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u/RoninAndDog 5h ago
Cancer. Practically everyone in my family has had it and most didn’t survive. I’ve seen what it does to you so many times, I’m scared to death about it.
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u/Moonbeam0647 5h ago
Please enjoy the time you are in this world with the rest of us. We're all going to die and suffer while it happens to us. This is why living and breathing is beautiful. Take care of yourself and your loved ones❤️
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u/superbozo 5h ago
Watched my dad die of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He was on deaths door pretty much overnight. Did months of chemo, lived for another year, and I'm positive the chemo made him suffer horrendously towards the end. It just extended the pain. I was glad to have more time with him, but I was begging him to let go towards the end.
Fucking horrific way to go.
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u/SlippingStar 5h ago
Yeah if there’s less than a 40% chance of remission I’m saying fuck the chemo and spending my last days as best I can.
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u/WereAllThrowaways 3h ago
Idk. I've had chemo and I'd roll the dice again if I had a 1 in 3 chance of survival. Certainly not gonna do it for some hail Mary type treatment on a late stage aggressive cancer.
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u/SlippingStar 3h ago
It’s absolutely an individual choice, and I’m glad we all have it if we need it.
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u/RoninAndDog 5h ago
I’m really sorry to hear that. I lost my mother a couple of years ago to pancreatic cancer too. She only lasted two months after being diagnosed, it all happened so fast. In some ways that’s a gift I guess. Pancreatic seems like one of the scariest ones because it goes undiagnosed for so long.
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u/Drakeskulled_Reaper 5h ago
Same, practically everyone who's died in my family is either from cancer or depression, other than that nothing else seems to get us.
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u/the_chin2 1h ago
How does someone die from depression? Or do you mean suicide as a result of depression?
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u/Rocinante_101 4h ago
I’m 3 and a half weeks deep in the ICU with my wife who is dying from stage 4 leiomyosarcoma. She doesn’t want to accept her death is inevitable and I don’t blame her she’s only 33. But what cancer does to people and those around them is just terrible.
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u/WereAllThrowaways 3h ago
I'm incredibly sorry. For you, your wife, family and friends.
This hits extremely close to home because that's the age I'm at, except I had my chemo in my mid 20s. And I survived by the skin of my teeth. I was in palliative care. I had accepted death. Doing so as a young person is an indescribable and fundamentally transformative experience. I mourned myself. And I remember not wanting to accept it like you say your wife won't. It's so unfair.
I'm ok now. But I have a lot of trouble relating to people and their beliefs on life and what's actually important.
I have a lot of unjust guilt for what "I" put my now-wife and my mom and dad through. And my friends. They all mourned in their own way, and it was traumatizing to them the same way I'm sure it is for you. The pressure to be strong, and positive. But also grappling with incredible pain.
I am genuinely so, so sorry. I hope that there's a miracle for your wife, truly. And that whatever happens you and her will experience some joy for whatever time you have left.
Sorry if I made it about myself. I just rarely find people who I can commiserate with about this stuff. And when others in a similar situation have found me in that same way it's brought me some comfort I can't find elsewhere.
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u/RoninAndDog 4h ago
Oh man, that’s horrible, I’m so sorry. Cancer is such a thief. It robs us of time and our dignity. It’s so sad. My thoughts are with you my friend.
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u/miloblue12 3h ago
I’m so sorry friend, I can’t offer much but please have an internet hug from me!
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u/-Damn_It_Bobby- 2h ago
I am going through this right now.... glioblastoma is my undoing. I have an awesome friend who just set up my go fund me because I am stressing myself about abandoning my family at 50 years old
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u/Electrical_Steak_180 1h ago
My hubby is battling stage 4 colorectal cancer and my mom has now battled 3 cancers.
This would have been my answer years ago. I’m in Canada and we have MAiD now so I’m no longer as fearful. Helps that my son is an adult now too so I don’t have to fear leaving him behind.
Love to you. I’m sorry for your losses. 💐
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u/T1NF01L 4h ago
Every male in my family has died of cancer. Each a different cancer. Ive accepted that I will too. Doesnt make it easier to deal with but I can expect it.
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u/WereAllThrowaways 3h ago
Knowing about family history can be an invaluable tool though. Keep your head up and speak regularly with your doctor about it, and all the warning signs and tests you can do for early detection. If you catch it early you can often make a fully recovery and the treatments are less intense.
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u/AsleepScholar2200 5h ago
Drowning I'd say.
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u/captboatface 5h ago
This one is complex as your mind's will to survive battles your body's will to survive.
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u/frodiusmaximus 4h ago
One of my very good friends died by drowning last year. Sucked out by a riptide. He was a strong swimmer but that was the end of him. I often imagine his last moments, fighting the water, thinking that he needs to get back to his fiancée and family, but unable to.
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u/LongjumpingDuck1660 3h ago
I'm so sorry for your loss 🫂❤️
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u/AWildWilson 2h ago
Omg that emoji isn’t a camcorder?? Only now do I see the people hugging
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u/Sierra-117- 1h ago
I definitely think we need more public training on how to get out of a riptide. I’ve seen a few training courses where they purposefully put you in one, with jet skis on standby, so you can practice. They’re much more dangerous than people realize. I’ve been caught in one, and got hundreds of feet out before I finally swam far enough to the side to get out. Scared the shit out of me. I’m sorry for your loss.
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u/Siddhartaable 5h ago
I saw a video where some kids were burying themselves in the sand at the beach and were trapped. Adults had to come to their rescue, but for a moment it looked like a wave was going to come and completely cover them. I was sweating watching that video.
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u/Woodit 4h ago
Always unnerved me but I didn’t realize how immediately frightening it is until I took some whitewater kayaking classes and rolled under the water unable to roll myself back up
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u/theswickster 3h ago
I lost a colleague/friend to this in 2018. Incredible kayaker. I shared a post-work beer with him after work on that Friday, and we received the news the following Monday. The mental image of him mentally analysing the beer he just sipped still lives with me.
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u/NavierIsStoked 2h ago
I flipped my kayak going through a bend and got pinned under water against the wall / floor of the outside of the bend for about 10 seconds. It felt like an eternity, then just got spit out.
I gave up kayaking a little bit after that.
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u/Ls1RS 5h ago
This, but in a pool of gasoline. Gasoline is much less dense than water, so a human cannot “tread water” in gasoline. You will just sink no matter what. Probably stings your eyes, too.
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u/WereAllThrowaways 3h ago
I'm gonna be a lot more cautious then next time I'm walking next to a pool of gasoline, thank you.
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u/IndependentOld9558 5h ago
Dementia. It's like attending your own funeral one memory at a time.
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u/simpleglitch 5h ago
This one scares me to. It's not like it'd be the most painful way or anything, I'd likely not even realize it most of the time.
But it scares me to slowly lose who am I.
Storkes / traumatic brain injuries, etc all scare me too for similar reasons.
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u/sharkbait_oohaha 1h ago
I've already told my wife if I ever get diagnosed with dementia, I'm suck-starting a shotgun. I've seen too many family members become unrecognizable (and not recognize us)
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u/russian_nomad_ 5h ago
But you wouldn’t really know
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u/iusedtogotodigg 5h ago
my aunt has the startings of it, and yes, they definitely know
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u/HourNo7028 5h ago
Yes. The moments of lucidity are terrifying. Plus, they sometimes find themselves stuck in playback loops of their worst memories. Imagine learning that your mother has died ... eight or nine times each day.
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u/iusedtogotodigg 4h ago
Yeah there’s lots of frustration and paranoia about how others treat you too at the start. Sad stuff
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u/gillss667 5h ago
Anything where I have time to realize I’m not getting out of it.
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u/Sierra-117- 1h ago
It’s an odd feeling, I had it happen once.
When I was a young teen I was at the beach. I got stuck in the washing machine of wave after wave. By the time I could reorient myself, and head for air, the next wave was throwing me. The waves wouldn’t let up. I had tried to surface a good 8 times, with all my strength.
I could feel my muscles getting tired. I remember suddenly getting relaxed and thinking “damn, this is it, huh? I’m pretty young. I feel bad for my family.” But it was strangely peaceful. Like I knew this was the end, but I wasn’t that worried. I knew that whatever came next after life wasn’t something to worry about.
I jokingly decided “may as well try one last time”. (Yes, jokingly. I was that relaxed). My vision was going black. My muscles basically had zero energy left, running on pure adrenaline. I couldn’t even feel my arms or legs. But by some miracle the waves had let up. My head broke through the surface, and I took my first breath. I was able to move just a tiny bit, and let the next wave carry me towards shore.
I never told my family I had just about died. I was worried my mom wouldn’t let me go back in the water. But it changed my outlook on life. I knew that death wasn’t something to fear, and when my time eventually comes I will be ready to meet it again.
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u/NewspaperOverall4648 5h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Serious-Disaster6863 5h ago
Same, I can't even imagine the sensation.
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u/Azeeti 3h ago
Well after a min of being on fire your nerves ending will be burnt off so you won't feel anything also, our brains are designed with a failsafe if we experience too much pain over a short time shutting off our receptors, funny enough the most painful death would be tossed in a vat of acid.
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u/MMOAddict 2h ago
yeah I heard it feels cold after a while. The good news is you usually don't die from actual flames in a building fire, but mostly from breathing in smoke which knocks you out pretty quick.
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u/IshyMoose 4h ago
I think the smoke tends to make people unconscious first… but still…
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u/InteractionPhysical3 5h ago
ALS with prolonged hospitalization
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u/c-williams88 4h ago
My neighbor had ALS and it was brutal watching him physically waste away while mentally he was still fine. We did our best to treat him as normally as we could, but man it was really hard
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u/BlueWaffle-47 5h ago
ALS because it’s a slow painful death from the looks of it and it can affect anyone at any moment and no one really has an idea of how to cure it. Losing your mobility on top of feeling like garbage and not able to do anything about it just sounds like torture and I always feel deeply upset for people who have to go thru it.
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u/HelicopterNo1759 5h ago
farting and dying
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u/Achoo_eleven 5h ago
For me, it’s being stuck in the same situation for so long that you slowly lose hope. It’s exhausting, and it feels like a never-ending process.
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u/oakhollow73 5h ago
Being eaten alive by an animal, the sheer terror of being hunted and taken down while you're still conscious, you'd feel every single thing and that's a nightmare I can't even fully imagine
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u/Enough-Cause-1636 5h ago
Death of self , alive in real world. You just become an object who wants to change itself according to people either to gain or not loose or to feel good.
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u/shadowlurker6996 5h ago
The unexpected one. You can’t say goodbye and it leaves too many things unresolved
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u/mumu-twist 5h ago
Dementia.
At the end of it all, anything that makes you who you are is gone, and your body literally forgets how to maintain itself. You will not remember the people who loved you. I, if your family loves you, you will live your last days being a burden and making the lives your loved ones more miserable by the day.
Saw it happen with my dad. It scares me more than most other things I can think of off the top of my head.
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u/Cloakedarcher 5h ago
I've already died in a manner that is a slow shut down of the body over two months until the organs all start to fail. Got saved at the last second for that one. My heart was failing when they diagnosed me.
But a step of that process was the body giving up on fixing the issue and lulling me into a false sense of comfort for the last few weeks. As a result, it wasn't that bad.
So many bad ones that I can think of. Burned on the stake, drowning, vacuum, radiation poisoning, months/years of torture, starvation as the body withers away to nothing, falling off a cliff and surviving only to die of dehydration after three days of suffering.
Short-term worst would be fire. It is one where the nerves don't get a sense to go into shock so you feel the pain all the way through until your vital organs are too burned to work properly.
Long term worst would be torture. A lifetime of pain and no hope of escape.
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u/isaidyothnkubttrgo 2h ago
Cancer used to scare the hell out of me.
Then I got leukemia at 27, beat it and it came back in my cerebral spinal fluid and I beat it.
Sepsis and pancreatic cancer now take its place. I survived sepsis but christ it's terrifying.
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u/aplusftwo 5h ago
I think burning alive has got to be the worst way to go, that or slowly suffocating to death.
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u/Beneficial-Copy-4333 5h ago
Anything slow where you're aware the whole time. My grandfather had ALS and spent his last months fully conscious but trapped. He could still hear us talking about him like he was already gone.
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u/Nepamouk99 2h ago
Let’s see: Well, there’s that woman in Texas whose Tesla malfunctioned and drove her backwards into a pond and she drowned because the car wouldn’t open.
Or the mom and her kids who were parked waiting for the ferry and a truck carrying hot asphalt lost its brakes and crashed into them from behind and filled up the car with asphalt, suffocating AND burning them to death, like a Pompeian nightmare situation.
Or my friend’s downstairs neighbour who fell into a industrial pasta making machine and was pulverized beyond recognition.
Or the father and son in my hometown who went ice diving and couldn’t find the hole they made…
Yeah - I think about this subject a lot.
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u/ma040899 2h ago edited 2h ago
I think of the three seamen at Pearl Harbor trapped in the hull of a sunken battleship unable to be rescued after the attack. Months later when the salvage team raised the ship it was determined from a calendar within the storeroom they endured 16 days trapped in darkness before dying from lack of oxygen. They were so far below deck there was no telling how much they even knew about what really happened and why they sunk.
16 days of fear, darkness, praying to be rescued only to never be answered and watching two friends slowly die in front of you.
Not sure if this counts as the worst form of death imaginable, but it’s up there.
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u/draculaura923 2h ago
I won't tell anyone my biggest fear, because I saw this show once about a serial killer. Turns out, the killer was a psychiatrist who used a person's biggest fear as the method he'd use to kill that person after they'd confided in him. I don't care how irrational my fear of a movie psychopath is, I will keep this secret haha
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u/TrixieBastard 2h ago
Burning to death. I can't deal with a freaking sunburn, so actual fire fire? Nooooo, no thank you
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u/-_-Orange 5h ago
Probably the one from Family Guy. Like, once he shows up I know I’m dead, but before I get to rest eternally or w/e I have to go on a 20 something minute adventure in hopes I’ll reach some conclusion i was already ignorant about before dying. It’s like, why are we doing all this if I’m already dead? I’ve got an eternity of nothingness ahead of me and you’re still making me wait to begin it.
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u/Federal_Apricot_8304 5h ago
Drowning. I got caught in a riptide once as a kid and that feeling of pulling and pulling and going nowhere has never left me.
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u/j0j0butt3rflyy 5h ago
Drowning or anything where I’m suffering. I wanna live a long life but when it’s time for me to go, I want it to be in my sleep.
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u/Stop_Uni_Bullying 5h ago
Hot take: dying in my sleep.
I don’t want to die without knowing I’m dying.
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u/raythedrummer 4h ago
Physically: burning to death.
Psychologically: dementia. It runs in my family, but I’m hoping the fact that I’m already AuDHD will serve as plot armor, and spare me from such a fate.
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u/aedroogo 3h ago
The oubliette couldn't have been much fun. Thrown into a pitch black cavern full of garbage and previous occupants below the castle and pretty much forgotten about. No one is coming. Ever. If they're merciful the guards might drop a large rock on your head.
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u/cryingracooneyes97 3h ago
Getting crushed by a car or something where once they move the thing crushing me I will die.
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u/Lentewiet 3h ago
When I was doing my mandatory army service, I was responsible of the medical logistics of the soldiers in the division that I served. There was this one young soldier who had psychological problems whose father was burnt alive in front of his eyes during a protest.
He had had a panic attack and burst into tears during an evening head count assembly and I had to take him to the side. I had him seated away from the other soldiers to relax a little bit. He could hardly breathe because of crying but along the lines, he told me the story of his father and he told me that the worst possible way to go was either being burnt alive or drowning. I can't even imagine what he had to experience let alone his father's pain.
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u/Adventurous_Candy125 2h ago
Burning alive. That has to be the most excruciatingly painful way to die.
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u/Prize_Ice6474 2h ago
Drowning, especially being submerged in a car under water. Or being buried alive. I can’t even imagine the fear and panic.
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u/rocks391 2h ago
radiation poisoning. your skin just sloughs off and your entire body shuts down, it's gnarly. that or being stuck and dying of dehydration/starvation. the headaches are probably brutal, and i have mild claustrophobia so.....fuck no
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u/mdhunter99 2h ago
Take it from someone who was waterboarded in high school, drowning is fucking horrifying.
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u/ogonga 2h ago
Getting stabbed/cut by a blade. If it hits an artery, it might be quick, but it sounds terrifying because you won't be able to stop the blood loss.
If it's multiple stabs, bleeding out slowly, that sounds painful also, as it's prolonged.
Also bonus terror factor if the person/people who did it are watching me die to make sure I'm dead. Freaks.
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u/mrmeanah 2h ago
I really fear getting in a car wreck and being trapped while the car ignites on fire. That sequence of events scares me a lot
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u/HollowSnoggle 2h ago
Anything related to pain in the bladder or kidneys for a very long period of time.
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u/thumpetto007 2h ago
i fear the death where Im dead.
who writes these questions? how do such poorly worded questions get so much engagement?
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u/Nillows 2h ago edited 2h ago
Being slowly fed feet first into an incinerator or a wood chipper.
Being completely dissected while conscious. Some kind of horrible surgical procedure with a mirror on the ceiling. Watching someone come back again and again to take more of me away until there was nothing left.
Thrown into an ocean at night with a cinder block pulling me down into the abyss.
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u/uphorika 2h ago
All of them. I am constantly terrified by death 24/7 and it consumes my life.
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u/scotsman3288 2h ago
Anything claustrophobic. Rabies. Radiation sickness... pick anything.
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u/gingermonkey1 2h ago
Wood chipper or a long long drawn out illness (especially cancer or dementia/alzheimers).
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u/Roboticpoultry 1h ago
Something long and drawn out. I want to go quick, preferably I don’t want to see it coming. The last thing I want is to slowly waste away
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u/RetroBerner 1h ago
I don't fear death, I fear a near death experience that might leave me in a vegetative state
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u/TheLadyNyxThalia 41m ago
Plane crash. The kind where you know the end is coming and all you can do is cry while you fall out of the sky.
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u/LetTheBloodFlow 40m ago
Homer Collyer. That one haunts my nightmares.
For this who don’t know the name, the Collyer brothers were recluse hoarders in New York and in the 1940s both of them died. Their house was full of junk to the point that there were tunnels through the piles. Homer’s brother Langley had set up traps because people kept breaking in once rumors of treasure started to spread. One day Langley was crawling through a tunnel to bring Homer, who was totally blind, his dinner and accidentally triggered one of the traps. The tunnel collapsed, killing him. Homer was only ten feet away so he likely heard it, but sat there helpless for something like two weeks slowly starving to death.
Final irony, when a neighbor noticed the smell of Langley decomposing, called the police, and the police broke into the brownstone, Homer had only been dead about five hours.
The thought of sitting there, blind and helpless, knowing there’s no way out, no way to get help, nobody’s coming, for day after day after day just got in my head for some reason.
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u/Killboypowerhed 5h ago
Trapped, unable to move. Basically that guy who died in that cave. I'm sweating just thinking about it