So let’s say that a regular, healthy man is running as fast as he can, and doesn’t see the flat wall straight in front of him. Can he run face first into that wall hard enough to kill himself? I suspect the answer is yes, but I can’t imagine doing it, myself. What about other animals? Case studies?
Pete Reiser ran into outfield walls regularly, fracturing his skull on one occasion. Didn’t kill himself but I can see how it would be possible.
My guess is that it’s possible.
A week ago, my son and I were playing football. We blew a handoff and he ran into my shoulder. His eyes fluttered for a few seconds, then he eased himself to the ground and passed out. Later he said that it rang his bell (an old boxing term for a concussion that causes intense stinging pain behind the ear.)
Me? I didn’t feel much. It felt like a pretty soft impact to me. I suspect that the damage would have been a lot worse if he ran into a brick wall instead of a soft, movable body.
Birds do this frequently; flying so hard into a window that they die.
Sadly I’ve had to bury a couple that hit my living room window. The bang they made when they hit scared the hell out of me.
I have heard of a panicked horse running straight into a wall at full speed and killing the rider. I suppose the horse did not fare too well either. Horses are stupid animals and some are easily spooked.
I’ve seen one patient die from this, repeatedly ramming his head against a wall and giving himself a subdural hemorrhage.
No, they’re not.
A simple KE calculation: 80 kg moving at roughly 10 m/s = 4000 J, should tell that a head-on collision can easily produce lethal fracturing / lesions in the head-neck area. Of course, if one does not reach out with one’s head at the point of impact like a 100 m runner does, much of the energy will be taken up by sundry body parts slamming against the wall.
Gus Frerotte nearly killed his career.
One could hit a wall and break one’s nose in such a way as to send shards up into the brain, I imagine.
I’ve seen at least two cases of a dog running headlong into an obstacle and dying. The owners did not want a necropsy so we don’t know if they snapped their necks or if it was some other mechanism of death. They were both young dogs running around like crazy and were not otherwise ill. One was a dobe that ran into a wall and another was a smaller dog that ran into the coffee table. We also recently had a small dog, yorkie, that wriggled out of it’s young owner’s arms and fell on it’s head and died. It was only about a 3 to 4 foot drop but it landed just right, or just wrong, and died instantly.
As has already been pointed out, birds often fly into windows and die.
You’ve been watching that “blonde antelope” video, haven’t you? 
Make the wall of frangible transparent sugar and placed at the edge of a cliff, and I think you’d have a winner!
In 1994, Texas Tech’s mascot–The Masked Rider–was thrown or fell from her horse as she entered the stadium at a football game. The horse was spooked and bolted down the sideline toward an exit. It apparently slipped headlong into a wall and died instantly.
Depending how you hit it… yes.
Running full force flat on to the wall would spread the impact across the entire body (I’m simplifying here, of course, it would probably hit whichever shoulder was ahead, a side of the face/neck, a side of the hips… etc…). Still lots of points of impact.
Running straight at it with your head down? Eh, stupid… But probably not lethal, I’d think. The human skull is there to protect the brain and it will do so. Concussion? Cracked skull? Nasty head wound? Yeah, probably. Death? Mehhh… Don’t know. I’d give it a maybe.
Now to run straight at a wall chin tucked half way, head tilted to the side and forward (making sure your temple is about the first part of your body to strike said wall)… I think you’d have a decent chance of breaking your neck going at full speed.
Make sure you have someone else there for this test or the police will keep the video and it won’t end up on Youtube. (What? I just went through a few minutes of theorizing a how to… I’d like to see if my theories work…)
Yes. In 1987 during a state high school championship football game in TN a player thinking that his team had lost the game put his head down and ran into a concrete/cinder block wall. The injuries weren’t instantly fatal, but the kid did die within a day or so from those injuries. I do not know if he had removed his helmet or not.
I don’t know if it was protecting much except for the part of the brain that keeps the vitals going.
Call me cold… But man… I don’t feel all that bad for him.
Stereotypes to follow, but would you predict he’d be a future professor of economics or a drunk redneck you see in the police log for rolling over a truck after picking up their kid from kindergarten?
I had not heard of it, no, but since you mentioned it,I googled itand that’s pretty funny. 
Interesting responses, guys, thanks.
I think you could probably kill yourself. According to Wikipedia, a world class sprinter can hit 42.5 km/h or 26.4mph or 11.8 meters per second. This is moving pretty fucking fast. This is about the speed of a brisk road bike speed. Running into a brick wall head first could easily kill you.
Somehow, not considering air friction I think:
∆x = (v*v)/g where ∆x is the distance, v = final velocity and g = gravitational constant, we get
∆x = (11.8*11.8)/9.8 = 7.1m = 23 feet
So, I think it’s equivalent to falling off close to a 3 story building on your head, which would kill most people.
OK, I’m a bit buzzed, so I’m probably wrong. In any case, running at full speed and the throwing your head into a brick wall, it seems like you could kill yourself.
Good math for being buzzed.
I looked at the issue and said… Eh… I think so.
You pulled out the calculator and, while hitting a 7 instead of an 8 here and there before hitting clear and starting over again… Did better than I would’ve done sober.
One of my fraternity brothers (a lousy drunk who truly has a problem) was wasted one night and managed to run the entire length of his dormitory hallway and straight into a wall, flat out against it, breaking straight through the drywall at the end. He had to go to the hospital for internal bleeding and a possible concussion, but that’s all. Now had he ran into a brick wall, I don’t know if he’d still be around today.