You **never **suicide prematurely. I’ve seen The Mist!
In the first place, I’m truthfully the least likely sort of person to make it to the last stand. Although I’ve never been in a life-or-death situation, and no mettle knows of what it’s made until tested, I think I’d be the “fright, then flight” type (who is predictably taken down by the cannibal zombie chefs within minutes–nay, seconds).
While I have no ideological problem with suicide, and certainly think it would be the most rational option under the circumstances, I can’t see myself reacting rationally. I’d never stop holding out hope for a last minute helicopter rescue.
Wait, do these enemies fight Aztec-style, to capture rather than kill? Do they go out of their way to NOT kill you on the line? Are they mythological marksmen that can shoot to nonfatally disable a moving target? Armed with paralyzing dart blowguns? Because as mentioned before, you could try a suicide charge and force them to take you down on the battlefield so you don’t make it to the field kitchen.
Kill as many as I can and try and take a bite out of the fucker sticking me in the pot.
If I’m a gonner either way then I am much more focused on how much I can make them hurt rather then minimizing how much I hurt. Pain is temporary, chicks dig scars, but glory is forever.
TANSTAAFL, cannibal dudes. In other words, I’m planning on taking a sizable escort with me to Valhalla. I keep going until my body fails me.
One addendum: I’m a mean sneaky SOB. I’d be sneaking out in the middle of the night to sow terror among the enemy. Why meet them head-on when they’re so much more vulnerable sleeping, fucking, or shitting? No reason they should be having all the backstabbing mutilating fun.
Sure, I’d be willing to fight - AFTER I have swallowed enough drugs to ensure a speedy death.
Or maybe have a poison capsule glued to a molar - as soon as I clinch my teeth, I’m dead.
With those assurances that death will be painless, I’d be willing to take out as many as I can in my remaining time.
Priorities, people.
A talented sadist can keep a victim just alive enough to feel pain for days on end.
And you can never tell how your body will react to a massive injury - it just might go into shock and knock you down - I made it to the ER before going into shock. I even diagnosed it when the nurse told me BP and pulse rate. They put me on a gurney until the shock passed. Then they treated me.
All fear essentially stems from the fear of death. Fear is an unhealthy emotion that gets stored in the nervous system and the subconscious until you deal with it. If you don’t make peace with it, you carry it around. I’m not interested in having any fears or contractions in this body/mind system so I work to discover and release them.
Now that I know what I essentially am, there is no longer any fear of death, and I am at peace with the mortality of the body. To get there I of course had to confront all the crap my subconscious was hiding, but it was well worth it.
Fear of death is a useful thing that I would never want to completely rid myself of. Fear of death keeps healthy people with potentially decades ahead of them from dying Darwin Awards-style deaths or, more banally, dying in the middle of the street because “I can make it across!” when a few seconds’ more patience would have served them. :dubious:
I have no quibble with the proposition that the fear of death should be understood, tamed, and/or dealt with, nor do I doubt that excessive fear of death can cripple people. Nonetheless, I would be exceedingly nervous dealing face-to-face with a not-terminally-ill person who says “there is no longer any fear of death” in him. :eek:
Excessive fear of death, like excessive eating or hyperventilating, is unhealthy. Fear of death, like eating or breathing, is healthy.
Having dealt with it I see no problem. Fear of death comes from an identification with the body (which is born and dies). The argument that you somehow need fear is in my experience not true.
From a belief system point of view it actually makes no sense at all to me. If you’re an atheist, you essentially believe that death just equals a lack of experiencing. That happens every night as we go into deep sleep anyway, that’s an experience of non-experiencing. If you’re some sort of religious person, the after life is usually described as a lot better than the current life, so once again it makes no sense to fear the death of the body (unless you’ve been a very bad boy or girl of course…).
So essentially psychological fear of death is a form of learned ignorance. The body doesn’t fear death, it is just aversive to pain, which is quite sensible.
I would like to point out that going by the response of a few people in this thread, it’s definitely not just the “enemy” that is merciless and sadistic.
This. I have watched this happen with other elderly relatives, and now it’s happening to my father. I don’t know whether he would have chosen to end his life with a pill if the option had been open to him while he could still communicate clearly. But by all that is holy, the choice should have been his.
He may live for another three weeks, or another three months, in a netherworld where he can barely communicate, can’t sit up enough to cough up the gunk that accumulates in his throat and lungs, and is generally helpless and trapped inside himself, in a failing body. When I left him the other night, I said, “Hang in there, Dad.” And instantly thought: hang in there, for what? It’s not like he’s going to recover. He’s dying, and he knows it. Enduring pain or difficulty in the hopes of a better tomorrow, that’s one thing. But whether or not one believes in an afterlife, what’s the point of endurance if your days are only going to get worse until you die?
Thirty years from now, I may face the same choice - and it better BE a choice by then. I’m not scared of being dead. But what life is generally like for old people during their last weeks and months - I’d like to skip that part, if I may.
And in the OP’s scenario, well, I’m not much of a fighter. I’d likely lose the opportunity to suicide before being barbecued because once you’re in a fight to the death, it’s hard to extricate yourself. And I’d probably only get in the way of those who were not only trying to fight, but might do so competently if I wasn’t in the way. So it would be best for all concerned if I took the early exit.
I simply fail to understand the mentality of a person who would commit suicide, under any circumstances.
You are personally reaching the end of the universe, the end of all time. No matter how painful the last part may be, you can wait through it. It will come soon enough. Because after it all is over there will be nothing left to feel or go through. Even if it is terrible the human body and mind have a way of getting you by, and later it will not matter at all. Even very, very, really terrible, I mean suckola experiences, are still at least experiences.
I fail to comprehend, and thus fail to respect, the decision to self terminate. And yes, I am serious.
How long will a suicide be dead? Forever.
How long will a fighter be dead? Forever.
During all that time, how much will either one of them experience or remember? Nothing at all.
I fail to comprehend, and thus fail to respect, considering one option to be more worthy of respect than the other when they have absolutely identical outcomes.
A question for the ‘any life is better than any death’ types:
You are standing beside the bed containing the withered, pain-wracked body of a person you loved.
Everything that made that person a sentient human is gone. It does not show any sign of recognition of faces or voices or names.
The merciful thing would be to pull out a pistol and put a bullet into its medulla.
If you do so in the US, you will be charged with Murder in the First Degree. Punishable by death.
The outcomes are not identical. The point that f the suicide option isbjit to escape death; it’s to minimize pain.
And we don’t know what awaits us after death. I disbelieve in Heaven, Hell, and reincarnation, but I don’t KNOW they don’t exist, and I do not believe you do either.
