There are a few prion diseases that are absolutely horrible. I believe one of them causes you to be unable to sleep until you go mad.
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Fatal Familial Insomnia
Mothetfuu that is scary
Edit: or the non hereditary version transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, TSE).
Fucking hell why did I read up about that. Okay this easily wins this post. Fuck that shit.
Literally my worst waking nightmare. Every now and then I have insomnia and 100% of the time I think, "Fuck...this is the beginning of the end..."
I remember reading that it gets so bad that, even after doctors put you into a coma, you'll eventually resist that treatment and nothing at all will work.
Alzheimer's. The thing I fear most is that I will die surrounded by a bunch of people I don't know, feeling scared and alone. I'm terrified of forgetting who my loved ones and my family are. I don't want to go like that.
This is where physician assisted suicide has a really strong case.
This gets my vote. Runs in my family and I've seen it first hand a ton of times by now. It is absolutely heart wrenchingly terrible. Not looking forward to that one bit.
Anything that makes you aware that you're slowly losing touch with reality and control of your body or causes you to mistreat the people who love you.
This. Dementia and other progressive neuro conditions are fucking scary.
causes you to mistreat the people who love you
Iβve told my wife that she doesnβt have to spend time with me if I end up with dementia and I start behaving that way. Both of my parents were more or less all there well into their 90s, but you never know.
There are so many things that would be fighting for last place honestly. Idk, being stuck deep in a cave Nutty Putty style for days, barely able to breathe, arms pinned totally by my side, legs all twisted, total darkness. Slowly suffocating as the blood pools in my head and I become delirous.
That terrifies me so much. But idk, there are so many horrific ways to die. There are many cases of people being tortured to death over weeks or even months if they somehow survive that long.
There are also a bunch of diseases that are all around awful and terrifying. That syndrome where you are trapped inside your own body, total unable to move anything but you are aware of everything around you, maybe would be the most horrific.
Idk, too many horrible ways to suffer and die in this world...
Fuck, I forgot Nutty Putty cave. Switch my answer to that.
Every time I watch a video or read about that incident I feel myself start to almost panic. And I'm not prone to panic attacks or anything, but that scenario just makes me freak out.
Imagining the feeling of trying to move and feeling literal hundreds of feet of totally immovable rock encasing your limbs, not a milimeter of give or flex.
Ugg, literally making my heart rate go up as I type this :S
Dying at work.
These people have already taken damn near everything they can from me. I'd rather kill myself right now than find out I die at work.
I think I may be an outlier here. I really don't want to die in a sudden 'didn't-see-it-coming' kind of way, like getting hit by a semi or a freak accident with heavy machinery kind of way. The idea of going from living, thinking, feeling, person to chunk(s) of meat in an instant terrifies the shit out of me. Especially if it's caught on video and people watch it for laughs or whatever possesses them to watch that kind of thing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to die in some slow, painful way either, but something I had some agency in would be worlds better. Like taking a bullet to save a loved one, or punching my own ticket after getting a terminal diagnosis, or even just taking a deliberate, calculated risk.
I'm alright with anything that will kill me instantly. My fear is having something so sudden that will keep me bedridden and helpless to finish it all. I won't wish it on an enemy.
I had family members that needed care and I was happy to provide it. But to see them like that was hard and I know it was harder for them to go through that not just it felt like that to me but they told me so as well. They were too religious to end it. I'm not so I hope I'll never experience this fear of mine.
Well if we exclude the slow and painful ways to die I'd say that drowning by diving under ice and not finding the way back. The panic on your last minutes must be something else.
My biggest fear, given mental health issues, wondering through out life if I'm going insane, seeing things, hallucinating, etc...
I'm terrified that the moment of death, I won't be able to tell if it's real or not. So it will be an infinitely protracted moment, and right now, I may already be in that moment.
For me, it's any situation where you know you're fucked but can't do anything to stop the inevitable.
Give me instantaneous death where idk what happened or a slow progression of disease where death would eventually be a welcome relief. It's the in between that freaks me out.
Where the F are serious mental health conditions? When your appearance seems intact from the outside, but inside your reality slowly yet steadily derodes, and there's no way to help it. Going insane. That's for me the last one. Prefer physical pain over losing touch with reality.
Lathe accident.
I've seen a video and heard some stories. I work in a CNC shop, but I'm not a machinist. I think it would be terrifying for a moment, painful for a moment, then nothing. Gruesome for sure, but I think they're are certainly worse ways to go. I believe the 'popular' video is called, pink mist, or something like that, if that's any indication of the outcome.
Some kind of dementia. It's a cancer of the soul which arbitrarily removes parts of you that you can't even perceive the loss of. I had an MS patient whose vocal processing was reduced to the point that he could only say variations of "you fucking bitch". He was totally bed-bound and dependent on a mostly female nursing staff for every single need. Most of those employees were burned out and he could only communicate to them using a wildly misogynistic slur. I've seen it reduce a famous AIDS researcher and a WW2 pilot to toddlers, others to cornered raccoons, for some it's a nightmare they can never wake up from and they just spend all day/night reliving their worst memories. For a good 10% on the ward it just takes away their executive function and they can no longer control their worst impulses or recognise that they should.
Cancer and strokes are a close second for more or less the same reason, but dementia is so existentially terrifying to me.
Alzheimer's.
Milk and honeyed to death, if you know it, you know that shits barbaric.
If we talking in the realm of realistic and probable, probably Alzheimer's, or maybe being trapped in a vegetative state but concious and lucid.
Radiation illness is one of them, there are certain yields that make it rather nasty. Rabies is also pretty high up the list.
Mechanically wise I remember the OSHA case of the worker getting trapped in a walk-in autoclave and literally steamed to death. because that actually takes a long time.
Prion diseases and locked-in-syndrome are also pure horror.
Rabies is my first thought as well, by the time symptoms show up and you go to the hospital, there is nothing you can do other than die in horrifying confusion, fear, and panic as your brain melts into mush.
Being wrapped tightly in untreated canvas, soaked in hot water, and then the canvas begins to shrink.
Least preferred way in the disease category would be any disease that slowly erodes the mind and body. Being unable to move or know where I am, who are those around me sounds terrifying, not to mention the burden (financial and emotional) it would be on my family. No thanks.
Now for "mechanical" I'm not totally sure what this means but a similar logic applies. Of the classic methods of execution I think getting burned alive would be probably the last choice, but I'd take that before slow torture that's for sure
Dying from poisoning with Dimethylmercury, which happened to one scientist and itβs like an Alzheimerβs speed run but you donβt see it coming.
Itβs easy to become desensitized to, since many of us see crosses frequently, but death by crucifixion is absolutely horrible.
Rats and a heated bucket against your stomach
Wood chipper, feet first, slow setting.
The little turtle setting.
Fatal Insomnia.
Easy: drowned in spiders
Blood eagle, iron maiden, rat torture (method where rats were placed in a container and heated, forcing them to gnaw through the victim's body to escape), brazen bull, lingchi.
Or anything from the spaniah inquisition
Bob! Did you forget to set the steam roller on park? My leg is kind of stuck, help me off will you? Ok we'll need a grinder, go turn that steam roller off dude it's rolling this way. The keys? Joe had the keys last? He's off today? Call Joe dude! C'mon!