Top 10 Fates Worse than Death

Suggested by SMS

Death could be the worst thing that can happen to someone. Others might argue death is the best thing that can happen in remote parts of the world and birth is the worst. Now then lets begin with the list.

10. Being buried alive

It’s got to be the worst way to go out: knowing you shouldn’t be going out. There are a million different reason why this could happen, but for the, oh, let’s say 10 hours it takes for your to exhaust the air where you’re buried, it will be the worst experience of your life. It’s probably pretty dirty and dusty, which complicates the breathing scenario further, and your legs are about to start tingling, and not in a good way. There’s no way you can push though the casket, certainly not with all that dirt above you. And the smell is horrible, what did you last eat? Don’t bother wondering why you weren’t embalmed, that’s outside the scope of this article. If you can get past the craziness that come with lack of oxygen, confined spaces, and the fear and guilt you will feel for those you are leaving behind, you might pray or hope or dream about waking up, or getting out, or that someone might come, just one last time to see if you are really dead. Except it won’t happen: somewhere, lots of people (let’s hope you were well liked anyways) are eating casserole and drinking punch, remembering your life. Somewhere someone is checking out your wife and commenting how hot she looks despite the whole “grieving widow” thing, and making plans to play daddy to your children. If that doesn’t make it hard to concentrate on other things while you wait to die-what would?

9. Being in a coma and hearing what’s going on around you but not being able to respond

Laying down on a bed where a (maybe) hot nurse is giving you sponge baths isn’t half bad, unless you can’t feel it or move, or smile or talk, or respond in any way to physical or emotional stimulus. Being in a catatonic state, unable to interact with the people visiting you, let’s hope they still show up in a year from now. It’s got to be quite a chore to wish for death when you can’t even wiggle your toes, and even worse than that: if you wiggle your toes, they may try to rehabilitate you. That’s going to be a rough three years. Eventually they will pull the plug, but your family will never pay off the bills that you racked up in that bed. That’s got to nag you a bit huh?

8. Being in jail without any friends

Being in jail, no matter where it is, is probably not anyone’s idea of fun. But to be stuck in a hardcore prison without anyone to watch your back, except the huge gangbangers, murderers, and rapists that want to violate your body in ways that gets movies banned in many countries-that’s probably going to make you wish you were dead. If you don’t fight back, you become that big guy’s girlfriend; if you do fight back, you can guarantee your sentence just got longer. How about solitary confinement-that can’t be fun. The dark isn’t so scary when you know you are going to go back to having to protect your own back in amongst a sea of predators when you get out of solitary. It’s best if you start making friends.

7. To the Pain-Torture

“To the pain means the first thing you lose will be your feet, below the ankles, then your hands at the wrists. Next, your nose…” A classic quote from Mel Brook’s The Princess Bride, but hardly the worst form of torture out there. It’s hard to imagine being stoked about torture when it’s happening to you-one would assume that the only thing keeping you going is the Chuck Norris like revenge you are plotting out for the fool providing the torture methods for you. One memorable torture method is Count Rugen’s torture machine from the princess bride pushed all the way to level 50, it literally sucked 50 years of life from Wesley. How about impalement-Vlad the Impaler style: with a 3 inch thick sharpened pole inserted in your anus and through your body careful to cause internal bleeding and out through your mouth so you remain alive for hours or even days, or being tarred and feathered, burning the tar into your skin with almost no hope of getting it off of you. Then there is the vagina spreading medieval speculum made exclusively to puncture the uterus and cause a slow bleeding and death by excruciating infection. I think water torture is looking pretty decent now.

6. Never feeling purpose

Going through life bouncing around with no sense of meaning probably makes for one depressing opening line to a hallmark card, but that doesn’t mean that millions of humans don’t feel this way every day. Depressed and useless that’s a horrible combo. Not only can you do no right, but now you feel sorry about the fact that you suck at everything. That’s no kind of life. It could probably make even the toughest guy wish for death. To feel that your life will never have meaning must make it pretty hard to get out of bed every day. No amount of anti depressants is going to control the feelings after a certain point, and that is going to make your existence pretty lame indeed. It doesn’t help that you just got out of prison wrongfully accused and sentenced for a crime you didn’t commit and stuck in a prison where you played girlfriend to any number of large, hairy and aggressive men, who didn’t even practice safe sex. Yeah, that’s worse than Death.

5. Being forced to listen to looped recordings of songs like “MMM Bop!”

This one is a bit of a stretch, but imagine you have been abducted by tetrodotoxin-using abductor, and they have a penchant for the 20 most annoying songs of all time. Tetrodoxin is the potent paralytic neurotoxin found in triggerfish, and commonly called the zombie powder. First up on the playlist: it’s Crash Test Dummies with “Mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm”, followed by the Hanson Brothers with “Mmm Bop!”, but wait that’s not all, the list reads like a ‘Candid Camera’ script, if you could move, you would look around for cameras to ensure you weren’t being ‘Punk’d’. Following those gems of pop are 7 of the most disturbingly annoying songs in the history of the world, including: Chumbawumba, “Tub Thumper”, Cher, “Believe”, Sisqo, “The Thong Song”, Ricky Martin, “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, Baha Men, “Who Let The Dogs Out”, Los Del Rio, “Macarena” and Meatloaf, “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”, all on loop. Bet: after listening to meatloaf’s song 72 times, “You would do anything for a gunshot wound to the head”.
It’s about this time that you begin to think you just got Rick-rolled.

4. Never knowing love

Feral children are humans reduced to their animalistic tendencies due to lack of love and affection. They physically change to become more animal like and aggressive, and cannot function as normal integrated members of society because their brain is programmed and wired to tell them to rely on instinct. They will scratch your eyes out to protect their toy or playground, or gnash at you with their teeth to let you know you are getting too close. It’s a real phenomenon, feral children are fascinating if not very sad to watch. Imagine never having love as an adult. Feeling like there is nothing better out there for you, and convinced that you will never find someone to love you or accept your love. It is a physiological and emotional necessity to seek out love and to people to love. Imagine for a minute you are the cat lady. That’s one possible result. Had she just been able to convince that married man she hooked up with at that office party in 1978m that she was the one for him, she wouldn’t be looking for love and affection in domesticated house cats. It’s depressing to think that there is a portion of society that will never find love or the special person to make them feel the way they always dreamed they could. Depression, thoughts of suicide and an overwhelming sense of bitterness are all byproducts of never knowing love. Feral adults are almost as depressing as feral children. Do whatever you have to do t find someone to love, because cats are fiercely independent and you will realize that after only a short time.

3. Being the only one you know of who is immune to the virus which started the Zombie apocalypse

Zombies are scary because it’s not a matter of if, only when. The mad horde of flesh and brain eating scavengers will hear you eventually. And then it’s just a matter of time. Oh you didn’t sock away a bunch of food and water, and invest in the hydroponic underground vegetable garden to go in your bunker? Well at least you didn’t turn into one…yet. You should have played the lottery with that kind of luck. Not that the winnings would have mattered, since no one who is still alive cares much about money. It’s about day 160 that the overwhelming feeling of despair and lack of nutrition will set in, and from that point on, it will no longer give you great pleasure to hack of zombie heads with a rusty machete you found in the severed hand underneath the Dodge Durango your neighbor used to drive. The moral of the story: stock up in preparation for the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, or endure many lonely nights wishing you had.

2. Being the guy who pushed the button which caused the disaster

“…I am become death. The destroyer of worlds.” Words famously recited out of the book of Bhagavad-Gita quoting Vishnu, told by J.Robert Oppenheimer. Yeah he’s THAT guy. The voice of the Nuclear bomb. Imagine you are him, and must live the rest of your days knowing you have changes the world by creating more death. Having to live with the guilt, or pressure, sickness, or whatever it is that comes from knowing you caused so much suffering, pain and loss, has got to be difficult. Intense suffering not only for the people who died in some way from you, but the suffering you would have to endure as a result, it would probably have you praying for death or wishing for no conscience. Chernobyl, the origin of AIDS, the atomic bomb, it doesn’t matter which one it is, just that it didn’t necessarily have to happen. That is what will haunt you every time you close your eyes to sleep.

1. Immortality

This is the dead ringer. Nothing is worse than having no chance of dying. Everything else above this on the list can end with death. Immortality however, is permanent. Not only can you not die but there are hundreds of even worse scenarios within the scope of immortality. Could you imagine the pain and sadness you will go through at least every 70 years: losing someone you love, to death? Wash rinse and repeat that a few dozen times. Your pain and hurt will know no end, and you will inevitably relive it over and over again just for that spark of happiness that comes from someone you can spend your lifetime with….err…scratch that, the next 70 years with. Assuming something doesn’t kill them sooner. Then there is the eventual inevitability of getting stuck somewhere under a collapsed building, or in quicksand, or deep in a Mayan ruin. That’s probably going to start sucking pretty quickly. How about everyone hounding you for your ‘ability’ once they find out. That’ll turn you into Carmen San Diego real fast; you’ll be all around the world trying to avoid being nabbed by the next guy who wants to dissect you to find the secret to eternal life. It seems glamorous, but it won’t be for long. How many lifetimes will you live before you just can’t take it anymore? Two? Three? Probably before your 100th birthday you will have serious doubts that this is the way to spend eternity. With all the potential downfalls of immortality maybe you should cross “Finding the holy grail” off your bucket list, unless of course, you like really long bucket lists. Buckle up for the ride, it’s going to be a long one.