Whilst perusing Carina42’s thread on ways you’d like to die, I thought of ways I would not like to die. Stabbed, shot or drowning don’t really appeal to me, although they’re nothing compared to being lowered very slowly, an inch an hour, into an industrial grinder, then having salt vigourously rubbed into the soggy ends at regular intervals. That’d really smart.
So use your imaginations, how would you really not like to leave this mortal plane?
I think the worst ways would be the ones where you have a little while where you know you’re going to die, but not long enough to make your peace with it. Drowning, plane crash, house fire (and not one you sleep through), slow strangulation or suffucation…all of those seem pretty icky to me.
Among other nasty exhibits was one in which the victim is hung upside down to get his blood to flow to his head, then sawed longways, slowly, between the legs until completely halved. Some victims were said to live through this for days until the saw reached the neck. I dont want to die like that.
There was always Count Vladimir Dracula’s favorite execution method of impalement.
And I don’t mean a quick impalement, either. I mean he took a 32-foot-long pole and sharpened one end of it, then he greased up the sharpened point, stuck it in your crotch between your legs, and then raised the pole (with you on the end of it) to a vertical position. Your own weight pressing down on the pointed end of the pole would cause the pole to slowly work its way up through your guts until it hit a vital organ and finally killed you.
I think that George Bush’s lethal injection is inhumane.
You writhe for several minutes as your brain wacks out.
Why can’t they at least emulate natural death, whatever that would mean.
I’m not a doctor, but I’d guess it would be slowly reducing the oxygen content of the air until a person passes out, like when they climb a mountain. Just keep adding more nitrogen.
Or maybe “turn off” the heart with a defibrilator that’s hooked up wrong, both paddles on the same side of the chest.
There have to be a lot better ways than lethal injection.
Leprosy. Ugh.
Nobody’s mentioned burning to death? Unimaginable agony.
Also bad would be any form of death whereby you were eaten alive by small animals, such as ants, rats, or piranhas.
And Pink, that’s not how lethal injection works; when they kill you that way they put you to sleep quickly, then kill you. You may be thinking of a gas chamber.
Degenerative brain disease.
Hands down.
By the time you die, you’ve already died a thousand deaths.
I’d like to expand on my earlier answer. ANY lingering and disfiguring disease is the stuff of my worst nightmares, especially ones that affect the mind.
At least burning, drowning, lethal injection et al. are over quickly. I’d take them in a heartbeat over cancer or Alzheimer’s.
Getting trapped in an underground tunnel is also very low on my list.
I think the execution scene at the beginning of Michel Foucault’s “Disicpline and Punish” is awful, not so much for the physical pain involved, but because it was so disorganized, I’m sure it was dragged out a lot longer than it had to be.
Persoanlly, I would hate to be stabbed to death, because the person who’s killing you must really hate you. I mean, they have to be right up on you, not like a gun where they can stand back. And they have to stab you a bunch of times, not just once or twice. I once read this article about this man who stabbed his girlfriend 102 times. 102! Try tapping yourself on the knee a hundred and two times; that takes forever. Imagine being stabbed that many times.
Everything that was already said … ugh. Makes one not want to leave the house today.
Anything involving being buried alive, including in a coffin accidentally, or in some sort of cave-in or building collapse.
Other bad ways that come to mind are any situation where you are aware that help is on its way … perhaps they’re digging through rubble to find survivors, and you can hear them, but it’s just not quickly enough.
In books and movies, you often have the scenario where someone is sacrificing themselves to save others, say, bolting out into enemy fire in order to draw attention to yourself so that the others can run the opposite way to safety. While this is no doubt very noble and might give you some comfort knowing you died so that others might live, I can just see myself getting so neurotic that I not only die, but I die a nervous wreck, wondering if I screwed this up somehow and all the other people are going to die anyway.
Ick! Did I inspire this thread…?
I can’t imagine any worse ways to die than many of those described here.
In fact, now I want to hide under my quilt with some warm milk, a big fluffy teddy bear & a trashy novel where the heroine lives happily EVER after!
I think drowning would be terrible, you have to breathe, I don’t know it’s just to terrible to think about. Being buried alive would suck pretty bad too.
I think if I had to pick a shitty way to die I’d pick something that would give me some time to say good bye and try to tie up any loose ends and let everyone know how much I loved them. I wouldn’t want anything that gets you when you think everything is just swell, then KABLAMMMO! And you’re dead, I wouldn’t like that.
I think the wost death would to be eat alive by either rats or magots, perhaps worms. 
I recently read a short story by John Shirley (in “Black Butterflies”) where people are trapped on a BART train, under the Bay, after an earthquake.
The car is tipped, people are sliding slowly down, crushing each other, and water and mud begin to seep into the car.
You’ll never guess what some folks do in their last few minutes of life. (Nope, it doesn’t involve cell phones.)
When I was a few years along in college, I read in the paper of the suicide of one of my high school classmates. She drove out to a baseball park in the middle of the day, doused the inside of the car with gasoline, and lit a match. How bad a state of mind must she have been in to choose that way to die?
I spent the rest of the day reflecting on how she had been one of the few members of the stuck-up clique who was nice to me, the class geek and whipping girl. I’ll always remember the date of her death because the next day I started a new job and met Mr. Scarlett. Quite an irony to think that her life ended so horribly the day before mine truly began. I can’t drive past that park without thinking of her.
Is it absolutely certain that this was a suicide? My gosh.
That is so sad.
Okay, screw Blast Books and the pig they rode in on.
http://www.webpub.com/~jhagee/floyd-c.html
But be careful if you’re at work. Real loud banjo music comes on.