Everyone dies. It’s unavoidable. There are countless different ways to die, and some of them are pretty funny. Denying the humor found in death is just silly – why make things harder on ourselves? And anyway, if kicking the bucket is so inevitable, isn’t going out with a bang, or doing something that you love, better than a boring old die-in-your-sleep? Here are fifteen people who we commend for exiting this world in a unique and awesome way.
Drowning in A Flood of Beer
What’s manlier than drowning in a flood of beer? The frothy deliciousness which ended lives in 1814 came from a brewery called Meurx’s Horse Shoe in London. When a brand new, 4,000 barrel vat was filled to the brim, a weak support ring burst and let go a giant wave of beer. It ruptured others as a result, one vat lead to another, and a grand total of 1.3 million gallons of beer began destroying houses as it rampaged down the street. It made a noise that stretched for five miles, and drowned or inadvertently crushed nine people to death. If only we could breathe the precious liquid, like in our dreams.
Attempting a Dangerous Stunt
Block-busting action movies. The X-Games. Nascar Racing. WWE Wrestling. Air shows. All of these popular events are made possible by the brave — and sometimes reckless — individuals who hone the dangerous skills of a stuntman. A single miscalculated move can easily become tragic, like Owen Hart’s unfortunate plunge to death when a WWE stunt went wrong and dropped him over 70 feet to his death inside the ring. It is unfortunate that Hart died relatively young and left behind a family, but Hart’s dedication to his career was respectable to say the least. Performing stunts like the one that killed him was a part of his day-to-day job, and the risks involved were always obvious. Just like the stuntman at Disney World who recently died while preparing to entertain the masses in a rehearsal for the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. These guys died doing what it was they loved most, not allowing the possibility of failure to overcome the drive to succeed, entertaining some loyal fans, and being totally badass.
Whilst Fornicating
Orgasms rule. Imagine if orgasming was the last thing you ever felt before passing into the black abyss we call death. Great sex, the beginning of an orgasm, enjoying it a whole lot, and then — nothing. That’s it. While some are pleading for a short and painless death, a few lucky ones got an extremely pleasurable one. And this does not include auto-erotic asphyxiation, or death caused by choking one’s self in attempt to achieve a more heightened orgasm. Being found in the bathroom pants-down with a tie around your neck is way more embarrassing than awesome.
Eaten By the Family Pet, Pre or Post Mortem
The thought of a decomposing body left undiscovered in a house for days, or even weeks, is disturbing. The possibility that the person’s beloved cats and dogs are feasting on his or her rotting corpse is just gross — but kind of interesting. When the elderly pass away, it’s usually pretty quietly and uneventfully. What better way to put a twist on your timely and expected death by being partially recycled by your former best friends and companions? Some people are cremated and spread into the ocean, while some live on in the hearts of their family pets…literally. Bonus points for being found spread about the house with three vicious dogs guarding the remains.
On the other hand, some endure the irony of being eaten by their own food. A man in China was mauled and killed by the French Poodle which was intended to be the contents of his stew at the Shanghai Food Festival. The dog dragged him into an alley where it could feast on his remains in peace, and no one dared to stop it.
Testing Your Own Crappy Invention
People are constantly inventing new products which will hopefully bring about the creation of something previously impossible or unheard of, or considerably increase the ease of one’s ability to perform some sort of task. Inventions that push the limits of our abilities to fly, move at really high speeds, or do anything that might easily result in death can be controversial and frightening when it comes time to test the product’s efficiency. Like that guy who claimed to have found the cure for AIDS. Who wants to test that out? Fortunately for the rest of us, he did. That guy didn’t die, but the guy who made a DIY parachute and jumped from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 did. The man had guts.
So did the guy who invented a Jet Pod Flying Taxi, which would actually rule if it were to function properly. Unfortunately, the teetering mini-plane struggled to lift off the ground before pivoting to the left and taking a fatal nosedive.
Turning Into Toxic Waste
Gloria Ramirez’s death was so bizarre, it was the subject of an X-Files episode. It’s unfortunate that Ramirez never got to enjoy her fame, but this one of a kind living [dying?] mystery really sent the medical world for a spin.
Ramirez was a middle-aged woman suffering from advanced cervical cancer when she was rushed to the hospital with slowed heart rate and abnormal breathing. Although staff attempted to medicate her with various sedatives and heart stimulators, it was to no avail. As Ramirez lay dying on the hospital table, she began to smell like what staff described as ‘fruity and garlicky.’ The blood drawn from her arm smelled like ammonia and caused three people to faint with shortness of breath and muscle spasms. Upon further investigation, no conclusion was reached and one victim soon became infected with diseases that were debatably related. A report by the New Times Los Angeles uncovered evidence that suggested methampetamine, which was being illegally manufactured in one section of the hospital, was accidentally injected into Ramirez from a mixed up IV bag. Others speculate that dimethyl sulfate, a poisonous gas, was excreted from her body after a freakish chemical reaction took place within her.
Ramirez’s death remains unsolved, and perfect fodder for mystery crime television shows.
Death By Robot
Movies like The Matrix and Terminator glorify the possibility of earth being taken over by an evil race of robots, but few have ever really suffered a robot induced death. There’s also no denying that ‘death by robot’ sounds awesome and would automatically earn any modern day hipster band some cool points, no matter how awful they sounded. Everything surrounding this type of death points to pure badass.
Robert Williams is the first ever documented victim of a murderous robot, and met his fate in 1979 at the casting plant where he worked. A robot malfunctioned (or rebelled, whichever you prefer) and robo-punched him so hard that Williams died on the spot.
The second guy ever to be killed by a robot was named Kenji Urada. He was working in a robot filled Kawasaki factory in Japan and forgot to turn one of the robots off before turning his back on it. The robot pushed him into a grinding machine, sort of like in The Mangler, which came after this accident. It makes you think Kenji’s death may have been awesome enough to warrant the creation of a 90s classic written by none other but the horror master Stephen King himself.
Hit By An Airplane While Jogging on the Beach
Dying on the beach because your ipod drowned out the sounds of a small plane making an emergency landing might not be as badass as it is bizarre. However, that guy’s last memories are pretty fantastic; taking a healthy run through some beautiful scenery while enjoying his favorite tunes. It sure beats the slow demise brought on by cancer, or something un-cool like the worn out ‘get hit by a car or bus’ death.
Saving Someone Else
The most obviously badass and awesome way to die is going out while performing a heroic act that saves other lives. Sacrificing your own life for the well being of another is one of the deepest acts of kindness one could ever perform. Jumping into a roaring canal to save a young boy ends in drowning. Pulling one’s granddaughters from a fire leaves a grandmother dead from smoke inhalation, beside the family pets who huddled beside her after she collapsed. One guy recently died saving his own bride from drowning after their boat collapsed. That one is pretty sad, but both of them could have died if the man didn’t react so quickly. Case in point: Heroism is awesome and badass, even when it’s sad.
Attempting to Break a Record
It must have been sad to see J.G. Parry-Thomas go, but at least he bit the bullet trying to reclaim a speed record that was such a big part of his life. Thomas was killed during his race against the clock when a piece of his car broke off and smashed him in the head. Similarly, a man named Donald Campbell was killed trying to break his own water speed record in 1967. His body wasn’t fully recovered until 2001, but at least his death sounded faster than blacking out 561 below the surface of the ocean while trying to set a free diving record.
For a Cause
Although dying during sex and drowning by beer both have a strong ‘Fuck Yeah!’ factor, sacrificing one’s life for a serious cause wins the badass prize hands down.
Most disgruntled citizens find a peaceful way to become an activist for whatever cause they deem worthy. But what if a day spend marching or picketing isn’t enough? For the Monk Thích Quảng Đức, self-immolation was the perfect form of protest against the persecution of Buddhists in South Vietnam. The amount of resilience, self control, and conviction it must take to not only set yourself on fire but remain seated calmly whilst melting away is just baffling. Those who take a stand and remain there even in the face of death are not to be scoffed at. When’s the last time you even went to a protest for something you claimed to care about? Better yet, when’s the last time you stayed home from one because you were tired or the weather wasn’t ideal?
Eaten By Bears
Most people know about Timothy Treadwell. He’s a guy who decided that living in a society of bears would suit him more than the human world, and filmed his summers in the wilderness with his furry friends for thirteen years. Treadwell loved the bears as if they were his best friends. There was an undeniable bond formed between himself and the animals with whom he spent countless hours earning trust and recognition. However, his newfound friends were still enormous, carnivorous wild animals. During the fall of 2003, one of the bears that Treadwell had called ‘more aggressive than usual’ in his journal only days earlier was found sitting atop his scattered remains. It had also eaten his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, who Treadwell documented as ‘impatient’ to get home and never return to the forest.
The camera, which was often used to record interactions with the bears, was rolling, lens cap still on, when the massacre took place. The audio has never been released to the public, but a documentary called Grizzly Man follows the relationship Treadwell had with the animals using many of his personal tapes.
Of course, there’s always the classic get-eaten-while-camping, but knowing the bears that maul you to death is undoubtedly cooler than running screaming through the woods from complete stranger bears.
Struck By Lightning
Being struck by a giant bolt of electricity from the sky is pretty extreme. It’s so powerful and fast that it can destroy houses or set trees on fire in under a second. A lucky few survive lightning strikes, but most die on the scene of the accident. When lightning isn’t directly destroying people by on horses.
Mortal Kombat’s Pit
The only awesome death that hasn’t actually happened to anyone (that we know of, at least), is being upper-cutted into the bloody spike pit of death whilst being finished in Mortal Kombat. Falling from such a height that it allows the bellowing of a long and loud “NOOOOOOO!”, becoming impaled in the pit would be a dark and grisly (yet awesome to watch) way to die.
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