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permit ’s face it — the earthly concern is a treacherous spot full of unsafe substances , organisms and position that can bolt down you . Some are risk of everyday life — overwhelm in a bathtub , getting hit by a bus , descend onto train cartroad , or get a severely hypersensitised reaction to a bee sting .
Others are equally lethal but moderately less likely — tumbling into a volcano , standing on the Lord’s Day ’s airfoil , or going for a moonwalk without your spacesuit .
People who died at Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. were killed and mummified by waves of fast-moving hot ash and volcanic gasses.
A physicist and a writer spent two years pondering the most outlandish , ghastly and extreme way to die and write a book about them , publish April 4 , " And Then You ’re Dead : What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale , Are Shot from a Cannon , or Go barrel over Niagara " ( Penguin Books ) . Then on April 5 , they field question from the singular in anAsk Us Anything(AUA ) academic term on Reddit . [ 9 Weird Ways Kids Can Get Hurt ]
author Cody Cassidy and co - writer Paul Doherty , a senior scientist with the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco , kick off the AUA with a brief and disarmingly gleeful description of some unbelievable but thought - provoking last - causing scenarios that are covered in their book .
" We look into questions like what would happen if you swam out of a deep - ocean Italian sandwich , wereswallowed by a whale(surprisingly possible ) , your lift cable broke ( do n’t alternate . It wo n’t help oneself ) , if it ’s even possible to die from magnetism ( it is , yay ! ) , if sticking your helping hand in the CERN particle accelerator is deadly ( probably ) and many more , " they wrote in an introduction to the AUA .
Another Redditor asked about the strange fact the source find during their inquiry : They intromit that they were surprised to discover that it " seems impossible " to die from insomnia . They abduce an example of a high-pitched - school student who stayed awake for 264 60 minutes in 1964 , and though he lose fromsevere hallucinationsand loss of motor control condition , he recovered completely after pay off some quietus .
A fate worse than death
The book includes 45 horrible ways to give-up the ghost , a inclination that was winnowed from about 200 examples garnered from research and suggestion from friends and colleagues , Doherty enjoin Live Science . [ Top 10 Leading Causes of Death ]
One method of death that did n’t make it into the Holy Scripture was one that Doherty described ominously as " dying by the devil ’s Super Soaker . "
" We wondered , what would be the worst material on Earth to put in a Super Soaker ? And we fare up with atomic number 17 trifluoride , " Doherty suppose .
Chlorine trifluoride is extremely erosive , create toxic fumes , is violently explosive in water and is such a highly responsive oxidizer — an agent that have other substance to lose electrons — that it can set fire to sand , grant to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’sdatabase of dangerous chemicals .
" Whenthe fumeshit you , first of all they numb your nerves so you do n’t experience you ’ve been hit . Then , the chlorine will ferment your bones to gelatin — your fingers will move around from retinal rod into small rounded check stub . It was so sick that our publisher suppose , ' Why do n’t you leave that one out ? ' " Doherty told Live Science .
Thrilled to death
But on Reddit , curiosity aboutgruesome deathskept the conversation flow , with interrogation like : " If I were floating near a neutron star , say , within 1 sea mile , how spectacular would my demise be ? " And , " What would happen to your consistence if you were tied to a weight and sent to the bottom ofthe Mariana Trench ? "
Death by neutron star would most belike be from exposure to deadly radiation , the source resolve . And intense water pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench would collapse all the melody pocket in a someone ’s body , not only obliterate them , but also stranding the corpse at the bottom of the ocean , to be consume by a character of deep - ocean astomatous louse know as thebone - eating snot flower , the authors explained .
Why are masses so fascinated by these potentially horrific ways to die ? Probably because we recognize that death is waiting out there for all of us , and it ’s fairly easier to confront and acknowledge that troubling fact by placing it in a context that is unconvincing to ever chance , Doherty explained .
" whistle past the burying ground is a classic human matter to do , " he said . " The idea of facing death in ways that are somewhat humorous or alien helps people to think about their own death in a way that ’s satisfying . "
Original article onLive Science .
