You discover you'll be dead in less than two decades. How would you guess it happens?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Let’s say that, on a trip to the backwaters of the world, you chance to meet a genuine oracle. This oracle, like every other oracle, gives information about the future in mostly unhelpful ways. At any rate, after satisfying you of its bona fides, the oracle tells you that you will live no more than another twenty years–but, smirking, refuses to tell you how you are doomed to die.

What would your best guess be?

And by the way, I’m not asking how you WANT or HOPE to do, so it’s not necessary to say “in battle with the Romulans” or “of multiple orgasms while in bed with Starbuck,” okay :stuck_out_tongue:

2

My most likely: Some sort of aircraft crash, probably caused by me doing something stupid. And spectacular.

My most feared: Illness. Like a really bad cancer or something. Long and lingering.

3

Heart attack. Our family has a long history of heart conditions.

4

Small plane crash for me too. In my case, into a jungle mountainside in a cloudbank.

5

I’m pretty darn fat so I’d have to say heart attack. I’d be surprised if I lived that long.

6

Diabetes-related cardiac failure is a good guess. However, I have always thought it would be a really bad traffic accident that I am not responsible for and that I don’t see coming.

7

Car accident. Of course, if an oracle DID say that to me and I believed in oracles, it’s entirely possible that I would never get into a car again in my life.

8

I would hope for a small plane crash. The smart bet would be an auto accident, cancer, or a heart attack. I just volunteered to go skydiving today with a coworker so maybe it would be something cool like that.

9

Something smoking-related, probably. Cancer, a stroke, COPD – maybe all three! I’d be surprised if it was anything else.

10

Heart attack or shot by an angry defendant…like the wife beater who lost his kids to my client yesterday.

11

Dude, you’re I know you’re a lawyer, but you’re also a SOUTHERNER. Where’s your handgun? 'Cause I’m a busy man and I don’t have time to be avenging your death.

Not that I wouldn’t do it, but I just wouldn’t do it with a cheerful heart.

12

Cerebral hemmorage, cause by tripping and cracking my head on the oracle’s front stoop while he sits in the background, snickering to himself and saying “Well, three minutes is less than twenty years…”

13

I have no response to Hal’s post. I just want to encourage everyone not to make the obvious joke. And by “encourage” I mean “I will unleash the genetically engineered flame breathing venom spewing winged howler monkeys upon the first person other than myself who refers to the ovine.”

14

Oh, my liver is probably in the lead right now.

15

Choking on something. I eat too fast and there’s no one around to Heimlich me.

16

Sooner of later I’ll get ‘left turned’ by a cager while motorcycling.

17

Put me in the car crash column. Hopefully by someone else’s stupidity, rather than mine, but some days the odds don’t look so good.

18

The thing about handguns is they aren’t much good against a sniper. A guy that really wants to take me out is prolly gonna do it by surprise attack from range. Not much I can really do to prevent somethng like that.

All things considered, it’s not a bad way to go. I’ve seen what heart problems and cancer can do to a person. I’d take a bullet over that anyday. As a bonus, I’d have an argument for admission to Valhala, since’ll I’ll have died in quasi combat.

19

Have I taught you people nothing? What about pre-emptively sending your enemies to Coventry?

Wait. You’re one of the good guys. Never mind.

20

Nah. I’m the aging cynic riding a jackass and tilting at windmills. When the bastards finally win, you’ll turn me into Don Quixote in one of your books. Please describe me as taller, slimmer, and getting laid more often. :smiley: