We're not going to try and pretend that dying is any fun at all, but it would seem as though there are some scientifically worse ways to go than others.
The torments and pains that the human body can be put through can be incredibly gruesome, and history is littered with examples of shockingly gory deaths which you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
As our scientific understanding of the world around us has developed then so too has out ability to work out exactly what some of the worst ways for a human to die are.
Advert
There are plenty of awful ways to pop your clogs, but when the experts uncover some of the more terrifying titbits of scientific trivia about what happens - certain ways to go stick out as worse than the rest.
Buried Alive:
You might assume that this is one predicament you could get out of, in much the same way that some men reckon they could beat a lion in a fight or win a game of tennis against Serena Williams.
Advert
Surely it's just a matter of punching your way out of the coffin and then scooping your way to freedom through a few paltry feet of dirt, right? Nope.
While scientists disagree on how long you could survive if buried alive, their estimates ranging from 10 minutes to 36 hours with very few people willing to volunteer for more testing in this field, they do agree that you are almost certainly screwed.
If you're buried in a coffin you'd have to somehow get out of that sturdy box with your bare hands and once you run out of oxygen attempting to do so it's game over.
Then you'd have to somehow force your way up through several feet of earth when you're a puny little human with no real space to deposit anything you dig out, all while it's crushing you.
Advert
A daredevil who tried to escape from being buried alive managed to make it four feet before almost dying and needing to be rescued, while famous escapologists Harry Houdini and and Alan Alan also couldn't manage it.
Radiation Sickness:
Unsurprisingly, dying of radiation sickness is absolutely awful and there's plenty of scientific evidence to back it up.
Advert
The victims of nuclear weapons and disasters are history's testament to the ways radiation can kill you, whether it gets you quickly or slowly it's an agonising process.
Radiation can kill you very slowly and painfully, and one of the most gruesome examples of this is the death of Hisashi Ouchi after an accident at a power plant in Japan.
After a week of doctors trying to save his life he was begging them to stop, and at one point his heart stopped three times but was restarted after his family requested they keep trying to save him.
In the end it took him 83 days to die as he 'cried blood' and his skin melted off, ultimately dying of multiple organ failure.
Advert
Pyroclastic Flow:
The most deadly part of a volcanic eruption, a pyroclastic flow is the fast-moving cloud of gas and volcanic matter which spreads out following an eruption.
The flow travels so quickly that you can't outrun it, and they destroy pretty much everything in their path as they are able of reaching temperatures of around 1,000°C.
This is what smothered the Roman city of Pompeii and preserved the bodies there in whatever they happened to be doing at the time.
While the heat would kill you quickly your final moments would be absolutely awful as your skin would be instantly cooked, and there's even evidence of the heat from pyroclastic flows being so severe that it makes people's heads explode.
Some of the skulls of victims near Pompeii were found to have shattered and it's believed that in their last moments the insides of their heads would have boiled before exploding.
I hope you're not having dinner while reading this.
Decompression:
It's a good thing us humans live on the ground because we're not suited to live either really high up in the air or deep underwater, and pressure is a major part of that.
We can explore the highest heights and darkest depths of our planet with pressurised vehicles where the internal cabin pressure is consistent and survivable, but if something goes wrong it can spell doom for the occupants.
On a plane decompression can mean oxygen deprivation or people getting sucked out of the aircraft depending on how much damage has been caused.
Deep below the sea the pressure of all that water pushing down on you is dangerous, and if you rise out of the water too quickly you can suffer from decompression sickness, also known as 'the bends'.
In 1983 a group of divers died from 'explosive decompression' following a diving bell accident, with a study from The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology finding that three of the divers were instantly killed when the change in pressure caused the air and fluids inside them to expand, rupturing their bodies.
The fourth diver was 'completely disintegrated' and the study notes that parts of him were scattered around the place, needing to be collected in plastic bags, though his liver was recovered completely intact.
Getting Historical:
When it comes to figuring out what the worst execution in history is there's a lot of contenders for the top spot, which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of human beings being nice people.
There's the guy who was repeatedly dunked into a vat of boiling water after Henry VIII decided to change his punishment, and when you're facing being hanged, drawn and quartered it's hard to think what what could be worse.
Dunked three times into the boiling water, Richard Roose was executed and people looking on were horrified.
Then there was a Roman punishment which involved the condemned person being stuffed into a sack along with a bunch of animals and tipped into the river so you'd drown and also get torn to shreds in the panic.
.webp)
Sheer incompetence:
Dying is not much fun in the first place but if something is going to kill you then you'd probably prefer they didn't make an absolute mess of it.
Spare a thought for poor old Margaret Pole, who took 11 swings of the axe to die in large part because the main executioner was away on business and the work experience kid made an absolute hash of it.
She suffered multiple blows to her head and her back before she died, which sounds like a horribly unpleasant way to be killed.
Joe Harker