Laughter is said to be the best medicine, but, as with all drugs, overprescription is a dangerous thing. For most people, the most significant side effect of laughing is a pain in the ribs and perhaps some damp underwear, but for a few people, there is a real risk of overdose.

Some people have underlying conditions that make belly-laughing hazardous to their health, while others laugh so hard that they just forget to breathe. Whatever it was that tickled their funny bones, some people would have done better to try and keep a straight face. Here are a few things that you might want to avoid, if you don’t want to die laughing.

10 A Little Light Entertainment

In 1975, Alex Mitchell was watching a surreal British comedy TV program called The Goodies. This particular episode, “Kung Fu Capers,” involved the three Goodies trying to learn the very British martial art of “Ecky Thump,” where combatants attack each other with black pudding.

Though it perhaps wasn’t a joke that travels well, Alex Mitchell found it hysterical. He found it so funny, in fact, that he laughed his way into cardiac arrest.

It is believed that Mr. Mitchell may have suffered from long QT syndrome, a heart disorder which can induce heart attack when triggered by adrenaline or exertion. His death led to doctors testing other family members, and they found that Mitchell’s daughter also had the syndrome, which is manageable.

After the death, Alex Mitchell’s widow wrote to the three Goodies to thank them for making her husband’s last moments so happy.^[1]

9 A Night At The Opera

In 1782, a certain Mrs. Fitzherbert went to Drury Lane to see a performance of The Beggar’s Opera. It is possible that, being the widow of a clergyman, the lady had lived a somewhat sheltered life. Or perhaps she had never seen a pantomime.

Whatever the reason, the appearance onstage of a man in drag caused Mrs. Fitzherbert to break out into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Such behavior being discouraged at the opera, she hastily left her seat and went outside, whereupon the fit of “hysterics” continued.

According to The Gentleman’s Magazine (not at all the same thing as a men’s magazine), Mrs. Fitzherbert was “unable to banish the figure from her memory, was thrown into a fit of hysterics, which continued without intermission until Friday morning, when she expired.”^[2]

8 The Company Of Friends

In 1893, Wesley Parsons was enjoying a convivial dinner with friends. Although his exact age is not known, he is described as being “aged.” This aged farmer from Indiana shared a meal, a drink, and a joke. We do not know for sure whether the food was good, but it is likely that the drink was plentiful, since Wesley Parsons, while attempting to amuse his guests, laughed at his own joke.

According to reports at the time, he was “seized with a spell of laughing, being unable to stop. He laughed for a whole hour, when he began hiccoughing, and 2 hours later, he died from exhaustion.”^[3]

Though the death was recorded, the joke was not. Perhaps it is just as well. A joke that powerful could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

7 Fine Art

Zeuxis was one of the most well-known painters of ancient Greece. Although none of his work is thought to have survived, he was said to have specialized in painting single figures, notably of the gods. Descriptions of these works, such as Zeus surrounded by other deities or Eros crowned with roses, have survived.

He is said to have died after painting a picture, supposedly of Aphrodite, who he had depicted as an ugly old woman. As he finished the painting, the ridiculousness of the old hag beneath his brush being the Goddess of Love and Beauty tickled him so much that, each time he looked at the painting, he laughed harder until, finally, he collapsed and died.

The idea of the Zeuxis’s final hours seems to have struck a chord among painters. The artist Aert de Gelder, in 1685, painted himself as Zeuxis, and Rembrandt’s Laughing self-portrait is also said to be a nod to his ancient Greek predecessor.^[4]

6 Beasts Of Burden

Donkeys aren’t normally considered particularly funny. Foolish, yes, but funny?

The stoic philosopher Chrysippus would disagree. Chrysippus was normally a serious kind of man. He was concerned with subjects such as metaphysical theory, materialist ontology, freedom, and determinism, which all sounds rather heavy.

Perhaps he’d had a hard day’s thinking when he chanced upon a donkey eating his figs.^[5] After watching this scene for a while, he yelled, “Now give the donkey a pure wine to wash down the figs!”

The philospher’s joke entertained him so much that he fell to the ground laughing and was soon foaming at the mouth. It is believed that he died from laughter-induced syncope, which can cause tissue death in the brain, leading to muscle weakness, loss of consciousness, and death.

5 A King

Thomas Urquhart, born in 1611, was an unusual man. Opinion is still divided on whether he was a prankster, a con man, or just plain mad. He was a gifted scholar, attending university at the age of 11. He fought for King Charles I and was knighted for his efforts. He fought again for Charles II and, on losing, was held in the Tower of London by Oliver Cromwell.

He claimed to be able to trace his lineage back to Adam and Eve and that it was his ancestor who found Moses in the bulrushes. He also claimed to be related to the Queen of Sheba, who was living in disguise in Ireland, to Fergus of Scotland (who probably never existed), and to King Arthur (who definitely didn’t).

Oliver Cromwell held him prisoner for a long time, but, eventually deciding that Urquhart was probably insane and definitely harmless, he let him go. In 1660, Urquhart heard that Cromwell had been ousted and that King Charles II was going to be restored to the throne, and he broke into a bout of “excessive laughter” and died.^[6]

4 Sweet Dreams

Dreaming isn’t normally a dangerous pastime. Even nightmares can’t actually hurt us. For Damnoen Saen-um of Thailand, however, his dreams, though sweet, were the death of him.

According to his wife, the ice cream truck driver suddenly began to laugh in his sleep in 2003. The laughter carried on for two minutes, and he was laughing so hard that his wife became concerned and tried to wake him. Damnoen did not wake, however, and laughed all the harder, until he suddenly just stopped breathing.

Although the cause of death is not entirely clear, it is thought that the laughing may have brought on a heart seizure.^[7]

3 A Trip To The Movies

In 1989, Ole Bentzen, a Danish doctor who was in, it is thought, perfect health, went to the movies. The film he chose to see was A Fish Called Wanda, a Monty Python-esque surreal comedy staring Jamie Lee Curtis and a couple of original Pythons.

When he reached the scene where Kevin Kline shoves a couple of French fries up Michael Palin’s nose, he began to laugh.^[8] Apparently, it reminded him of the time his entire family stuck cauliflower up their noses while sitting around the dinner table. (Doesn’t every family do that?)

His pulse is claimed to have risen to between 250 and 500 beats per minute, and Bentzen suffered a heart attack. His assistant, who had accompanied him, said, “I was shocked to hear him break out laughing like that,” possibly because talking in the cinema is frowned on, or possibly because he was dead.

2 Reading The Paper

They do say inflation is a killer. For Arthur Cobcroft of Sydney, Australia, it certainly was. The 54-year-old dog trainer came across a five-year-old newspaper in 1920 and was comparing the prices of goods in the paper with current prices when he suddenly broke into fits of laughter.

He made a remark to his wife about the ridiculous prices, and his laughter became more uncontrolled. He soon found that he was unable to stop himself and eventually collapsed and died. Cause of death was recorded as heart failure caused by excessive laughter.^[9]

1 Animal Cruelty

King Martin of Aragon is believed to be the only king ever to have laughed himself to death. He had just eaten an entire goose and was, understandably, beginning to suffer from a certain amount of bloating and indigestion. He retired to his bedroom, and in order to distract himself from his discomfort, he called for his jester.

It may be that the jester was reluctant to visit a flatulent king in his bedroom. We do know that the jester took some time to respond to the summons, and that when he finally did arrive, the king demanded to know where he had been. The jester replied, “In the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs.”

The jester, it seems, knew his audience. The king found this so funny that he laughed uncontrollably at the joke for three hours, despite the discomfort of his indigestion. Eventually, he fell out of his bed laughing. By the time he hit the floor, he was dead.^[10]

With Hollywood being in the age of long-running blockbusters, we have spent the better part of the last two decades witnessing studios doing everything in their power to secure themselves lucrative franchises and series to make money on for an endless amount of time. That said, cash-grabbing projects orchestrated by studio executives almost never end up being successful without a true artistic vision behind it. As a result of that corporate greed, massive franchises that were once beloved have turned into something unrecognizable. Here are 10 tired franchises Hollywood refuses to let die:

Top 10 Things Hollywood Does To Kowtow To The Chinese

10 Charlie’s Angels

While “Charlie’s Angels” started as a popular TV series back in 1976, Hollywood only realized the potential behind the franchise in the year 2000, when it was successfully rebooted into an over-the-top action flick starring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz. Unfortunately, that potential was very short-lived — after a failed sequel in 2003 (and a cancelled third film), the franchise went dead, and Hollywood has miserably been trying to revive it for the last 17 years.

First came a proposed “Charlie’s Angels” animated film that got stuck and died in development hell in 2007, followed by an awful and widely forgotten 2011 TV series on ABC (starring Minka Kelly) that was embarrassingly cancelled after only four episodes, effectively making it one of the worst performing television shows of all time. Things got silent afterwards, and, for a while, it looked like the “Charlie’s Angels” universe was finally put to rest. But Hollywood wasn’t done.

Refusing to accept that audiences have not been interested in this franchise since 2000, Sony Pictures tripled down on their desperate efforts and delivered the historical box office failure that was 2019’s “Charlie’s Angels”, a dull and uninspired reboot/sequel of the original series, directed by Elizabeth Banks and starring Kristen Stewart. The movie bombed with critics and audiences, grossing only $8 Million in its opening weekend (against an estimated production & marketing budget of $97 Million) and prompting the inevitable cancellation of its planned sequels. Let’s hope that, this time, the message was clear.^[1]

9 Men In Black

The first two “Men In Black” movies were massive hits that undeniably solidified their place in pop culture through the years. The odd pairing that were Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones worked against all odds, and created a franchise that was like unlike anything we had seen before. Lightning in a bottle, as they say. But then, in 2012, we got “Men In Black 3”, and it became quite obvious that Sony and Columbia were pushing their luck. Despite being successful at the box office, it was generally agreed amongst fans and critics that the movie was an absolute disappointment, far from the quality of the first two films.

As a result, Sony Pictures decided to find a new way to reinvigorate the series. For about two years, there were talks of a “Men In Black” spin-off that would work as a crossover with the recently rebooted “21 Jump Street” franchise. At the time, Jump Street stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum were even confirmed to be reprising their roles in the weird yet exciting project. Sadly though, the film died in development hell, and Sony Pictures opted to shift the franchise’s direction all together, abandoning the crossover idea for a straight reboot.

And so, the year 2019 saw the release of “Men In Black: International”, a brand new take on the franchise featuring a new set of MIB agents, this time played by “Thor: Ragnarok” stars Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. Unfortunately, the movie fell flat and widely underperformed at the box office, causing future plans to be halted in their development stage. As of right now, there are no plans for new “Men In Black” movies moving forward, but it is only a matter of time before a new reboot arises.^[2]

8 Resident Evil

There is a known curse in Hollywood when it comes to movie adaptations of popular video games. None of them are good. From the famously awful “Super Mario Bros” in the 90’s, to the abomination that was 2016’s “Assassin’s Creed”, it looks like video game movies are always doomed to fail from the start. One of the very few exceptions to this rule though, was 2002’s extremely successful adaptation of the horror classic “Resident Evil”, starring Milla Jovovich.

While it was a fairly unfaithful adaptation that widely disappointed fans of the video games, the film surpassed expectations at the box office, creating a brand new fandom and kickstarting a 14-year long movie franchise. That said, the overly convoluted and increasingly unlikable sequels quickly began to lose audiences over the years, and the franchise grew stale with diminishing returns.

Accepting the deplorable status of their film series (despite it still being somewhat profitable), Sony Pictures and Screen Gems decided to put an end to it with 2016’s highly forgettable “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter”, which came and went mostly unnoticed by western audiences. But, while we might have thought this was the end of it, it was quickly made very clear by studios that they were not done trying to milk this franchise for every dollar it could make.

When, the video game series was reinvigorated with “Resident Evil: Biohazard” in 2017, it was reported by Variety that a reboot of the movie franchise inspired by it was on the way, with James Wan attached to produce for what was set to be a 6-film series. Despite Milla Jovovich’s very public disapproval of this announcement, the idea seemed promising and actually got fans excited. Unfortunately, the film never got past the development stage.

But, in 2020, it was announced that a new movie project based on the first two games was in the works. The reveal of this new iteration was almost immediately followed by Netflix releasing a trailer for a “Resident Evil” animated series, set to be released in 2021. All these projects seem to be an attempt to regain the fans’ approval, and to capitalize on the hype the franchise has had in the past three years, thanks to the critical acclaim of the last few games.^[3]

7 Pirates Of The Caribbean

In 2003, we were gifted with Disney’s “Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl”, which revealed itself to be one of the most fun and charismatic films of its time. Inspired by one of Disney’s popular theme park rides, it was a genuinely brilliant adaptation with a unique story that gave us iconic characters such as Johnny Depp’s legendary Jack Sparrow. The movie became an instant classic, and the success it garnered quickly gave way to a trilogy.

While the following two sequels (“Dead Man’s Chest” and “At World’s End”) were not as beloved as the first one, facing some criticism for being a bit messy and overblown, they still formed a solid trilogy that closed with acclaim from fans and critics alike in 2007. Unfortunately, Disney then opted to keep going with the franchise.

“Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” came out in 2011 and brutally disappointed fans by delivering a boring story, ditching the original cast and turning Jack Sparrow into a caricature of himself, in a weird attempt to make him the franchise’s mascot. But, despite the backlash, the movie did make money, and Disney doubled down with 2017’s universally hated “Dead Men Tell No Tales’, which was so terribly bad that the planned sequels were cancelled almost as soon as it came out, effectively ending the series on a dud.

Not knowing what to do with their fallen franchise, Disney announced that the so-called “Pirates 6” was going to be a reboot, confirming in 2018 that Johnny Depp had been dropped from the series. Since then, a never-ending line of reports have circulated about the reboot being cancelled, then being back on track, then losing its head writers, then being cancelled again — which only confirms that Disney is not ready to let go of the Pirates, even if they have absolutely no idea what to do with them.^[4]

6 Alien

“In space, no one can hear you scream.” A sentence that still sends shivers down people’s spines. Ridley Scott’s “Alien” is, to this day, one of the greatest horror/sci-fi movies ever made. James Cameron’s “Aliens”, the 1986 sequel, is one of the greatest action/sci-fi movies ever made. Both films gave us something strong, special, with one of the most iconic heroes in cinema history, and villains that are impossible to forget. It was perfect. And then…it kept going.

After the disappointing “Alien 3” and “Alien Resurrection” crashed and burned in the 90’s, the 2000’s saw studios attempting to turn the Alien series into a blockbuster franchise with the terrible crossover event that was “Alien vs Predator” in 2004, which was followed by “Alien vs Predator: Requiem” in 2007. These films completely drained the franchise of its soul, losing the audience’s interest entirely, and 20th Century Fox quickly decided to shift gears.

In 2012, original director Ridley Scott came back to the franchise to direct a prequel to the first film titled “Prometheus”. The film gave a new breath to the Alien universe, but proved to be extremely divisive amongst fans, often criticized for being boring and pretentious with its themes. A sequel to the movie then became unsure, and “Prometheus” quickly fell into oblivion, forgotten by most.

Four years later, Neill Blomkamp (director of the critically acclaimed “District 9”) was brought in to direct a new Alien film that would be taking place right after “Aliens” and disregard all of its sequels. It was even confirmed that Sigourney Weaver would be coming back as Ellen Ripley to give her character a proper ending… but the film was abandoned by the studio in its preproduction stage and, almost immediately after, it was announced that, in the end, Ridley Scott would be making his “Prometheus” sequel instead.

That sequel came in 2017, in the form of “Alien: Covenant” a disjointed disappointment of a movie that left both critics and audiences cold and bored. The film performed terribly at the box-office, which, once again, made the possibilities for a sequel very foggy. But, despite everything, Ridley Scott did claim in 2020 that a sequel to “Covenant” was still a possibility, so it is safe to assume that 20th Century Fox is refusing to accept that this franchise has not had a single good movie since 1986. Go figure.^[5]

Top 10 Ways Hollywood Recycles Movies

5 The Walking Dead

The fact that “The Walking Dead” was (at one point) a cultural phenomenon as highly regarded as “Game Of Thrones” and “Breaking Bad” is almost comedic today. AMC’s flagship show lost its way quite a long time ago, and has since become a very pale shadow of its former self, often surviving by the skin of its neck. Labeled “the greatest downfall in television history” by Collider, the show is now more known for being flat and inexplicably dragged out. A crazy thought when we know that, in its prime, “The Walking Dead” was the most watched television series in the entire world.

With the original graphic novel coming to a highly criticized end in 2019 and the TV show growing stale and falling behind a dull spin-off series, it has become very clear in the past couple of years that the franchise as a whole has completely lost the interest of audiences. And when AMC announced in 2020 that season 11 of “The Walking Dead” would be its last, we assumed that the tired universe was finally going to be put out of its long and agonizing misery. We were wrong.

Not only is “The Walking Dead” still going to be an active franchise in the next decade, it is also going to be expanded through a variety of weird and unappealing spin-offs, such as “World Beyond”, a teen drama taking place in the universe that is currently making history for its terrible ratings. A movie trilogy about Rick Grimes coming to the big screen was also announced, and a number of other TV shows to debut in the coming years. In other words, despite the lack of demand for this franchise to grow, “The Walking Dead” will only make itself more obnoxious as time goes.^[6]

4 X-Men

Nowadays, most people tend to forget that 2000’s first “X-Men” movie is essentially the movie that “saved” the superhero genre, and shaped it in the form it has today. After 1997’s disastrous “Batman & Robin” put the entire genre in a Hollywood-shaped grave, “X-Men” took a new approach to comic book adaptations by refusing to conform to the silly and campy clichés that had become synonymous with them, and reinvigorated the potential behind it. A few years later, we got Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” and “X-Men 2”, which is still considered to be one of the greatest comic book films of all time. That immense success and acclaim quickly took a turn, though…

Over time, the X-Men franchise became a lazy and incoherent mess with a broken timeline that felt more like Fox was throwing everything they could at the wall to see what stuck, with writer/producer Simon Kinberg even admitting that the films became more interested in crazy visual effects than crafting interesting characters. The glimmer of hope that came after 2016’s widely disliked “X-Men: Apocalypse” was very short lived though, as 2019’s “Dark Phoenix” (which was the final entry in the current franchise) crashed and burned at the box office like never before, losing the studio over $100 Million in the process, and ending the series in the most forgettable way possible.

That said, since acquiring 20th Century Fox in 2018, Disney and Marvel Studios have confirmed that the X-Men will be coming in the colossal Marvel Cinematic Universe, giving fans the hope to repair the characters’ honour the same way Spider-Man did after the catastrophe of the “Amazing Spider-Man” franchise that ended in 2014. In other words, despite 20 years of regular movies, it looks like the X-Men franchise is only just getting started.^[7]

3 Rambo

It is strange to think that John Rambo was originally a character meant to represent the challenges that come with a war veteran’s PTSD in 1982’s “First Blood”, before he was turned into an iconic ultra-violent action hero that pretty much defined an era of action flicks in Hollywood. The “Rambo” franchise has been a staple of the genre ever since its genesis, but Hollywood’s reluctance to let the series end has started to crack its legendary status.

After the awful “Rambo IV” saw the light of day in 2008 (no less than 20 years after “Rambo III”), Hollywood decided to try yet another desperate comeback for the character 11 years later. “Rambo: Last Blood” was released in 2019, and confirmed to audiences that the franchise was officially tired and out of ideas. The movie threw any sense of story out the window, deciding to instead make a spectacle of excessive violence without much of a point. Needless to say, critics and audiences were not impressed.

David Morrell, author of the original Rambo novels, even admitted to being embarrassed by the movie, which he referred to as “degrading” amongst other things. And despite the movie doing poorly at the box office, Sylvester Stallone has recently claimed that a seventh Rambo film could be put in the works soon, as well as a prequel movie that would be taking place before “First Blood”.^[8]

2 Transformers

Michael Bay’s 2007 “Transformers” was a fun movie with groundbreaking visual effects that took the world by storm. That’s about it. Nothing can justify the continuing disaster that allowed Bay to make four more films. Sure, they made money (for some reason), but it is common knowledge amongst audiences that Transformers movies are some of the worst blockbusters ever put to screen. If anything, the franchise has become a perfect example of studios pushing their luck a bit too far. As a result, Michael Bay’s incarnation of “Transformers” was finally put to rest after 2017’s god-awful “Transformers: The Last Knight” bombed and lost Paramount Pictures and Hasbro over $100 Million.

Although, despite the overwhelming franchise fatigue, it took less than a year for Paramount to release their new vision of the franchise, with the reboot “Bumblebee” making its way to theatres in 2018. The first film to be directed by someone other than Michael Bay, “Bumblebee” proved to be a superior entry in terms of quality, but struggled to be profitable at the box office, barely saved by Chinese audiences who came in droves to see it.

Beginning to feel a bit nervous because of the blatant lack of interest in the franchise, Paramount ended up cancelling “Transformers 7”, which was slated to be released in June 2019. But, in a twist of events that surprised nobody, The Hollywood Reporter announced in May 2020 that “Transformers 7” was back on the schedule, this time landing a 2022 release date. The report was quickly followed by the release of 6-part animated Transformers series on Netflix, proving that both Hasbro and Paramount are determined to fix the franchise they have been actively driving into a wall for the past decade.^[9]

1 Terminator

Oh, god…where do we even start with this one? It’s almost crazy to think that the last good “Terminator” movie came out almost 30 years ago. Especially when we know there have been 4 more movies released since then. After director James Cameron brought us “The Terminator” in 1984 and “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” in 1991 (which is still considered to be one of the greatest action films of all time), studios decided to carry on with the franchise without its creator. And, to this day, none have been able to accomplish that successfully.

Following the underwhelming “T3: Rise Of The Machines” in 2003, studio execs opted to take a different approach, and the franchise was rebooted by director McG in 2009 with the universally despised “Terminator: Salvation”, which drifted away from its original cast and took a heavy science-fiction spin with the storyline. “Salvation” was one of the most expensive movies ever made at the time, but it completely failed to interest audiences, and the planned sequels were cancelled a few months after the film’s release.

But Skydance and Paramount Pictures refused to back down, and in 2015, they rebooted the franchise once again with “Terminator: Genisys”, which marked the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the iconic T-800 after a 12-year hiatus. Unfortunately, it quickly proved to be another miss, as the bland and repetitive movie was plagued with negative reviews and brutally failed to meet expectations at the box office. Fans were utterly disappointed by “Genisys” (mainly due to the film’s ultimate plot twist being unceremoniously spoiled in the trailer months ahead of the release), and the planned trilogy for this new incarnation was quietly scrapped by the studio.

And then, because the message wasn’t clear enough, Paramount teamed up with 20th Century Fox to attempt yet another reboot of the series. “Terminator: Dark Fate” came out in 2019, erasing the four previous films from the franchise’s timeline, and claiming to be the one true sequel to 1991’s “Judgement Day”. But, despite building some mild hype with a decent first trailer (which teased the return of Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor), “Dark Fate” crashed and burned at the box office, losing the studio $130 Million. It became one of the most disliked entries in the series, making audiences realize that the Terminator franchise has been trying to tell the exact same story over and over again for the past 30 years, in a desperate attempt to recapture the magic of the first two films.

While the state of the franchise is currently up in the air, even MacKenzie Davis (who played one of the main characters in “Dark Fate”) seems doubtful that the planned sequels will ever be made, saying in an interview with NME that at this point, “thinking there would be a demand for a seventh film is quite insane.”^[10]

Top 10 Secrets Of Iconic Hollywood Sounds

From poisonous chemtrails to Area 51 as a government cover-up of nuclear weapons manufacturing, spycraft, or actual aliens, the vast majority of conspiracy theories don’t rely on anything as unimportant as facts and research. Instead, they simply jumble together everything that might vaguely point or relate to a particular situation.

Denver International Airport is looked at askance because of its terrible murals and Blucifer, which obviously makes it the playground of the Illuminati. Some are adamant that US school shootings are just a distraction from sinister scenarios playing out in the White House.

And, of course, everyone who is rich and famous must have made some kind of pact with the devil. Not to mention that the current COVID-19 pandemic is paving the way for the evil New World Order just as Pope Francis planned. Oh, and don’t forget that COVID-19 itself is just an excuse to implement 5G, which will eventually kill us all.

10 Dark Conspiracy Theories That Actually Turned Out To Be True

8 It Was All Political

On March 15, 2019, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant entered the Al Noor Mosque in Riccarton and started shooting. Twelve minutes later, he entered the Linwood Islamic Centre and the shooting continued. The aftermath saw 51 people dead and a further 49 injured. Tarrant decided to livestream the first shooting on Facebook. In no time, the video became a source of conspiracy theorist fodder.

There were claims that the attack was a false flag operation and that the murder victims were merely crisis actors. (This is similar to the theory about the Sandy Hook tragedy.) It was also argued that the false flag operation was allowed in order for gun policies to be changed in New Zealand.^[1]

Radio host Rush Limbaugh speculated that the shooter was a leftist and used the attack to blemish the reputation of the political right. It was even claimed that the “white genocide conspiracy” could have been behind Tarrant’s attack.

Brenton Tarrant has since pleaded guilty to all charges against him. As of this writing, he is awaiting sentencing for his crimes.

7 In The Name Of Love

When Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared without a trace in March 2014, no one thought that the plane would still be missing six years later. Most expected that the wreckage and the black boxes would be found so that an explanation for the incident could be discovered.

Instead, as of mid-2020, only a few pieces of debris have been identified as belonging to the ill-fated plane. Families of the victims are calling on authorities to reopen the investigation and restart the search. Also, in 2020, the conspiracy theories around the tragedy have multiplied, with some becoming even more ridiculous.

According to one of the more elaborate theories, the pilot devised a scheme to leave his wife because he couldn’t simply divorce her due to his Muslim faith. Therefore, he bought fake ID documents for himself and his mistress and planned to jump out of the plane with a parachute after depressurizing the aircraft to kill all the passengers. He then landed in a boat where his mistress waited while the plane crashed into the sea.^[2]

Other diehard theories include the plane being stashed away in a Cambodian jungle or being a statistic of the “Asian” Bermuda triangle. Yet another theory says that “someone” in North Korea really wanted a huge plane. So MH370 was hijacked and diverted there.

6 Fake Melania

A host of conspiracy theories exist about Donald Trump and his presidency. In turn, Donald Trump seems to buy into a lot of theories about various things. The one he soundly rejects, however, is the long-standing theory of “Fake Melania.”

The Fake Melania theory is based on the claim that a body double stands in for the first lady and accompanies the president to various places. It is also argued that the body double hides behind large sunglasses and wears clothing similar to Melania Trump’s. Supposedly, the conspiracy was uncovered because the woman is shorter than Melania.

Donald Trump slammed the theory. He called it deranged and said that the Fake News photoshopped pictures of Melania.^[3]

5 Island Of Horrors

The Plum Island Animal Disease Center was established in 1954 as a facility for research into animal pathogens. It was hoped that new ways to stave off diseases such as African swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease would be developed.

The island also houses the only foot-and-mouth disease vaccine bank in the US. But naturally, research could not be conducted there without various conspiracies swirling about these activities.

According to one theory, no research is actually done on the island. Instead, animal-human hybrids are in the process of being developed there. Researchers have been accused of being Nazi scientists out to create alien technology and genetically modified monsters.

Some theorists went another way. They believe that biological warfare weapons are being manufactured on the island and that Lyme disease is one of the bioweapons that somehow escaped the laboratory.^[4]

The Plum Island facility has been scheduled for shutdown in 2023 and will be replaced by the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility which is currently under construction in Kansas. No doubt, more conspiracy theories will soon follow.

10 Conspiracy Theories About The European Union

4 Economic Crisis?
Enter Barack Obama

If there is one thing that conspiracy theorists seem to love above all else, it is coming up with screwball claims involving national leaders. All loose ties that seem vaguely connectable will be linked, and an outlandish theory that paints one or more parties in a bad light will surface.

The economic crisis of 2008 provided just enough “ties” for the Democrats to be accused of orchestrating it. Rush Limbaugh fueled the theory on his radio show in 2008 by claiming that Senator Chuck Schumer caused the IndyMac collapse to create a feeling of financial instability.

The Democrats then somehow used this panic to ensure wins in Congress and the White House. The claimed purpose of winning and getting Barack Obama elected was to ensure that US industries would be nationalized.

Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly extended the theory by saying that they believed journalists caused the economic crisis because they wanted to see Barack Obama elected as president.^[5]

3 Start Of The Apocalypse

Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik detonated a van bomb in Oslo on July 22, 2011, killing eight people. Then he set off for the island of Utoya. There, he shot and killed 69 people who were camping as part of a Workers’ Youth League outing.

Breivik was initially diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. But a second team of forensic psychiatrists refuted this and instead diagnosed him with antisocial and narcissistic personality disorder.

Breivik distributed his manifesto online shortly before the attacks. In it, he described his opposition to feminism and Islam. He also called for the deportation of all Muslims from Europe. Breivik additionally claimed that the main motive behind the devastating attacks was to make his manifesto known.^[6]

Despite Breivik’s claim, several alternative ideas were dreamed up. Theories were thrown around that Freemasons were responsible for the attack or that Hillary Clinton set up the attacks by means of a sponsored Israeli government operation. Some felt that the entire episode was made up as Breivik could not have set off a bomb and still had time to escape to the island where he killed 69 people.

However, the strangest theory says that Breivik was Conquest, the first of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, and carried out the attack to pave the way for the other three horsemen—War, Famine, and Death.

2 Second Sun

NASA has been accused of many things, including keeping information about aliens from the public and lying about giant asteroids flying close to Earth. According to one outlandish theory, NASA doesn’t exist to explore space but simply to come up with elaborate hoaxes such as the Moon landings and fake pictures of planets that don’t exist.

In 2016, field astronomer Paul Cox accused NASA of covering up the existence of a second Sun. During a live show, Cox pointed to what is generally known to be Mercury in the night sky and claimed: “That large round thing to the right of the Sun is our second Sun.”

While some immediately thought that Cox was being sarcastic or making a joke, many theorists jumped at the slim chance to “prove” that NASA was guilty of just about every accusation ever made about it.

To make matters worse, Cox also referred to the Planet X theory, which claims that a “broken” planet will eventually emerge from behind the Sun (whether this is the first or second Sun is unclear), crash into Earth, and destroy humankind. Naturally, this sent the conspiracy sphere into overdrive again.^[7]

1 Orchestrated Shark Attacks

On December 1, 2010, four people were seriously injured when they were attacked by sharks in the Red Sea off Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt. On December 5, 2010, a woman was killed in the same area after a shark attacked her as she waded in shallow water near the shoreline.

Some believed that the “unprecedented” attacks were due to inadvertent shark feeding or animal carcass dumping. In the aftermath of these incidents, dozens of sharks were captured and killed.

As if the whole episode wasn’t horrific enough, a conspiracy theory emerged. Supposedly, a GPS tracking device had been found on one of the sharks and traced back to Israeli agents.

Israel was then accused of orchestrating the shark attacks to kill the tourism industry in Egypt. Previously, Israel had been suspected of tagging birds with GPS trackers to spy on other countries.^[8]

Israel’s government has since denied involvement in any shark or bird tampering for spying purposes.

+ Just When You Think You’ve Heard It All

Tragedy inevitably opens the door to a flood of conspiracy theories. The sinking of the RMS Titanic spawned some of the craziest rumors still in circulation today, including that the ship was sunk by a U-boat. Another persistent theory says that the Titanic was swapped with her sister ship, the Olympic, which was deliberately sunk for insurance money.

Then came the conspiracy to top all Titanic conspiracies: It has been whispered that either the Rothschild family or J.P. Morgan planned the accident to get rid of those who opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve.

“Those” refers to Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus, and John Jacob Astor IV. These three “opposers” all died in the sinking, and the Federal Reserve was up and running by December 1913. Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan was clever enough to cancel his trip on the Titanic at the last minute by feigning illness.^[9]

Top 10 American Conspiracy Theories That Are Completely Bonkers

Next to eating a healthy diet and getting enough exercise, getting adequate sleep is a staple cornerstone to a healthy life. But did you know that sleeping can also be dangerous?

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Amazing Facts About Dreams

There are actually a number of things that can go wrong when you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness—and for some people, the danger is real enough that they never wake up again. In fact, according to an ancient Greek proverb, death and sleep are brothers . . . death being the perfect fulfillment of sleep and sleep being the imperfect embodiment of death.

Sleep has, for the most part, always been seen as a “passive” activity that our body performs on its own. But the truth is that our brain is actually quite active while we slumber. It’s also true that there are many unanswered mysteries about sleep that modern scientists have yet to unravel.^[1]

As it turns out, there are still some surprising (and somewhat scary) things going on when our conscious brains turn off and our bodies begin the sleeping state. And sometimes, the results can be completely terrifying.

10 Sudden Cardiac Arrest

Sudden cardiac arrest, also known as SCA, can occur when the sinoatrial node, the node in the heart that essentially acts as your body’s natural pacemaker, becomes impaired.^[2] In other words, this condition occurs when the electrical systems of the heart malfunction. And in some cases, it’s deadly within the first few minutes.

How does it kill? Well, it basically reduces blood flow to the brain. And the scariest part? Not only can it happen during sleep, but half of cases show no symptoms before the cardiac arrest occurs.

9 Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

Carbon monoxide, or CO, is a colorless, odorless gas that can be lethal if too much of it enters the lungs. CO can be found in the fumes that come from running cars, stoves, grills, fireplaces, gas ranges, furnaces, and so on, and it can be almost impossible to detect unless a carbon monoxide detector is in use.

How does it kill? Basically, if enough of it builds up in a small enough space, breathing it in can become toxic. And if you inhale enough of it, just having it in your lungs can be enough to “seal the deal” in a very final way. If awake, the victim may experience symptoms like dizziness, weakness, a headache, or an upset stomach.

But what if it catches you while you’re asleep? Well, people who are sleeping often experience no symptoms, and they can die in their sleep.^[3]

8 Myocardial Infarction

A myocardial infarction, more commonly known as a heart attack, can happen during sleep, though thankfully, the odds are pretty good that this specific type of cardiac event will wake its victim up before it kills them.^[4]

Heart attacks happen when blood flow to part of the heart gets blocked. This blockage can destroy part of the heart muscle.

How does it kill? If enough heart tissue gets damaged, the heart may not be strong enough to pump any blood out to the rest of the body. This can result in heart failure, which could be lethal if medical treatment isn’t obtained immediately.

Unfortunately, it usually isn’t possible for a heart attack victim to seek medical attention if they’re asleep—and that’s the part that’s terrifying.

7 Central Sleep Apnea

Central sleep apnea is basically a disorder that causes the sufferer’s breathing to stop and start repeatedly while they are unconscious. It happens when the brain doesn’t send the proper electrical signals to the muscles that control the breathing mechanisms during sleep and is believed to originate from a problem in the brain stem.

How does it kill? Basically, if the case of apnea is bad enough, hypoxemia may set in—which happens when oxygen levels in the body fall below those required for normal life function. This basically leads to oxygen deprivation.^[5]

If the brain is not able to rouse the body in enough time to take a breath, the prognosis can be fatal!

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Surprisingly Common Ways To Die In Your Sleep

6 Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome

This is undoubtedly one of the more “mysterious” inclusions in our list.

Unexplained nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS) was first reported in 1977 among southeast Asian Hmong refugees in America and Canada. Since then, it has gained a pretty scary reputation in both textbooks and on the dark corners of the internet. In the Philippines, they call it Bangungut, in Hawaii, they call it Dream Disease, and if you’re in Thailand, you call it lai tai, which means “sleep and die.”

The exact cause of death among those who die of SUNDS is actually still unclear, but the presentation always seems to be similar. It basically causes otherwise young, healthy individuals to die in their sleep for seemingly no reason.

How does it kill? Scientists still aren’t sure, but it tends to occur frequently in Southeast Asia, and researchers suspect a range of possible explanations, from malfunctions of the ion channel to ventricular fibrillation.^[6]

5 Cerebral Aneurysm

A cerebral aneurysm, also known as a brain aneurysm, is basically a weak spot in the wall of a blood vessel in the brain. It is kind of like a thin balloon that fills with blood. Over time, as the blood pumps through the artery, it continues to weaken and swell—and if the pressure increases too much, a rupture can occur.

How does it kill? When an aneurysm ruptures, the bleeding usually only lasts for a few seconds. But the blood causes damage to the surrounding brain cells and can increase the pressure inside the skull. If the pressure elevates too much, the condition can quickly turn fatal.^[7]

4 Enterovirus D68

This is one of the more obscure entries on our list, but that makes it no less terrifying.

Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) is a type of non-polio enterovirus that was first identified in California back in 1962. But back in 2014, there was a huge increase in the number of reported cases, leaving researchers to wonder if the virus was going to become more predominant in coming years than they had expected.

The scary thing about EV-D68 is that while it usually causes mild to severe respiratory illness symptoms, it sometimes produces no symptoms at all. And yet, physicians are saying that the disease has the potential to be more dangerous than Ebola in the US.^[8]

How does it kill? It can cause particularly severe respiratory problems, characterized by a high-pitched wheezing sound that has become a dreaded earmark of infection. It has also been associated with muscle weakness and spinal cord inflammation, which is perhaps even more terrifying than the wheezing.

Dying of an infection is not necessarily common, but sometimes, the symptoms are dangerous enough to kill—even if the victim is asleep.

3 Dry Drowning

Most of us are aware that you can drown in the water—this is obvious, but a lot of people aren’t familiar at all with the term “dry drowning” and what it means. It turns out, it is a pretty horrific way to die!

Basically, the idea behind this danger is that it is a type of drowning that can occur even after the victim has left the water. It’s technically still drowning, but “dry drowning” is the term that has come to be used to describe it, though some doctors have argued for the dropping of said term.

It can occur when inhaled water, even just a drop or two, makes it past the throat and into the lungs. This usually causes symptoms, but they are sometimes mild and easy to miss.^[9]

The scary thing is that this water can cause breathing problems that get worse over time. In some cases, these breathing problems don’t strike until hours, or even days later—after the victim has fallen asleep. So-called “dry drowning” is actually pretty rare when you look at total deaths attributed to drowning, but this makes it no less disturbing.

How does it kill? It basically asphyxiates the victim—depriving them of oxygen until they suffocate.

2 The Widowmaker Heart Attack

While most heart attacks have a decent chance of waking their victims up before death occurs, the “widowmaker” tends to be an exception. We’ve already mentioned heart attacks in general once on this list, but this particular type of infarction deserves its own spot.

Why? Because it’s among the deadliest types of heart attacks that can occur. It happens when the left main artery, also known as the left anterior descending artery, gets blocked. A 100-percent blockage in this artery is almost always fatal without immediate emergency care, hence the nickname.^[10]

How does it kill? Heart attacks with severe enough blockages result in damaged heart muscle. And if the muscle becomes too damaged to pump blood, the result can be fatal.

1 Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a sleep disorder in which the victim repeatedly stops and starts their breathing process during sleep. OSA is by far the most common type of sleep apnea, and as it turns out, it is also probably the most likely reason that a person may die in their sleep.

This type of sleep apnea is literally caused by an obstruction that blocks the airway. This obstruction is usually caused by sagging throat muscles, though the muscles and tissues of the tongue, uvula, tonsils, and soft palate can all play a part. It is estimated that as many as 22 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea but that 80 percent of cases go undiagnosed making it a true “silent killer” that many people remain unaware of.

How does it kill? People with OSA experience sudden drops in blood oxygen levels when they stop breathing. If they’re already at risk for a heart attack, stroke, or heart failure, then OSA can be the trigger that sets a sudden cardiac event into motion.^[11]

In such cases, death may occur before the victim even has a chance to wake up.

Joshua Sigfus is just a writer trying to make the world a better place.

Death is a frightening topic for almost everyone. But no matter what, it comes to all of us in the end. Some people—like those who die in accidents—have no control over how or when their demise will occur. Others—like those with long-term fatal illnesses—have time to decide how to face death.

Still, there are some people who just do not want to go. Despite their ominous circumstances, they survive when others would certainly perish—whether by luck or the sheer will to carry on.

Here are 10 people who refused to go gentle into that good night.

10 The Woman Who Was Hanged (And Then Some)

In 1650, housemaid Anne Greene was seduced by the grandson of her employer and became pregnant. But she told no one. She miscarried six months later and buried the body of her son by herself. When the body was discovered, Greene was charged with infanticide despite clear evidence that the child had been born dead.

Greene was found guilty and sentenced to hang. On December 14, she was “turned off” the scaffold, hanging by the neck for almost half an hour while her friends thumped her on the chest and pulled on her legs with all their might to shorten her ordeal.

Finally, her body was cut from the scaffold and was ordered to be sent to a surgeon for experimental purposes. As she was placed in the coffin, a guard heard Greene breathe. He jumped up and down on her chest a few times to finish her off as an act of charity—or so he said.

Despite this, the surgeon revived Anne Greene with “hot and cold cordials,” throat tickling, and a hot enema. The last one, it seemed, did the trick. Anne Greene was later pardoned, got married, and had three more children before finally dying in childbirth in 1665.^[1]

9 The Man Who Fell From His Coffin

In 1571, English farmer Matthew Wall was engaged to be married when he expired suddenly. His friends were carrying his coffin up the steep hill toward the church when one of the pallbearers slipped on wet leaves. The coffin hit the ground with a thud.

In the shocked—and no doubt embarrassed—silence that followed, other thudding sounds could be heard, this time coming from inside the coffin. The sounds were followed by some muffled yelling.

The pallbearers opened the coffin and found Wall alive inside. He had been in a coma, and the jolt of the coffin hitting the ground had brought him back to consciousness.

He went on to marry his fiancee and have two sons. Wall finally died an old man in 1595.

In his will, he bequeathed money to the parish church so that every year, on the anniversary of his first funeral, the church bells would be rung as if for a funeral and then rung again in a wedding peal. He also requested that the lane to the church be swept clear of leaves to ensure that no one else slipped on them.^[2]

The tradition is kept to this day. Each year on Old Man’s Day, the children of the village sweep the lane and are rewarded with sweets while the bells ring.

8 The Man Torpedoed Out Of A Submarine

John Capes was a stoker aboard the submarine HMS Perseus when it sailed from Malta to Alexandria in November 1941. On December 6, the submarine was struck by a mine off the coast of Cephalonia.

There were 61 crew members aboard the vessel. Only Capes made it out alive. He claimed that he had been relaxing in a makeshift bunk hidden in a spare torpedo tube when the mine exploded and that he and three others had escaped through a hatch in the engine room. Capes said that he had taken a fortifying tot of rum, helped his comrades into their life preservers, and then made for the surface 52 meters (170 ft) above.

Capes had to swim 8 kilometers (5 mi) to the shore in the cold December sea at night. He headed for the white cliffs of occupied Cephalonia and was found unconscious on the beach by fishermen the next morning. They hid him from the occupying Italian forces for 18 months, moving him from house to house to evade capture.

In 1943, Capes was finally taken off the island. From there, he went to Turkey and then to Alexandria to serve on another submarine. Though he was awarded a British Empire Medal, many people doubted his extraordinary story, particularly as submarine commanders had been ordered to bolt escape hatches from the outside to prevent them from being forced open during depth charge attacks.

Capes died in 1985. But in 1997, his story was finally confirmed. Divers examining the wreck of the Perseus discovered the compartment exactly as he had described it, with the escape hatch unlocked and open and a torpedo tube with a makeshift bunk inside.

They even found his bottle of rum.^[3]

7 The Woman Dug Up By Grave Robbers

In 1705, Margorie McCall fell ill and died in Shankill, Ireland. During her wake, there was an undignified row among the mourners over a valuable ring the deceased was wearing. Some of them said they wanted to remove the ring to prevent the body from being dug up by grave robbers. The ring, however, would not budge.

So McCall went to her grave still wearing the ring. Sure enough, that very night, her body was exhumed by robbers. After failing to remove the ring, they produced a knife to cut off the ring finger. As soon as the knife pierced her skin, McCall regained consciousness. The robbers fled, and McCall walked home to her shocked family.

When she finally expired, McCall returned to Shankill Graveyard for a second funeral. You can still see her tombstone which bears the inscription, “Lived Once, Buried Twice.” It is not known whether the ring went with her.^[4]

6 The King Who Survived At Least 50 Assassination Attempts

In 1931, King Zog of Albania was shot while leaving the Vienna State Opera House. For most kings, this might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but King Zog had already been shot in the early 1920s. That time, he took a few minutes to compose himself and, still bleeding, carried on to the parliament house to make a speech.

Which is impressive. In a way.

King Zog was not entirely beloved by his fellow Albanians. His tendency toward excess when most of his countrymen were dirt-poor did not always go down well. And the monarchy in Albania was relatively young, so he was not widely accepted outside his country. These factors plus his undeniable habit of murdering his political opponents left Zog a marked man.^[5]

Zog began to find life difficult. He tried not to be seen in public. He put his family in charge of the army and his mother in charge of tasting his food. However, his paranoia was justified. King Zog is said to have survived at least 50 assassination attempts, including some that occurred after he went into permanent exile in 1939.

He finally died of natural causes in 1961.

5 The Man Who Was Mauled By A Bear

In 1818, Hugh Glass escaped from a pirate crew. He was captured by the Pawnee people and accepted into their tribe. Glass learned how to cross swollen rivers, identify edible plants, start fires, and navigate by the stars. All of this would come in handy.

In 1822, he escaped the tribe and joined a fur hunting expedition led by General Ashley in the northern Missouri River area. There, Glass surprised a female grizzly protecting her cubs. The bear attacked, and Glass was badly mauled. Unable to reach for his gun, he was forced to wrestle the bear with his bare hands.

Convinced that Glass was dying, General Ashley laid him on a bearskin rug and called for volunteers to stay with him until he died. Then they were to bury his body. No one seemed keen on it. But two men stayed after being promised a bonus. They dug Glass’s grave and waited.

After three days, it became clear that the terribly injured Glass was not going to die quickly. So the two men stole Glass’s rifle, knife, and other possessions and left him to die alone. When they caught up with the main party, they gave an account of Glass’s death and burial.

Glass used his survival skills to tend to his wounds. He strapped up his leg, wrapped himself in the bearskin rug, and crawled the 322 kilometers (200 mi) back to civilization.

He maintained that the thought of taking revenge on the two men who had left him for dead gave him the strength to keep going. He spent months crawling to the Cheyenne River, where he built a raft and floated downstream toward help.

Despite his wish for revenge, Hugh Glass didn’t kill the men who had betrayed him. Instead, he reported their treachery to the general and returned to Upper Missouri. There, he had several more adventures before he died in a conflict with the Arikaras tribe in 1833.^[6]

4 The Explorer Who Survived Mutiny, Starvation, A Poisoned Arrow, And A Spear

In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan, the first man to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, was killed while attempting to make the first circumnavigation of the world.

He had left Spain with five ships and 250 men in 1519 and headed for the Spice Islands. He survived an attempted mutiny. Then Magellan lost one of his ships during a reconnaissance mission. And he severely underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean. The trip that he believed would take a few days took four long months.

Magellan and his crew began to starve. The food ran out, the water turned putrid, and the men contracted scurvy. When they finally hit land on Mactan Island in the Philippines, they were almost dead. In gratitude to God for helping him to successfully find the island, Magellan decided to convert the indigenous population to Christianity. However, he used cannons and muskets rather than hymn books.

Magellan’s cannon fire was ineffective because the coral reef around the island kept the target out of range. So the invaders waded ashore wearing upper body armor. The tribesmen realized that the crew’s legs were unprotected and aimed their arrows lower.

With his men fleeing all around him, Magellan kept on fighting. He was hit by poisoned arrows. Still, he persevered. He was attacked by spears, but he just couldn’t let it go.

Finally, Magellan collapsed into the shallow surf at the ocean’s edge. There, a native slammed a bamboo spear into Magellan’s face. You’d think that would do it. You would be wrong.

Magellan killed the assailant with his lance. The embattled explorer was trying to draw his sword with his injured arm when a dozen natives “all hurled themselves upon him. [ . . . ] They rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses.”

Though Magellan was dead, some of his men continued the circumnavigation attempt, finally completing the trip in 1522. Only 20 of the original 250 crew members made it home.^[7]

3 The Comrade With 200 Bullets And An Ice Axe

For Leon Trotsky, assassination was always in the cards. Locked in a bitter feud with Stalin, Trotsky had already survived several attempts on his life when Stalin approved a two-pronged plan to rid himself of his rival in 1939.

The first attempt came in May 1940 when a team of hit men crept up on Trotsky’s hideaway in Mexico and fired over 200 bullets into the house with high-powered weapons. Both Trotsky and his wife survived.

However, a much subtler backup plan was already being prepared. Sylvia Ageloff, an ardent Trotsky supporter and member of his staff, had been targeted several years earlier and introduced to a handsome diplomat named Jacques Mornard. In fact, Mornard was neither a diplomat nor was he named Mornard. He was Ramon Mercader, and he was a Stalinist.

Each day, he dropped Ageloff off at Trotsky’s compound, gradually getting on friendly terms with the guards. When Mercader told them that he had written an article that he would like Trotsky to read, they let him in. Mercader was carrying an ice axe with him.

As soon as Trotsky sat down to read, Mercader hit him with the pick end of the ice axe, penetrating his skull 5 centimeters (2 in) deep. Trotsky managed to scream to attract the attention of the guards and hold Mercader fast until they arrived.

Trotsky finally died the following day, and Mercader was imprisoned for almost 20 years before dying in 1978. His last words were said to be: “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”^[8]

2 The Knife Man Who Fell From A Roof, Had TB, Was Stabbed, And Got Bayoneted

Jim Bowie, the designer of the Bowie knife, fought in the Texas Revolution and made his last stand at the Battle of the Alamo. He first cheated death in 1828 when he killed a man in a duel.

It would be fair to call Bowie a hard-living man. He was known to have a sizable drinking problem and almost certainly had yellow fever. In addition, he may have had typhoid, pulmonary tuberculosis, or both. He fell from a roof while drunk, breaking several ribs and leaving him with impaired breathing. He was also bedridden at the beginning of the Battle of the Alamo.

Witnesses stated that they saw enemy soldiers enter Bowie’s sickroom and attack him with bayonets. He was still alive when they carried him into the square where they “tossed him up and caught him on their bayonets.”

Though sick with fever, Bowie fought on. When he was wounded again, he was carried to a bed. From there, he continued to fire his rifle at the enemy until they closed in on him. As they made their final rush, Bowie rose up from his sickbed and stabbed one man in the chest with his eponymous blade and shot another before finally expiring.^[9]

1 The Pilot Who Untangled His Plane After A Midair Collision

Keith Caldwell was a fighter pilot on the Western Front during World War I. He was the “highest-scoring” New Zealand air ace with 25 successful missions.

After a failed attempt to enlist at the outbreak of war when he was just 18, Caldwell raised the £100 tuition and entered the New Zealand Flying School. He gained his “ticket” in December 1915 and sailed to England to join the Royal Flying Corp in early 1916. By the time he headed to the front in July 1916, Caldwell had logged only 35 flying hours over both continents.

At age 22, he was promoted to flight commander and was said to be a fearless, aggressive pilot. By the following October, Caldwell had increased his tally of downed aircraft to nine. He was awarded a military cross and was mentioned twice in dispatches.

He was known for his daring feints, including a tail-spin dive during a duel with the German flying ace Werner Voss. Caldwell pulled out of the dive just before the plane was due to hit the ground.^[10]

In the final weeks of the war, it seemed as if Caldwell’s luck had run out when he was involved in a midair collision. The impact damaged the plane’s wing struts and sent him spinning downward for several thousand feet. To control the descent, Caldwell crawled onto the lower wing, removed the obstruction, and held the wing strut with one hand while operating the joystick with the other.

Caldwell managed to control the descent enough to be able to crash-land behind British lines. He leaped to safety just seconds before the plane hit the ground. Caldwell survived World War I without a scratch and returned to New Zealand to become a farmer.

He returned to active service during World War II, which he also survived.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels and an occasional travel writer.

Life is too short to sit around on the net all day reading about other people’s experiences in life, so we have put together a nice little list of ten absolutely fabulous, fun, naughty, and neat things to do before you get too old. Some of these items might put you in danger of jail time, but that just adds to the thrill!

Who doesn’t love cocktails? There are thousands of spirits and liqueurs out there for the tasting – so go to a liquor store, stock up, and try as many variations as you can. You are bound to stumble upon a great tasting cocktail to show off to your friends next time you have a party. Remember to keep a bucket handy – after a night of tasting cocktails you will need it.

Flash mobs have become a worldwide phenomena in which a large group of unrelated people all converge in one place, perform an unusual action for a short time, and disburse again. Flash Mobs were invented in 2003 in Manhattan, but they can now be found in almost every city in the world. To illustrate the scale and awesomeness of flash mobs, in 2006 the London Underground was overtaken by 4,000 people who all silently danced to their ipods (video clip above).

This one is an easy task for most people living in California, but not so easy for people in other states and countries. But it is worth the airfare to get to a premiere if you can afford it. I was fortunate enough to see the premiere of one of the Lord of the Rings movies and I had a fantastic night – you definitely must do this at least once. Who knows, maybe a superstar will see you and fall in love with you (that didn’t happen to me, alas).

It is possible that many of you will have already performed this task, but for those who haven’t (myself included), why not give it a shot? All you are going to cost someone is the time cleaning up after you. Pick a nice clean spot and go to town with spray paint. Be careful not to put anything that will lead the cops to your door. For added points, try to graffiti in a nearly impossible to reach spot – you are more likely to leave a permanent mark that way.

Disclaimer: If you do this, and JFrater will not be held responsible. Now this is something that I can say I have never done, though I have left a store with free things that the staff didn’t ring up (accidentally), but I do have friends who have done this. The trick is to go to a very fancy restaurant (don’t forget to dress up), order something from every course – preferably things you have never eaten before – or can’t afford to eat, then do a runner from the restaurant without paying. Just remember: this is theft, so don’t pick a small family run restaurant that can’t afford to foot your bill.

You may have noticed the absence of items such as bungee jumping and sky diving – the reason is that I think they are insane things to do and I would never recommend them. So, in lieu of other “flight” related things to do, I propose that you learn to fly a plane. You might need to save money for a while as lessons can be very expensive. If you do decide to give it a go, I would recommend that you shave off any long facial hair you may have.

This one may be a little risky, but it is worth it for the kudos you will get from your friends and family. First off you need to paint yourself a piece of art; it doesn’t matter whether you can draw or not – most modern art is unrecognizable anyway. Once your painting is dry, sneak it in to the fanciest art gallery you can find and tape it up on the wall. If you want to go for a special extra touch, you can make your own wall plaque to hang beneath it – and include a price tag. Who knows, you may be discovered!

This is something you have to do at least once in your life. Save up some money and book a night at the poshest hotel in your city – and book the most expensive suite. While you are there make sure you saved enough cash to tip well and to enjoy all of the benefits of the hotel – like fabulous food, massages, pool, and spa. There is nothing grander than waking up in a magnificent penthouse suite with a hangover. Just remember, if you steal the bathrobes you may find an unexpected bill turning up on your credit card the following month.

If you volunteer at your local cop shop you can often be invited to participate in a lineup. Doing so can be fun – and you sometimes get a free lunch as well as cash (though not always). If you do get to appear in a lineup, be sure you didn’t commit the crime! Wear something fun like a tee-shirt that says “I did it” and be sure to look shifty. If you accidentally get picked as the perp, you might want to check out the Top 10 Prison Survival Tips.

We live in a fast paced society where gadgets exist for virtually every task – but occasionally you find that nothing exists to do exactly what you want to do. Instead of ranting and raving, why not try your hand at inventing it? It can take months – even years – to invent something, but if you have a good idea, it is worth the effort. Just remember, as soon as you have completed your invention, patent it and give it a truly awesome name. Who knows, you may even get rich off the idea.

Are you sitting down? Good, because we’ve got some bad news for you: you’re going to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day the cold hand of death will come grasping after you. When that happens, you better pray you don’t die in any of the following awful ways.

10. Electric Chair

The electric chair was originally designed as a humane alternative to the guillotine or the firing squad. Unfortunately, the guy behind it – an Edison employee named Harold P Brown – apparently got the meaning of humane confused with its exact opposite. Dying from the electric chair is one of the nastiest ways you can possibly go.

Let’s start with the heat. In some states, so many separate shocks are fired through the body that it ends up super-heating to an absurd degree. Internal organs start to cook inside you. Your eyeballs melt. Skin can be burned off or get fused to the chair. In some cases, exposed flesh and even heads have been known to burst into flame.

Then you have the convulsions. In the very best-case scenario, you’re likely to soil yourself. In the very worst, you may jerk so violently you snap something. In 1991, one man twitched so hard he broke his legs. Then there’s the time. While some executions in the chair take a mere two minutes, others have been known to last nearly twenty. This still has nothing on the lethal injection. One recent botched execution took over two hours.

9. Botulism Poisoning

Every year, an average of 110 Americans get botulism. That might not sound like much, but if you’re one of the unlucky few, then God help you. In severe cases, botulism is an infection that will make the short remainder of your life a living hell.

Most-frequently contracted from contaminated food (although there are other ways to get it) botulism is almost vindictive in its treatment of humans. The most-common side-effect is muscle paralysis. It’s even worse than it sounds. Not only does your body seize up, the muscles that power your breathing stop working too. In no time at all, your body is incapable of taking on oxygen, or doing pretty much anything for itself.

When that happens, you’ve really got one of two options. Go to the hospital, or go to the morgue. But even if you get treatment, you’ll still be in for a rough ride. Those with severe botulism can spend anything up to several months on a breathing machine as their body slowly returns to normal.

8. Army Ant Attack

Imagine living in a world that’s crawling with swarms of predators. A world where insects travel in hordes, devouring everything in their paths, from animals to humans. Imagine they’re virtually unstoppable, and will take the young, sick and old. Are you picturing that world? Well, we’ve got some bad news for you. You’re living in it.

Army ants (also known as Driver ants) are a collective name given to some 200-odd species of nomadic ant that live in Africa and Central and South America. National Geographic has compared them to Genghis Khan’s Mongol Hordes. It’s easy to see why. Army ants attack in swarms of 100,000 plus – steamrollering across the landscape, overwhelming and eating anything that crosses their path with their superior numbers.

Scary as they seem, these guys generally just eat other insects and small animals. However, they have been known to attack humans in Africa. There are even stories of them overwhelming sleeping or bedridden people and feasting on them before anyone can save them.

7. Drowning in a Drain

From the terrifyingly exotic to the grotesquely mundane. Every year a handful of people drown after falling into storm drains; a method of death that’s depressingly pathetic. While any instance of drain drowning is bad enough, some are occasionally so gross that we can only pray it doesn’t happen to us.

Case in point: in 2003 a young man from Somerset in England was walking home when he dropped his phone into a drain. Reaching in to retrieve it, he slipped and fell in head first. Since drains are essentially 6ft long tubes filled with sewage, there was no way for him to claw his way out. The guy drowned in drain water, and was only discovered hours later.

If that seems like a freak one-off accident, you should know there’s been a few cases identical to this. It happened in Wisconsin in 2007, in New Zealand in 2012, and nearly happened in California in 2011 (the guy was pulled out before he could drown). If there’s one thing worse than the idea of drowning in sewage, it’s drowning in sewage while your last thoughts are all about what an idiot you are.

6. Your Insides Exploding Outwards

If you’ve always dreamed of living fast, dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse, you better pray you don’t go the way of Truls Hellevik. A Norwegian diver working on an oil rig, Hellevik was sat in a decompression chamber with four others when things went pear-shaped. And by ‘pear-shaped’ we mean the chamber “explosively decompressed.”

You can tell just by the name that this isn’t going to be good.

The atmospheres decompressed from nine to one in a single split second. This was enough to kill three of Hellevik’s colleagues instantly, and leave the other seriously injured. But Hellevik got the worst of it. Exposed to the highest pressure-gradient, he had his internal gasses swell up and literally explode out of him.

Standing by the door that had broken open, Hellevik was forced through the 24 inch gap in an instant. The force and pressure combined dismembered him and caused his internal organs to burst out his chest like an extra from Alien. A section of his spine was blasted 30ft into the air. Although his death was instantaneous, it was also one of the messiest in recorded history.

5. Mustard Gas Attack

Unless you’re reading this after time-travelling back to WWI, it’s very unlikely you’ll die from a mustard gas attack. This is excellent news, as death from mustard gas was terrifyingly, unbelievably horrible.

While most modern chemical weapons kill by affecting the central nervous system (for example, Sarin), mustard gas is a ‘blistering agent.’ That’s a depressingly literal term. Mustard gas attacks any surface it comes into contact with, leaving horrific burns. Those who inhale it have their throats and the inside of their lungs blister and swell up, erupting in puss-filled sores. But even if you have a gas mask, you’ll still suffer. Contemporary accounts from WWI are filled with images of men’s skin breaking out into debilitating blisters that left them hideously scarred.

Terrifyingly, mustard gas isn’t entirely a thing of the past. In summer 2015, twisted death-cult ISIS released some in Syria, sadly killing two people.

4. Execution by Elephant

Be glad you live in the modern world. If you were alive in India as little as 150 years ago and pissed off the wrong people, you could expect to suffer execution by elephant.

This method of death was exactly as gory as it sounds. In the most-common version, recorded by Louis Rousselet in his book India and its native princes, the condemned would be tied up and dragged through the streets by the elephant. After being busted up and bruised by all this, he’d be dragged to an execution block and have his head rested on it. The elephant would then lower its foot down, crushing the man’s skull.

In earlier times, the methods were even worse. In the 3^rd century BC, elephants would be trained to crush limbs and hurl the condemned man through the air before finally trampling him. In the medieval period, their tusks would be fitted with iron blades so they could cut their victim to pieces. While it’s unlikely this will happen to you today, it’s far from uncommon to hear of people in India still getting trampled to death by the beasts.

3. Attacked by a Flying Lawnmower

We know what you’re thinking. ‘Jesus, guys. Flying lawnmower? That’s happened exactly zero times in the history of the world.’ Well, hold your horses there pardner. We didn’t say it was common, but it’s happened more than zero times. In 1979, John Bowen was killed when an out-of-control airborne lawnmower crash-landed on his head.

The setting was a Jets-Patriots football game at Shea Stadium. In those days, halftime was a pretty dull affair. Instead of some fantastic cheerleader-based display, the stadium simply had a bunch of guys come in with their remote controlled airplanes and fly them around the crowd. One, by a Brooklyn guy named Philip Cushman, was a modified lawnmower that literally flew in the air. Unfortunately, it didn’t fly very well. Just before the halftime show was over, Cushman lost control of his toy. It dropped from the air and landed on Bowen’s head, giving him a cut that looked “like he had been attacked with an axe.”

Bowen died of his gruesome injuries, and man learned an important lesson. To never, ever again attempt to build a nature-defying lawnmower.

2. Tortured to Death by Insects

The past was a really horrible place. We’ve seen that with mustard gas and elephant executions. But nothing can compare to the practice of Scaphism. Practiced in ancient Persia, it was basically the nastiest way to kill someone you can possibly imagine.

Basically, the victim would be placed inside a hollow log with only their feet, hands and head protruding. Then they would be force-fed milk and honey for days until they developed severe diarrhea. At this point, the executioner would rub honey onto their eyes, ears, mouths, genitals, anus and face, before setting their log adrift on a stagnant lake. You can probably guess what happened next.

Attracted by the honey, insects would swarm the log. At first they’d simply bite and sting the victim. Then they’d start burrowing. As the log continued to fill up with the victim’s poop, the insects would start digging into their skin and any openings in their body, and start laying eggs. The victim was fed each day to keep them alive, to the point when the flesh was literally rotting from their bones and their skin was infested with maggots. The least-lucky could expect this experience to go on for over a week. We really hope no serial killers stuck for ideas are reading this.

1. Growing Old and Dying

After all those squirm-inducing descriptions of death, the worst way of all to die might come as a shock to you. It’s not violent. It’s not gory. It’s simply growing old, getting sick and passing away in a hospital.

We’re not making this up. When Vice looked into the matter, they found actual doctors willing to agree dying a ‘normal’ death in modern America is utterly hideous. The trouble is, we’re getting better at keeping people alive. On the downside, we still suck at treating certain types of pain. The result is many, many of us will spend our last weeks or months stuck in a hospital somewhere, slowly wasting away. Our bones wracked with pain or our stomachs turning with constant nausea, watched over by overworked and underpaid medical staff who neither understand us or really care about how we’re feeling.

It sounds like a nightmare, but it’s true. Recent research has shown the number of people experiencing depression or physical discomfort in the last years of their lives is on the rise. And that’s before we get onto stuff like care home workers who neglect or abuse patients on an industrial scale. It might not be what you want to hear, but the worst way to die may well be the one we’re all most-likely to experience. Wasting away alone and forgotten in some cold hospital, in agony and surrounded by people who treat us like garbage. If that’s not a chilling thought, then we don’t know what is.

They say that only two things in life are guaranteed: death and taxes. If you’re not a human, then that means only one thing is guaranteed. And even though we all have to die sometime, we sure don’t all get to go out the same way.

The animal kingdom can be brutal and death can come from predators, lack of habitat, lack of resources, and dozens of other reasons. But some species have unique and bizarre hazards that only they face. Let’s take a look at ten of the most unusual.

10. The Suicide Palm Flowers to Death

With a name like “suicide palm,” it’s clear that this particular plant has an unusual story. It grows in Madagascar and was only discovered back in 2006. Though it has the less grim name of Tahina, the morbid “suicide plan” name came from the tree’s remarkably unusual life cycle. 

For decades, the tree will grow up to a height of as much as 18 meters or nearly 60 feet. Then it blossoms for the first and only time. Nectar-filled blossoms cover the tree numbering in the millions. These will eventually turn into fruit. Producing the flowers and fruit takes every resource the tree has, and it is unable to survive the process. The tree dies and the fruit will litter the ground around their dead progenitor. 

The fruit can obviously give rise to a new generation of trees if the seeds take root and are able to grow, but if something didn’t work out, then the plant would simply die out in that location thanks to its all-or-nothing reproduction plan.

9. Australian Jewel Beetles Loved Beer Bottles to Death

Insects get a lot of credit for their seemingly remarkable abilities to organize and perform tasks but, realistically, that’s mostly reserved for bees and ants. The rest of the insect kingdom is generally overlooked, and maybe that’s for good reason, at least when it comes to something like the Australian jewel beetle. These poor little creatures have one claim to fame and it’s not a complex hive organization or their industrious nature. It’s that they’ll kill themselves trying to mate with beer bottles.

Researchers discovered the habit of the Australian beetles by accident some years ago. In the field, two scientists were studying something else altogether but happened to notice these beetles giving their best effort with discarded beer bottles. 

Numerous beetles and numerous bottles indicated it wasn’t just a fluke. These bugs were trying to get busy and there was no mistake. In scientific terms, they were able to observe that the beetles were definitely attempting to mate.They even set up new bottles and observed that they attracted more males for would latch on and had to be forcefully removed to get them to stop. One even continued even as ants bit its genitals.

The researchers noted that the female beetles were almost exactly the same shade of brown as the specific brand of bottles that the beetles had chosen. And, just like bottles, the females had a dimpled carapace. So the males were simply confused. But they were so committed that they would continue even unto death in the sun or plucked off and eaten by predators. 

The story does have a happy ending, however. After the scientists released their findings, the company that made the seductive bottles changed the design to remove the confusing dimples. The beetles then lost interest. 

8. The Longhorn Cowfish Poisons Itself

If you’re into saltwater aquariums, you may already know about the longhorn cowfish. They’re popular among exotic fish enthusiasts because of their bright yellow color and their extremely unusual appearance. But keeping them in an aquarium presents a unique danger in the form of their natural self-defense abilities.

Most animals have some way to defend themselves, and the cowfish pulls this off by way of an ostracitoxin it can release. So it’s a poisonous fish. But again, that’s not so unusual. Lots of creatures are toxic or venomous in some way. The problem with the longhorn cowfish is that it’s not immune to its own toxins. So if the fish gets too excited or feels threatened, the toxin will fill the aquarium and not just kill all the other fish, it will kill itself as well. 

The toxin can be removed from a tank with activated carbon, but if you need to do that, it’s likely everything will have died already. 

7. Babirusa Tusks Can Pierce Their Own Skulls

A babirusa looks like a wild boar that someone tried to draw from memory after seeing it only once in passing. Sometimes called deer pigs, they’re native to parts of Indonesia. The most notable feature of a male babirusa is their remarkably long, curving tusks. Unlike a boar, they have two sets of two, not just one. While they have the expected set you’d expect to see protruding from their lower jaw, they also have an upward curving pair of canine tusks on their upper jaw as well. These tusks do not extend up outside of their mouths, instead they actually pierce through the animal’s snout flesh. As far as we know, they’re the only animal in the world with teeth that grow vertically like this.

It’s this pair of tusks that can become a lethal complication for the animal. As they grow, they curve inward, extending up and over its eyes. 

The babirusa must find a way to wear those tusks down, either against trees or rocks. If it doesn’t, the tusks can curve around and pierce through the skull, killing it. 

6. Army Ant Mills

Ants can live in colonies that house anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 members. While these colonies can be huge, they work because the members all work together. But sometimes they work together too well. Or too poorly, as the case may be. When individual members lack autonomy, one ant can follow another ant towards certain doom. This is what’s at the heart of an ant mill, the phenomenon which occurs in army ant colonies now and then.

Army ants have some unique features that separate them from other species. One is that they don’t have permanent nests like many other ant species, so they’re always on the hunt for new food sources.. Another is that they are blind. And that works for them because they use their other senses to forage for food. 

When things work as planned, the head ant will lead the others by leaving a pheromone trail. The other ants follow the smell towards their goal. But if something goes wrong, and the lead ant doubles back, for instance, the other ants will follow that trail and the lead ant may also get caught following its own trail. This leads to the ants walking in circles, following trails that go nowhere. And because they’re not designed to do anything different, the ants will continue in these spirals until all of them die of exhaustion. 

5. Demodex Mites Eat Until They Die

Right now, on your face, is an entire ecosystem you never see. Microscopic demodex mites are very likely living it up in your hair follicles and pores, feasting on your secretions and oils. It’s believed skin conditions like rosacea are caused by too many of these little critters taking up residence in your flesh. The method of how and why this happens is truly bizarre and more than a little offputting.

The older you are, the more likely you are to have the mites, and they seem to be shared through direct contact. They like oily skin best and are most likely to be found on your face. And while they might live a happy life on your face eating cells around hair follicles and sebum you secrete, they can’t actually get rid of anything they eat because they don’t come equipped with an anus. 

With no way to remove waste, the mites just get bigger and bigger as they eat until they finally die and their filthy corpses are left in your flesh..

4. Dolphins Sometimes Commit Suicide

Dolphins are considered some of the smartest animals in the world, second only to humans and more intelligent than primates. They are capable of solving problems and abstract thought and, it seems, a lot of emotional turmoil. So much so that dolphins can even take their own lives.

Knowing that a dolphin can think about the world in almost the same way as a human, it changes how something like a dolphin show at an aquarium works. Imagine if someone was forcing you to swim and do tricks for a crowd every day. Or perform on camera, as was the case with Kathy, one of the dolphins that played Flipper on the TV series.

Trainer Richard O’Barry said he was in the tank the day Kathy killed herself. He claimed she sank to the bottom and stopped breathing. Dolphins must consciously control their own breathing, so if one were so inclined to simply suffocate, it could probably do so easily enough. 

In the 1960s, NASA was trying to train a dolphin named Peter to speak English. In a bizarre twist, Peter fell in love with his trainer Margate Howe Lovatt with who, he trained six days a week. You may have heard the unusual details of that story when they made the news a few years back as the media was rather taken with the specific detail of how physical that relationship between human and dolphin got.

That aside, the experiments ended abruptly and Lovatt was fired. Peter was moved to a new tank and left alone. He voluntarily stopped breathing as well, sinking to the bottom and dying, just as Kathy had. 

3. Shrews Need to Eat Their Own Body Weight Every Day

A shrew is often used as a pejorative term for someone who is a nag. Realistically, it should be a term for someone who eats like a fiend. A shrew’s metabolism is hard to imagine. Their hearts can beat 800 to 1,000 times per minute. One species even breaks 1,500 times per minute.

They can move 12 times per second and if they don’t eat their body weight every day, they die. A short-tailed shrew needs to eat three times its weight. If they even go a few hours without eating, it could be fatal.

2. Female Ferrets Must Mate or Die

Like shrews, ferrets are beholden to a biological imperative that can be deadly. Female ferrets go into estrus, or heat, like many other mammals. But the difference with ferrets is that if they don’t mate, they won’t survive the process.

Pet ferrets need to be spayed or neutered. First and foremost, it reduces their somewhat objectionable odor. But it also saves the lives of the females because those that don’t mate will die from aplastic anemia. This is due to imbalanced hormone levels caused by the ferret going into heat but not successfully mating. The hormones affect blood production and the fatal anemia soon follows. 

1. The Australian Antechinus Mates Until it Dies

Going from a creature that will die if it doesn’t mate to one that will die because it mated, we have the Australian antechinus. These little mouse-like marsupials experience either the greatest or worst ending of any life, depending on your perspective and/or sense of humor.

Every year, males of the species are obliterated as they attempt to continue their genetic line. For upwards of 14 hours at a time for several weeks on end, they mate with females or fight off other males. This continues until they die. 

The testosterone that floods their little bodies interferes with various stress hormone levels. This, in turn, completely destroys their immune systems and eventually they collapse and die as a result. 

As bizarre as this sounds from an evolutionary standpoint, it actually helps the species out. With the male population destroyed, the pregnant females have less competition for food and are able to eat and provide for their young.