I was watching some Discovery Channel thing about sharks when the NOAA weather alert went off announcing tornadoes in the next county.
Which got me to thinking …
Since humans are THE apex predator here and general all around Masters Of All We Survey, I’ve gotten used to the idea that my eventual demise will be from disease, old age, or human violence, accidental or otherwise.
I think if I was to find myself being eaten by a shark, thrashed by a tornado, or hit by a meteor, my main reaction would be one of insult. How dare it! The sheer effrontery of it all.
Which led me to deciding that it was more insulting to be killed by weather than by wildlife, and somehow less insulting to be killed by large geophysical forces like earthquakes, volcanos, or meteorites. Yes, I know weather is geophysical. But not in the same way. Wind, cold, or heat are soft and insubstantial. Rock or molten rock is not.
So which is it for you? The greater insult is to be killed by …
I don’t know if I would call it “Insult” exactly, but it seems sillier to be killed by wildlife (and I’d like to add to that wildernESS). I live where there is a lot OF it and IT is really wild. Seems as if there are a lot of people who get killed by wildlife (and/or wilderness) because they were STUPID about wildlife and didn’t respect it.
Six years ago, famed Israeli general and politician Rafael Eitan was killed after a freak wave swept him off a breakwater during a storm. It wasn’t seen as insulting at all - in fasct, the public consensus seemed to be that he had found an awesome way to die.
Mainly because it is something we can do something about…
Don’t build on a flood plain, or on a fault, or on the slopes of a volcano - duh!
If it is cold, put on warm clothing. In the heat, drink lots of water and stay in the shade.
And for the love of god, don’t go mountain climbing in the cold and dark, or wander around with no idea of how to find ones way about!
Morons who are out wandering while being unprepared should have to pay/have their survivors pay for the rescues. That moron who fell into the volcano or those idiots who get lost wandering around in the wilderness are perfect examples of this.
Well, ok, with animals, don’t try to play with a bear or shark. :smack:
I picked meteorite because the chance is abysmally small and so stupidly random. I guess, though, it’d depend on the size. If it was a tiny one that bonked me in just the wrong spot on the side of the head, and led to a brain bleed or something, that’d suck. If it was huge and pretty much splatted me on the spot, not only would that be kind of awesome, but that’d be a record meteorite. Please name it after me!
Man’s great (and sole) advantage is technology(via intellect). Without it, a naked human in the wild has little chance against almost anything, even a bunch of angry squirrels would have a fair shot at taking down a person under the right circumstances.
Respect nature, because nature has no respect for you.
maybe wildlife, as it would mean i was stupidly putting myself in harms way by feeding bears, riding alligators, pulling a lions tail or swimming with whales.
Weather meh, what can you do other than get off the golf course or body of water pronto. Sleeping in your bed when a tornado barrels through the house ain’t an insult.
But I think of that poor bloke who was walking along the beach and was smacked by an ultralight aircraft from behind. That is insulting.
Taken out by a meteor? not so bad, imagine the odds, and my family should be able to keep the rock.
I voted the last option, not because the idea is silly, but because “dead is dead” and any way of having that happen besides dying in one’s sleep well after his or her 100th birthday, is an unpleasant way to go. The list could be expanded to include “being murdered” which is the definition of an insult. Dread diseases come in as well.
Of the choices in the poll, other than the one I chose, I believe one’s intelligence and “life skills” would be insulted most by having some small critter, no bigger than a house pet, eat one to death. Big critters like lions, tigers, javelinas, elephants and condors getting to you and killing you is less an insult than a commentary on your running and/or climbing skills. Surely you would make some effort not to just stand there and get eaten.
It’s got to be wildlife, because we ARE the apex predator. Being eaten by an animal is like the world heavyweight champion losing a boxing match to an amateur.
But the weather has always trumped us. The awesome power of the globe can blow human beings away any time it feels like it. You can’t be embarassed if you’re beaten by a planet.
I nominate a new, fusion category: to be killed by a tree or tree branch which was destabilized by inclement weather.
Here in the NE, it never fails: every big nor’easter, blizzard, ice storm, and even a heavy storm period, regardless of season – at least one person in the greater NY metro area gets killed this way, and often more than one. I don’t think it’s because we have more [generally, deciduous] trees than everyone else, either. I think it’s more related to the population density and the likelihood that a big tree in this part of the country will be in someone’s yard, planted on a city sidewalk, or be near a jogging path or athletic field in a public park.
I bet that 99% of the people hearing about one of these fatalities wonders what combination of deaf, blind and stupid you’d have to be not to sense a tree slowly snapping loose from its rooted moorings (or a large branch snapping) and tumbling in your general direction, but it keeps happening anyway… which suggests that these people aren’t necessarily unobservant or slow to react, but just normal and average, and that given the same situation, our odds of survival wouldn’t be any better.
Re. the poll, I voted “weather,” because this is arguably a weather phenomenon with the trees being merely a proxy instrument of demise…
I picked Wildlife because it’s the one you have the most control over.
It’s not slow, though. The cats and I were out in the screenhouse today, and the upper part of a 20’ tree about a 10th of a mile uphill gave way. By the time we looked up at cracking the sound, the branches were just a few inches from crashing to the ground. It was all over with in 2 or 3 seconds. It’s quite possible that someone walking by the tree wouldn’t have had time to scramble out of the way.
I think dying in a car wreck is much more ignominious.
If you burn up in a volcano’s cauldron, or are eaten by jaguars, you’ve been living an interesting and exciting life. If you pass peacefully in your sleep at age 101, you’ve lived a long life and probably an interesting one as well, for the perspective if nothing else.
If you get smashed up on the bypass trying to get to work on a Tuesday morning, you’re just a schmuck.
I said wildlife, but it depends on the kind of wildlife. Getting killed by a generally docile herbivore is more humiliating than being killed by weather or geology. Getting killed by an aggressive meat-eater is not.
I have to go with weather. It might be different if I lived elsewhere but around here I don’t see how the weather could possibly kill you unless you were really really dumb. Whereas Grizzly Bears and Rattlesnakes could get you if you were just unlucky enough.
And killed by a meteorite isn’t insulting. It’s awesome. That’s the way to go. As far as I am aware no one is known to have been killed by meteorite. So you get to make history.
Wildlife is the only one you could do the most about; there is at least some intention attached to the culprit and you have the ability to fight and think your way out of the situation. A Meteor, not so much. Weather and other disasters are in theory avoidable, but there’s probably nowhere you could live that you didn’t have some chance of some natural disaster striking. You can prepare perhaps, but you can’t really fight it.