that medical examiners / coroners have a relatively consistent standard number of causes of death, perhaps you could find out from them.

The WHO death statistics table -- http://filestore.who.int/~who/whr/20...nexTable03.pdf lists about 100 groupings of different sizes (see note b about "residual categories"; possibly there's more). Also, there's some categories like "alcohol dependency" (60,000 dead) and "unipolar major depression"(1,000 dead); it's unclear if this includes any of those also cited with a different cause (such as suicide, liver disease, or vehicular accidents). The winner, by the way, was ischemic heart disease with 7.1 million victims.

[Beer]

I dunno about how many ways but for an answer maybe listen to Megadeth "99 Ways to Die" (Beavis and Butthead Do America Soundtrack).


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