Would you if there was nothing you could do to prevent it and the prediction was magically accurate? If told you’ll die in Ghana which is improbable to say the least, nothing you can do will stop it, by some bizarre confluence of events you will die there?
I vote no.
I will not die in Samarra.
When I was a teenager, I had the most vivid dream I’ve ever had, and I can still remember it to this day.
I was out with some friends having a picnic. It was a pine wood forest, and there was a clearing on the left hand side of the road (if you stood looking up hill). In the clearing were a bunch of picnic tables and a rock.
I was wearing a spring dress and laughing when an old clunker car (a boat car plymouth type) with a light blue body, a primered hood and white passenger side door came barreling down the hill and an automatic weapon shooting at all of us.
It was so real, it was more like a memory than a dream when I woke up. I convinced myself I had dreamed how I was going to die. Every time I went to a new picnic area, I found myself looking for the markers, terrified that this was the day I was going to die.
So, no, I don’t think I would like to know where I am going to die. Just thinking you know where you are going to die was bad enough, but to be positive, I’m not sure I could handle it.
p.s. I haven’t died at any picnic area yet, for the curious of mind.
No way. If I’m inexplicably finding myself on my way to Ghana, I’d like to think I’ll have a good time there. Knowing that I’m going to my death would be less fun.
Nope. I don’t want to know a single thing about my death ahead of time. Not when, where or how.
I would never say yes to this question because there is basically only one way for the person making the prediction to make 100% sure that prediction will be correct, and that both of us will know it to be correct.
“For $100 I can tell you the exact place, time and manner of your death, if you are willing to find out.”
“Here you go, $100. When and how do I die?”
BLAM “Right there and like that, sucka!”
I read a bunch of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not books when I was a kid, and it seemed like every one had someone who was told he or she would die “in water” or “in France” and so they avoided water or France or whatever it was.
Then one day he or she would stop at an inn and find out it was called “Blue Lake Inn” or “France” or some such thing and die of fright!
The boldfaced italics always got to me.
I’d absolutely want to know where I would die- with that knowledge, I’d be able to act as if I were immortal pretty much everywhere else. Skydiving? Sure, so long as I’m not in . Why not?
I’m not sure; one part says Hell yes but the other part would be so tempted to actually strangle some idiot in the last week.
Yeah. I could turn it into a great practical joke. Nothing like going out with a laugh.
Does the magical prediction say you won’t spends years in agony from skydiving injuries first? 
Damnit. No.
No, I wouldn’t want to know. It sort of defeats the purpose and especially if it’s goign to be a place I might see often, it could make it unpleasant every time I go there.
As a similar story, one of my best friends had gotten a psychic reading when he was young and asked when he was going to die. The story went that she refused to tell him the year he would die, but was willing to give him the date, September 27th. So, every year on that day, he would stay home from school, and when he was working, he’d call in sick, and basically be as cautious as possible. If he did have to drive anywhere, he refused to let anyone else drive and he’d go REALLY slow. Of course, being good friends, we reminded him that he could easily be home and the house could burn down with him in it or he could get a heart attack or whatever. We also promised him that it couldn’t happen since we’d just randomly kill him on September 26th one year just to prove that his reading was wrong. So… he just ended up being even more nervous at home, and then taking off the 26th as well, and refusing to talk to us on those two days.
So, yeah, finding out would be unpleasant. It might not be so bad if I found out I was going to die in Ghana, since I have no reason to go there, but what if I found out I was going to die in the town I’m currently living in? Hell, even if it’s Ghana, that doesn’t mean that the real cause of my death isn’t because of some bizarre set of circumstances that start in my home town, like getting kidnapped having been mistaken for some wealthy person they intend to ransom, and taking me to some far off place to kill me when they realize their mistake to prevent prosecution. In fact, that sort of bizarre scenario is probably more likely than me having another reason to go to Ghana. So, I really don’t see how that knowledge is helpful at all.
If my fortune says I will die in Jerusalem, you can sure as hell bet I will not be going anywhere near Jerusalem.
Then, when I collapse in a crowd and am carried into a nearby church, I find that I have been put in the Jerusalem Chamber. :smack:
(If you are wondering, this was supposedly how and where Henry IV died.)
Joe Haldeman wrote a story “Manifest Destiny” based on this idea. You can read it online here.