To me a fate worse than Death is like asking if there’s a food worse than pizza–probably about half and half. Death doesn’t sound so bad to me and responsibilities are about the only things that keep me from actively seeking it.
That said, I think I’m flexible enough to deal with physical impairments of any kind. But watching innocents be made to suffer and having no control over it sounds pretty bad to me regardless of weather they’re my kids or not.
I can’t believe I said “weather.”
For me, it would be a vegetative state, or anything that severely compromised my mental faculties. I know that I probably wouldn’t know it, but the thought of living like that scares me a lot. I think I might even be able to live with being a quadriplegic as long as my brain was fully functional and I could communicate, but being profoundly brain-damaged (even if I was capable of moving around on my own) would be very unpleasant to me. I don’t want to live with the mental capacity of a four-year old (or worse).
I don’t think blindness or deafness would be a fate worse than death for me, but the two together–that’s pushing it.
Anti-mindreading option? Is there anything OS X can’t do?
For me, Alzheimer’s or any other decline into dementia is a fate worse than death. As is being in a persistant vegative state. Pretty much any condition where I am not only a burden on someone, but unable to even comprehend my surroundings.
I just had an almost panic attack just reading that. I think you just hit upon a massive fear I didn’t even know I had.
Gah. Anyone have a paper bag?
Outliving my daughter would be a fate worse than death. So would outliving my usefulness. To be alive when living brings me no pleasure, and my life brings no pleasure to those around me, would be a fate worse than death.
Quadraplegic
Blindness
Life without parole for something I didn’t do.
And to the poster that mentioned amputation, it could be waay worse. I got a leg chopped off above the knee 20 years ago (I hate the phrase “lost a leg”) and if you can afford a state of the art prosthesis, it’s not so bad, relatively. (mine cost $25,000) Still work on my feet/foot? 40 hrs a week.
But just don’t piss off the old lady where she throws your leg on the roof and hides the ladder. 
Real mayo or bought mayo?
I’ll go with the quad/dependant option. I’m very, very, very glad that none of my known forebears has suffered any known major degenerative diseases; most common causes of death for the past 8 generations are cancer (sucks but you gotta die of something and it gives you time to do paperwork beforehand), absolute ancianity (85+ and “in perfect health other than being dead”) and bullets (the family has a taste for wars).
Blindness would suck, but I’d still be able to do a lot of things I like; I’d even be able to read, simply would have to learn a different alphabet. No more looking at Grecos, though snap.
What about 2 toes? Or a foot? Seems a little extreme to me.
I would have to go with blindness unless I received Daredevil-like super senses to compensate.
Paraplegic I could deal with but not Christopher Reeve style quadraplegic. Loss of part of a leg I could deal with.
Life or significant % of life in a prison.
I was a decent chess player in those days. He beat me soundly, though, and after, we got to talking.
He was the nicest, most intelligent, kindest man I have ever met in my life. I will always hold a great deal of respect for him in my heart and hope I would be able to face it as bravely.
Much better than the 21 YO soldier who’d gotten into a drunken car accident at 18 - after being enlisted for scarcely six months. He lost a good deal of motor function, but much worse, he regressed to the mind of a child…irrational. It was heart-breaking to even look at him. You could see how much life he had ahead of him, and he’d have to be in a nursing home forever.
Ah, I’ve digressed. Suffice it to say, losing knowledge of my self, my id, (which goes along with Alzheimer’s) is a fate worse than death for sure.
Being responsible for the death of one of my children. (Or somebody else’s child, for that matter.) I really do not see how I could keep living if that happened. None of those other things scares me nearly as much. That’s the one that gives me nightmares.
Doesn’t she have a spelling board? I knew a guy with severe CP, and even though using his board to talk to him wasn’t convienent, it wasn’t that bad. (For me. For him, I dunno, but I’d think it would be hell on earth. Then again, with a lifelong condition, it’s all you’ve ever known. You can see that other folks are different, but I doubt you can actually “know” what not being disabled is)
Becoming mute. I feel kind of shallow saying that, but if I were no longer able to talk or sing, I don’t think I would want to live anymore. Blindness, meh, learn braille and sing more. Deafness would be more upsetting, but as long as I could still be understood, I’d still be ok. But not being able to joke, laugh, sing, debate or discuss would kill me.
The only other thing I can think of is being burned very badly over more than 50% of my body. The pain and scarring would be too much for me, not to mention how I’d feel about having my body changed so much.
Nope. She has no control over her arms or hands or anything else that she could point to a spelling board with. She can look up with her eyes and, with some effort, move her head up and back to the left. That’s how she indicates “yes.” She’s been that way since her airway was restricted at birth. She’s now 32 years old. And she’s brilliant - easily as smart as I am, but trapped in that awful body requiring 24 hour care so she doesn’t asphyxiate.
On a side note, it was really hard for me to hang out with her when my own baby was born extrememly prematurely. I knew one of the more likely disabilities a preemie can get is CP, and that’s the thing that scared me the most. The thing is, how do you tell your friend that you’d rather your baby die than be like her? Horrid all 'round.
That’s definitely on my list of fates worse than death.
I really like how we all have so very different answers- for me, I don’t think I’d have any trouble adjusting to deafness at all aside from some of the practical issues, but blindness would take away nearly everything I now derive pride and pleasure from. I may be able to make do for awhile if I had something I wanted to accomplish that I still could or had an extremely supportive loved one, but I don’t think I could cope very well at all long term.
Hell, I’ve had to deal with having what I’m physically capable of change quickly and drastically and shatter my life goals and passions in the process, so while on one hand I’d like to think “Oh I’ll survive that too”, on the other I know just how devastating it can be and really dread ever going through it again.
Other thing would be persistant, unchanging, unaffected by medication, severe mental illness, like schizophrenia or years of unrelenting deep depression. If there was no reasonable hope of ever being remotely ok in my own head, I’d definitely find that worse than death.
What could be worth? A life of everlathting thorrow.
Professor Plum: What are you afraid of, a fate worse than death?
Mrs. Peacock: No, just death, isn’t that enough?
Losing my ability to use my hands and Alzheimer’s are things I wouldn’t want to live through.
Me too. You hear once in a while about someone who backed over one of their children in a car… Or that woman who, in the middle of a grand mal seizure, put her baby in the microwave…
::shudders:: Some things there’s no coming back from.
[hijack] Skald the Rhymer, your friend disturbs me. Not because she would find a rape to be a fate worse than death – I don’t agree with her, but I accept that individuals are going to differ in this regard. What I find disturbing is that she would continue to be friends with someone who did to another woman what she would find to be a fate worse than death herself. [/hijack]
Neverending pain.
Torture.
After my second birth (my second baby that is…not talking about reincarnation or religion) I had a whiff of what true serious pain is and let me tell you the preceeding childbirth (unmedicated) couldn’t hold a candle to it. I won’t tell you the disturbing details of what caused the pain, because they would disturb you (but all’s well now). Suffice it to say I had a searing insight into why physician assisted suicide should be legal.
But as bad as just plain ole pain by itself is, I have to think being tortured purposely must be worse, because there’s somebody actively thinking up ways to hurt you and you have the anticipation of what awful thing they’ll think up next.
Death would certainly be preferable to endless horrible pain or torture.
But the worst thing imaginable would be to witness or just know that my children were being tortured, because, though my death might bring relief to me (or not depending on what comes next) it wouldn’t bring relief to my children.