The worst way to die?

[bluepotatosack]

entombed alive.

Imagine it, you're only able to lay there in the darkness, hearing the faint noises of life above you, but you cannot move, you cannot see and your screams are unlikely to be heard.

Each breath depletes your dwindling air supply, it's getting hot...you're feeling smothered: dizzy and light-headed. And the pain, the fear...the loneliness and despair slowly setting in as those seconds tick away.

the dizziness grows worse: your skull throbs as your body struggles to find air and slowly...oblivion.

Ever hear The Mariner's Revenge Song by The Decemberists? That's a goodun.

"Find him, Bind him
Tie him to a pole and break
His fingers to splinters
Drag him to a hole until he
Wakes up naked
Clawing at the ceiling
Of his grave"

 

[The Towel Boy]

I would hate to be impaled or have a terminal illness, not very quick or painless

 

[Spambot 3000]

Tied up by an unbreakable rope which is then tied to the back of an SUV. It then drags you through a vast desert until you dehydrate or become burned to death by the sand.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Nibbled to death by toothless piranha (sp?).

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

An oiled spear straight up the rectum Vlad the Impaler style. Holy shit that would be terrible.

Nuh-uh! He used a blunted wooden pole, which instead of stabby stabbing, would simply...squidge all your organs out the way, causing the pain to me more horrific and last longer!
He was a terrific chap, that Vlad.

OT: I had a nasty incident when I was younger, and burning is my worst fear ever.
(Which is also hereditary, as my ancestor was the last witch to be burned alive in scotland)

 

[Little2Raph]

All these things are pretty horrible, especially what they did to Junko Furuta. Something nobody else has mentioned though is acute radiation poisoning (such as experienced by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, as well as the firefighters who first responded to the Chernobyl disaster). Anything over 5000 rads will cause extreme nervousness and confusion; severe nausea, vomiting, and watery diarrhea; loss of consciousness; and burning sensations of the skin - which occurs within minutes of exposure and lasts for minutes to hours. Then you get a latent stage that lasts for a few hours or less where the symptoms disappear, but then you get a return of watery diarrhea, convulsions, and coma. Death occurs within 3 days of exposure. Death is due to collapse of the circulatory system as well as increased pressure in the confining cranial vault as the result of increased fluid content caused by edema, vasculitis (destruction of vessels and arteries by inflamation), and meningitis. There's absolutely nothing you can do but die horribly as your body shuts down - all the medical staff can do is try and make you as comfortable as possible until the end. The worst part is the latent stage where there's a short period where you think you're okay and will pull through - only to come crashing back to reality in the worst way.

 

[Whateveralot]

If somehow you could force a persons pain centre receptors to be fully active, so that their brain would think they were feeling every type of pain ever from every part of their body.

They would literately die of (false) pain within a few minutes, but those few minutes would be the worst anyone has ever experienced.

It's would be twice as bad for females too, because they have twice as many pain receptors on their bodies as males, which means they have twice as many pain receptors in the brain that would be activated.

I suppose one would die near instantly because of the shock. The heart will simply stop. Instantly. Right?

 

[Niflhel]

During the medieval times in Denmark, they used an execution method called radbrækning, which translates into wheel broken.
It was quite simple. The convicted was tied to a platform, and his bones would be broken with either a club or a wagon wheel. If you'd just been a bit naughty, they'd do it from top to bottom - Break your neck first, then the rest of your bones. If you'd been a bad boy, they'd do it bottom to top - First breaking the toes, then the foot, then the ankle, then the shin... Continuing all the way up till they'd finally kill the convict by breaking his neck.

 

[repeating integers]

Eaten by army ants would suck....slow and painful.

This right here. Nothing else is even in the same league. Army Ants, when dealing with large prey, cover the entire body of their poor victim before eating it all at once - making sure to avoid the vital internal organs.

 

[Hawkeye21]

Aconitum poisoning.

Holy shit, this stuff grows in my garden! Now I can go and poison people that annoy me.

Dropping dead while spanking the monkey.

I really can't imagine any more humiliating way to kick the bucket.

Hah! Since autoerotic asphyxiation became a thing, this is more common than you would think.

 

[ISearchForTraps]

Impalement, eaten by rats, fed feet first into a wood chipper, flayed alive, flesh-eating bacteria/fungus, starvation, dehydration, crucifixion, sliced into pieces...

 

[Atomic Spy Crab]

Being possessed by a chaos god has got to hurt. (Because demon transformations, and da emprahs wrath)

 

[Angie7F]

Anything long. Like the gas chamber.
I dont mind dying in an earthquake, just hit me in the head and kill me instantly...

 

[Henrik Knudsen]

I would say alone but then I read about that japanese girl.

I now prefer alone.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

drowning, the panic as you try n find a way to escape, your longs screaming for air until you convulse n gulp down water

 

[F'Angus]

Contemlating things on the Tree of Woe...

being eaten alive by vultures while starving and dehydrating, and probably suffering from blood loss and strained limbs. I think the bit the Vultures go for your eyes would be the worst.

 

[Keith K]

Death by any kind of torture, I'm sure, would be among the worst ways due to its extended nature.

Death by fire, actually being on fire, is also high on the list.

 

[Aetherlblade]

are we going for natural or unnatural deaths? Because I've studied lots of ways to torture and I know lots of ways how-not-to-die. (parts of my history/politics intrests I guess.)

 

[lacktheknack]

So many people saying drowning. As a near-drowning victim, drowning is actually a bit peaceful. Your body is thrashing, reaching, doing ANYTHING it can to get to air, but your brain is just going "uhhhhhhhhhh". Your vision starts blacking out and you just kind of stop thinking. If anything, the worst part of almost drowning is finally breaking the surface and getting an enormous adrenaline boost with awful thoughts of what almost just happened.

OT: Crucifixion is a spectacularly painful way to go. Imagine someone squeezing and crushing your funny bone, and then hanging you from it. The only way if could be worse would be if you were also on fire.

Probably the worst death I've actually witnessed is extremely advanced Alzheimer's disease resulting in death by starvation because the patient forgot how to eat. Nothing challenged my anti-euthanasia stance as much as that. The only upside about the two years of death throes is the fact that the patient is only aware of a few seconds of it at a time.

 

[CorvusFerreum]

Scaphism. From an ancient greek description:

"[The king] decreed that Mithridates should be put to death in boats; which execution is after the following manner: Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lay down in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within.
They offer him food, and if he refuse to eat it, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes; then, after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey, pouring it not only into his mouth, but all over his face.
They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed.
When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures preying upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, at last expired."

That's probably the most horrible I can think of, though it was thankfully rare.

Oh, the ancient greek. Such funloving pranksters.
While we are at it: The breaking wheel [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel] is a medieval execution method in which every bone in you body is broken by dropping the edge of a wheel on it. You might then be executed by dropping it on your head, neck or heart. Your, now floppy, body is then wattled around the wheel's spokes. Sometimes they might wattle you on the wheel before you were killed. A skilled torturer would leave you alive during that process. This is pretty horrific, but let's try to use a bit more fantasy on it and combine it with other torture methods.
If you were alive on the wheel they could use such fun techniques as charring your skin or ripping your flesh with heated pliers, which are also reported measures of torture. They might also pull your finger- and toenails for good measure. Beeing then left to be eaten by scavenging crows and the maggots hatching in your wounds during the follonging days would constitue as the most horrific death I could think of atm.

Another one I have heard of would be beeing bound on top of pointed bamboo and letting it grow threw you.

Or the classic: Crucification.

As for a more likely death: Slowly burning to death sound like the worst of the more "mundane" ways to me.

Being possessed by a chaos god has got to hurt. (Because demon transformations, and da emprahs wrath)

But at least Chaos rewards those who are willing to spill their life's blood for the promise of power.

Hmmm...odd. I was just reading a piece, like last few minutes, about how today is the 40th anniversary of the biggest massacre of gay people in the US.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/24/remembering-the-upstairs-lounge-the-u-s-a-s-largest-lgbt-massacre-happened-40-years-ago-today/

Now, dunno about the absolute worst, but being upstairs in your church with your friends when it gets set on fire, trying to squeeze through a window to get out, and getting stuck halfway through and burning to death sounds pretty bad. Bonus points if the police and firecrews don't care too much because you're gay, except you're too dead to know about that.

That's fucking atrocious. It's sad that even today you rarely hear people remembering this event. Society still has a long way to go I think.