What's the worst way to be killed?

[0rganism]

Unlike most of my polls, there is no "none of the above" or "something else" response. I'm sure you can invent something else ridiculously painful and humiliating and fatal, it's one of our species' specialties, after all. Let's restrict ourselves to a few very common types of death, for the purposes of this poll.

(edit - corrected item 2 for the "quotation mark" problem)

[RebelOne]

1. All of the above.

[Axiomatization]

2. Hmmmmm....

Not quite getting the message you are sending.....:evilgrin:

Have to think about it and will get back to you......

[SHRED]

Probably

To die of boredom from reading stupid polls like this.

:spank:

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

3. I did vote

but my greatest fear is falling to my death from a great height. There is nothing worse, in my mind. Not drowning or burning or anything.

[Mr.Green93]

4. ants

[sallyseven]

22. My greatest fear is

seeing bush get elected. I will want to blow my brains out. But I have beautiful grand children so I guess I will just have to work harder for Kerry.

[Massacure]

5. Drowning would seem worse however I'll go with being crusified

Being burned at the stake comes close behind it.

[0rganism]

31. Excellent choice, sir. How would you like your stake?

Sorry, just had to say it.

[Big Kahuna]

6. The worst way to go..

IMHO, is dying and suffering in pain on a hospital bed. Sorry, I'm just not going that way.

[UpsideDownFlag]

7. other: to be slowly lowered into rotating helicoter blades, feet first.

[0rganism]

19. Has that ever happened to someone, as far as you know?

I've heard that Saddam Hussein liked to use the wood chipper on some people, but I don't know if that's urban legend. I suppose it would be comparable. Wouldn't something like a helicopter tend to remove so much at a time that "lowered slowly" would be impossible? I imagine one would be dead from shock and blood loss before passing the knees.

[kodi]

8. if i told you i would have to kill you.

in the worst way imaginable.

[0rganism]

13. Well, at least I'd know what you were thinking :-D

gallows humor makes a return...

[951]

9. Having your skull cap removed and left to die in front of a mirror

while still consious Is the worst way to die IMO.

[Terran]

10. Jeez, what inspired this?

Yes, the beheadings are awful. We know.

[0rganism]

16. Sort of. You're almost there.

It's really the "beheading threads" that inspire it. In the great scope of human cruelty, how much worse are the beheading videos? You tell me.

[0rganism]

11. Incidentally, for those who don't know, our army is still using napalm

Of course, it's not "exactly" napalm, since the UN frowns upon its use against civilian populations. Now we use "Mark 77 firebombs", which combine kerosene with polystyrene instead of gasoline.

"We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches," said Colonel James Alles, commander of Marine Air Group 11. "Unfortunately there were people there ... you could see them in the cockpit video. They were Iraqi soldiers. It's no great way to die. The generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/military/20030805-9999_1n5bomb.html

[NYC Liberal]

12. Being forced to watch hours of Bush footage

While suffocating in an airless, windowless room.

[0rganism]

28. Hey now, that is a nasty one

Don't give the republicans any new ideas, please!

[Rockholm]

14. Buried Alive.

Lying in some container underground with no way out.

[DrWeird]

15. Having your testicles bitten off by dogs...

and slowly bleeding to death as US troops laugh at you ranks right up there.

[Radius]

27. There was some

dude who lathered up his pole with peanut butter and thought the dog would lick it off, huge mistake.

This may be urban legend but since we are talking about terrible dog incidents this should be in the list.

This is not UL

http://www.thenewmexicochannel.com/news/3721034/detail.html

[0rganism]

29. Not common enough to make the list, "unfortunately"

But you're right, it does rank up there qualitatively.

[sweetheart]

17. To have your car break down

And then, whilst fiddling around with the fan belt, to be
sucked in to the fan blades. Then your lover, gets out of the car
and collects the mincemeat and makes several hamburgers from it.

The next weekend over an excellent delicacy burger barbacue, we all
learn the truth, whilst eating such excellent burgers. Your
partner wins a gourmet chef award, and we all sing and dance for
days until you've left our system in to the crapper.

HA! The worst way to die, is never having fully lived, to have
cowered in fear for an entire lifetime at what others might think,
and then, when your moment comes, to be a wasted lifetime.

[0rganism]

26. Nice answer, but to a different question

Notice that I'm not asking "What's the worst way to die?"

[sweetheart]

40. slow dismemberment

Cutting off each joint of each finger and toe, one bone at a time,
cut off until you die bleeding to death or from shock. Perhaps one
bone cut off per day, then the excessive pain and the pyschological
shock of the action would be most intensely torturous.

[camero]

18. Missed one

Cancer caused by depleted uranium poisoning.

[MrSlayer]

20. Draw and Quarter is pretty good. Eaten Alive is too.

Evisceration and dismemberment while awake. Not a pretty thing.
Rent limb from limb by a swarm of gators or sharks can't be very pleasant either.

[0rganism]

25. "Draw and Quarter" is sort of an uncommon death, AFAIK

I did consider putting it up, but the most gruesome part (the quartering) allegedly happens after the disembowelling and beheading, which makes it sort of redundant with the other beheading thing. *Shrug* maybe it'll be in the next one.

Eaten alive, well, that's "natural" :D

I've noticed from watching the nature shows that a lot of land predators are pretty efficient about making their kill (i.e., swift blow to the jugular) before devouring their victim -- reduces squirming and all that. Gators or sharks, well, I'm not sure they're so considerate, but at least it'd be over quick.

[stevedeshazer]

21. Being nickeled and dimed to a slow death by Republicans

All your choices are more swift at least.

[gordianot]

33. Yes

Also having to watch the Republican media on CNN, Fox, NBC, and ABC. Listening to Rush Limbaugh for more than an hour would do it to me.

[maveric]

23. Being burned alive seems like the most horrible death to me.

Or having your skin peeled off in strips while you are alive.

What a fucked up poll this is.

[Skittles]

24. suicide

mental pain trumps all physical pain

[Chico Man]

30. The buried alive scene in Kill Bill 2 is pretty disturbing

As close to the real thing as you're gonna get.. thanks Hollywood.

[gordianot]

32. All are awful.

After being beheaded the head is conscious for a period of time. The eyes blink and look around. The French were supposed to have conducted experiments with prisoners (condemned volunteer) who were guillotined if they felt pain. I do not remember the results, even though I saw this in print it has the ring of an urban legend.

I think we have all been conditioned by media, movies, and video games to accept horror. There is not a way to humanely kill execute someone (that includes lethal injection). Much like John Kerry's position I do not universally oppose capital punishment.

[0rganism]

36. Totally agree. They're completely awful ways to die.

I didn't include conventional beheadings, by guillotine, axe, or sword. It's worth noting, though, that the condemned were often encouraged to tip the headsman, as incentive to make certain the blade was sharp. The guillotine was an advance in terms of reducing the "margin of error", if you like. A multiple-stroke beheading by a drunken executioner, e.g. Mary Queen of Scots, would be a disgustingly awful experience. However, it does not stand alone.

We seem to be designed, as animals, to accustom ourselves to whatever level of violence we're trained to experience. It's curious to me that we find the beheading videos so singularly disturbing; most of us have never seen video of a person dying from napalm fire, would we find it as (as one colonel notes) psychologically effective? We've been conditioned to accept gun violence and knifings and beatings and burnings and dog maulings, but beheadings are apparently taboo.

Until we confront the underlying murderer still living within each of us, learn to accept it as a compelling part of the human psyche, and comprehend its affect on our behavior, our pretense of "progress and civility" is nothing more than a crude facade.

[Liberal_Dog]

34. How About Being Boiled Alive?

Did you forget that one?

[0rganism]

35. There are only ten slots, ya know

Has that happened much? I gather it was an uncommon method of torture during the Inquisition, but I don't know anything about how common death by boiling was. Most of these deaths I've listed are ones that happen to hundreds, thousands, or maybe even millions of people.

[AlFrankenFan]

37. Room 101 n/t

[DemoTex]

38. To die in a war that you do not believe in.

Your answers are weak for those of us with wars as ghosts of our pasts. Some of us have died a thousand deaths just waiting for the one that will remove the pain and the horror from that focal point slighty behind the mind's eye. Unless you have been in the mouth of the cat of death, you probably don't understand.

[Columbia]

39. Die for a lie