# We will all die
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [April 6, 2007, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959 "2007-04-06T07:34:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/1 "2007-04-06T07:34:26Z")
Someday you know, we’re all going to die. Being in a morbid mood, I just felt like pointing that out. It’s obvious obviously, but I mean, it really makes you think.
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### Author:  [@Santo\_Rugger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santo_Rugger)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/2 "2007-04-06T07:39:33Z")
[Tyler Durden]On a long enough time line, the survival rate becomes zero.[/Tyler Durden]
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/3 "2007-04-06T07:42:42Z")
It makes me think, “Fuck you. It’s 3:42 am. I already can’t sleep. Now you go and tell me _that?_”
Here’s wishing you a relaxation-free weekend filled with horripilating existential dread, you ingrown follicle on the asscheek of existence you.
😃
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### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/4 "2007-04-06T07:58:07Z")
I know.
**Autolycus** , have you been drinking again?
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### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/5 "2007-04-06T08:11:26Z")
[QUOTE=Rigamarole]
I know.
**Autolycus** , have you been drinking again?
[/QUOTE]
Not really, but ummmmm.. thanks?
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### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/6 "2007-04-06T08:17:01Z")
When I was a young person – 20s, 30s – and I would think about my own mortality, it would start to freak me out.
I’m in my 60s now and death is not so frightening at all. Part of it was a sort of mystical/spiritual insight/experience that I had in my 30’s or 40’s. But much of my loss of fear has to do with the falling away of my culture.
My hometown is not nearly the same as it was. The older people that I loved as a child are mostly gone now and I’ve also lost some of my best friends. These were people who made the world seem “real” to me. Without them, things don’t quite add up.
And the deaths of some entertainers start to seem unthinkable. Life without Sinatra? No more Carson _ever_? No new Mancini soundtracks? Rest in peace, Jobim.
My life is good right now. Wonderful friends! We share a lot of forgetfulness together! 🙂 I’m in no hurry to die. But I’m not afraid of it.
You know what one of my friends is doing tomorrow? She has a blind date. It’s the first blind date she’s had in seventy years! She’s eighty-eight and a living doll. I want to be like her when I grow up.
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### Author:  [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/7 "2007-04-06T08:20:08Z")
At the bottom of my screen I get links like
Donate a Kidney!
Donate a Car to Charity!
Help an Orphan!
Geeeez! No pushing and shoving the old person out the door!
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### Author:  [@Elsie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elsie)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/8 "2007-04-06T08:42:45Z")
Nice post, Zoe.
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### Author:  [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/9 "2007-04-06T09:05:46Z")
Screw _that_ noise. Death sucks. I refuse to participate.
The only way you can have my immortality is when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Uh, so to speak.
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### Author:  [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/10 "2007-04-06T09:15:29Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Not really, but ummmmm.. thanks?
[/QUOTE]
It wasn’t a compliment. More of an inquisition. So, by “not really” I suppose you mean yes? 😉
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### Author:  [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/11 "2007-04-06T09:53:10Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Someday you know, we’re all going to die. Being in a morbid mood, I just felt like pointing that out. It’s obvious obviously, but I mean, it really makes you think.
[/QUOTE]
So who pissed in your cornflakes?
God, you’re a cheery bugger aintcha?
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### Author:  [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/12 "2007-04-06T10:09:12Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Someday you know, we’re all going to die. Being in a morbid mood, I just felt like pointing that out. It’s obvious obviously, but I mean, it really makes you think.
[/QUOTE]
The balance to be learned is how to savor the present because we may not have a future, but still plan for a future just in case it shows up.
I much prefer Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” over Dylan’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” :
_“So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustain’d and sooth’d
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”_
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/13 "2007-04-06T10:23:09Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Someday you know, we’re all going to die. Being in a morbid mood, I just felt like pointing that out. It’s obvious obviously, but I mean, it really makes you think.
[/QUOTE]
12:34AM… the clock is tickin’, tickin’, tickin’, eh?
But how do you _know_ for sure that we will all die? What scares me much more than death is the possibility (however slim) that I’ll be forced to live longer than I’d like… or god forbid, maybe even _forever_.
What if everything we knew about mortality and the universe is wrong? Or can you prove that we’re not immortals who tricked ourselves into believing we’re mortal so we can see what it’s like?
I dunno. Death is just an unknown to me and I’m really kind of eager to find out what it might be like. Life is also an unknown, of course – I don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow – but I guess after a few years it just doesn’t seem as novel as that whole death thing.
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### Author:  [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/14 "2007-04-06T10:37:44Z")
“I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.”
```
-Albert Einstein
```
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### Author:  [@Captain\_C](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_C)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/15 "2007-04-06T11:06:38Z")
Dead guy: “I was kind of expecting my life to flash before my eyes or something.”
Death: “YES, THAT IS WHAT YOU JUST DID FOR THE LAST 35 YEARS.”
Dead guy: “oh”
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### Author:  [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/16 "2007-04-06T11:47:18Z")
Not only will we all die, we will all die alone. Even those surrounded by loved ones, still walk through the door alone.
So, it’s important to come to terms with our own mortality.
“No One Here Gets Out Alive”
Jim Morrison
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/17 "2007-04-06T11:59:20Z")
Every man dies - Not every man really lives
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### Author:  [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/18 "2007-04-06T12:09:36Z")
The thread below this, when I opened it, was “New baby boy.”
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### Author:  [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/19 "2007-04-06T12:21:07Z")
When I get in a “we’re all going to die after all” mood, I like to listen to Do You Realize, by the Flaming Lips. It’s the happiest “we’re all going to die after all” song ever. I highly recommend it to the morbidly brooding sort.
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### Author:  [@Winston\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winston_Smith)
#### Post date: [April 6, 2007, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-will-all-die/398959/20 "2007-04-06T12:36:19Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Someday you know, we’re all going to die. Being in a morbid mood, I just felt like pointing that out. It’s obvious obviously, but I mean, it really makes you think.
[/QUOTE]
Not necessarily. I think it’s just a question of who you’re listening to. [Alcor](http://www.alcor.org/), for instance, promises reanimation of your corpse at some as-yet-undetermined point in the future when they’ve discovered the cure for what ails you. And, um, how to undo the additional damage they themselves have caused by cutting off your head and freezing it in liquid nitrogen. : cough :
Also: Most religions promise eternal life, eternal salvation, or an eternal supply of virgins in exchange for your soul. Of course, it’s assumed that by _eternal life_ they mean “after” you “die”, so maybe that doesn’t quite count. Of course, The [Church of the Subgenius](http://www.subgenius.com/) not only promises eternal life, but with these these folks the brainwashing is _optional_, which is good. And you’ll get to ride in a space ship. Cool.
And in a fundamental way, nobody ever _really_ dies, because after you’re “dead” your body will decompose and return to the food chain, supplying nutrients which fuel other living things, which eventually die and return to the food chain, and so on. Unless, of course, you’re “out-processed” in the customary way for westerners (embalmed with chemicals that prevent the deterioration of your flesh, wrapped in a synthetic-blend suit, and then nailed into a big steel and wood crate, which is then sealed in an even bigger steel and concrete box, which is then buried in the ground). Or cremated.
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