Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Top 5 Ways You Don't Want to Die.


Let's face it. Everyone wants to die in their sleep, am I right? If we are forced to meet our demise, then we all want to close our eyes one night and not open them the next morning. It's quick, painless and hopefully we won't even notice.

This article is not about that.

I'm going to count down for you the...

Top 5 Ways You Don't Want to Die.



5. Being Eaten by a Hippopotamus: Oh look, a cute hippo. WRONG! MUNCH! Hippos murder approximately 3,000 people in Africa every year. How? They're known for tipping unsuspecting boats over and dragging the passengers underwater. Once at the bottom, they'll begin to consume their victims. Many local accounts have shown that hippos have a particular taste for human heads, sometimes letting the headless bodies they've munched on float back to shore. Annually, the hippopotamus murders more Africans than lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos and buffaloes COMBINED! Any animal that regularly eats crocodiles is not something you want to screw with.


4. Getting Pulled into a Wood Chipper: This is perhaps the most likely and potentially hazardous way to die in the United States on my list. As revealed by a Centers for Disease Control report, 31 men (no women) were killed via wood chipper between 1992 and 2002. Obviously, it's rare, but it does indeed happen. I can't even begin to imagine how terrible this must be -- you have no choice but to be pulled in face first!


3. Falling into a Volcano: Ouch -- this is not a pleasant way to meet your end. Erroneously, most people think you would fall into the lava and sink, much like the ending scenes from Terminator 2: Judgement Day or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In fact, lava is very dense. Unless you fell from a very high position, you would sink only a little ways into the lava upon impact. You might sink in a few inches at the most, but you'd almost instantaneously burst into flames and combust upon contact.


2. Being Sucked into a Jet Engine: Yes, this does happen. I can remember one of my teachers in high school whom served in the Navy and had a particularly gruesome story. He watched one of his fellow servicemen get sucked into a jet engine on the deck of an aircraft carrier. His story is not the only one -- this apparently happens somewhat often in the military. The air pressure differential created by a mighty jet engine has no problem pulling a puny human being into its swirling blades of death. Never, ever get close to a jet engine. You've been warned.


1. Death by Chainsaw: By far, this is the worst way to go on this list, in my humble opinion. The Consumer Product Safety Commission performed a study on chainsaw-related accidents in 2008. In total, there were nearly 28,000 chainsaw accidents that year. Nearly half of the injuries were to the operator's legs, which may have only maimed them. But, the report showed that over 2,600 injuries were to the face and upper body. These particular injuries proved to be fatal in many instances. The upper body injuries would occur when the saw blade hit a knot or irregularity in the wood it was sawing, thereby kicking back at the operator. Uhhhh.... chainsaw blade to the face? No thanks.

So kids... what have we learned from today's lesson?

Avoid hippos, wood chippers, volcanoes, jet engines and chainsaws and everything will be alright!

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