What are some of the worst ways people have died?

In WW2, Allied prisoners in Japan were experimented on to see how much they could physically endure before dying. People were tied up, given drugs to keep them awake, and dissected slowly. They were split open and their organs were slowly damaged and slowly removed while their vitals were being monitored. There were TONS of people who went through this to get a thorough analysis.

Getting trapped in an industrial oven. The podcast Swindled has an episode on this where a worker was locked into the oven in a tuna factory. The second part of the episode tells the story of two workers who were sent into a bakery’s industrial oven to fix it but it hadn’t been shut down long enough. They were on a slow moving conveyor belt and couldn’t back out of it. The other death I can think of is the guy who dove into a geyser in Yellowstone in the late 70s/early 80s to save his friend’s dog (there’s a whole book devoted to deaths in Yellowstone National Park). Pretty much, in Yellowstone, you stay on the board walk. Your hat blows off…leave it, it’s gone.

Being stuck in a grain silo would suck.

john edward jones. nutty putty cave.

I know there are plenty of horrible ways to die but the first thought i had was that one guy who got trapped in a suitcase and suffocated because his mental GF didnt let him out.

Junko Furuta.

radiation poisoning has to be up there - your body basically falls apart while you're still conscious and it can take weeks the Chernobyl firefighters who didn't know what they were walking into... their skin literally sloughed off and they were vomiting blood for days before finally dying. absolutely horrific way to go drowning in something thick like molasses or quicksand would be terrifying too, you'd have time to think about it but no way to escape

I know this guy who was playing Chubby Bunny with some friends at a get together, shoved too many marshmallows in his mouth and couldn't breathe. They gave him cold water (which of course is the worse thing you can do) which expanded the marshmallows and in 2 minutes he was dead. Sad thing is if they gave him hot water it would have melted them and he would have had a chance.

That teenage boy who got trapped in the back of an SUV and called 911 TWICE but was never saved and suffocated to death. Horrible, to die even after trying to save yourself.

My grandfather was electrocuted during a work accident. They weren't able to cut him down for a half hour. He wore a pocket watch that was completely melted.

Being from Indiana, Sylvia Likens death is pretty infamous.

The two young engineers who died on the wind turbine. https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2024/07/two-engineers-hug-die-top-burning-wind-turbine.html/amp

Rabies.

Vladimir komarov, cosmonaut He knows he's going to die he and his friends warn the decisions makers but no one listen, in his final moments while re entering the earth with the faulty craft he cursed those that doomed him

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory USS Indiana

Have you seen some of those cartel videos? that would be horrible

Been an icu nurse for 15 years and I have seen a lot of people die in a lot of different ways but two really stand out. 1. Burned badly but not killed immediately. Some get better but the ones that don’t are heartbreaking. Basically they slowly succumb to their injury’s over a month or so. Brutal. Everything hurts, toileting and hygiene are a nightmare and dressing changes are difficult and can take up to an hour. 2. Enterocutaneous fistula. Something, usually a surgical complication or traumatic injury, causes a tunnel between your intestines and your skin. Some aren’t bad, basically becomes an ostomy. You can slap a bag on it and live a fairly normal life. If they are bad it’s awful. People basically rot from the inside out over months. To top it off, they can’t eat or drink anything the whole time so they get put on iv nutrition. Just awful. Those are my top two.

Burning alive has to be among the worst 

Hisashi Ouchi

I’d say those victims of vivisection in Unit 731. I think being alive and fully aware while they cut your baby out to test for the affects of various diseases has gotta be at least top 5.

I knew a guy who went head first into a wood chipper

The Viking, Brodir of Man, was disemboweled, had his intestines tied to a tree, and then forced to march around the tree until the entire length of his intestines were wound around the tree by two Irish soldiers in response to him assassinating the 70-year old High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, while he was praying.

Franz Reichelt jumped off the Eiffel Tower in 1912 to test his parachute suit. There's footage. The suit did not work. He hesitated for 40 seconds first.

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Being denied a blood transfusion because their parents were Jehovah's Witnesses. So many people have died needlessly because of that. They just changed their unchangeable policy that it was always a conscience matter to store your own blood for yse later, which wasn't. People got booted out, lost their family, lost their job, and lost their community after taking a life saving blood transfusion. It was never a conscience matter. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost and they lie and claim it we always a conscience matter to store your own, which doesn't make any sense because it has a shelf life. Nobody can keep their own on hand for emergency without needing to resupply it. And what if you're elsewhere and can't acess your own blood? Die? They make zero sense. That's agerrible way to die. So many children died because of the Jehovah's Witnesses denying them.a life saving blood transfusion.

That poor guy who got stuck upside down in Nutty Putty cave.

Being stuck in a pipeline with no one coming to save you sounds pretty bad. [2022 Paria diving disaster - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Paria_diving_disaster)

In railroading there's a horrific way to go called "getting coupled up". Basically the couplers lock together through you, which means at about your midsection but due to the pressure, you don't bleed out. You have enough time to sit there, fused between two train couplers while they bring your family down to say goodbye because once they pull them apart, so do you. 

Police went to serve a warrant at a house and the suspect successfully hid from police as they searched the house. The man decided to hide by crawling inside of the chest-freezer in his basement but the door latched and he was trapped inside. I have heard that freezing to death isn't the worst way to go but unfortunately for him, the freezer was not plugged in so he was either trapped in there until he either suffocated or starved/dehydrated to death.

those 3 or 4 guys moving tall scaffolding and all getting zapped at once

The ocean gate titan sends pretty horrifying, albeit quick.

The guy who was thrown down a manhole and was scaled to death by a steam leak. [https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/sean-doyle-manhole-death-new-york-dr-judy-melinek-144676-20250830](https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/sean-doyle-manhole-death-new-york-dr-judy-melinek-144676-20250830)

The Byford Dolphin incident One of the divers in the habitat when the hatch failed and it went from 9 atmospheres of pressure to 1. A diver was folded through the partially closed hatch.

That one Chinese rock quarry inspector got scooped up in a bulldozer and tossed in a rock crusher. Horrifying video.

Stevens-Johnson Syndrome

The Brazen Bull

Rabies. Seeing that video of the man who is so thirsty but terrified of water is traumatic.

The [Erfurt Latrine Disaster of 1184](https://www.listnook.com/r/history/s/j6lG0YjnKD) - where a group of noblemen drowned in a large vat of excrement after the floor collapsed during a meeting

That Russian lathe operator that had his jacket got caught up in the machine. Dude got shredded. Bits and pieces all over the factory. There's videos on Listnook somewhere, although I don't really want to see that again.

Being burnt alive has to be the worst way to die. Crush/machine accidents are also quite bad, that's why lockout tags are so important.

The Darwin Awards are full of those stories, such as the man who blew up his own jaw. In December 2009, a 25-year-old chemistry student named Vladimir Likhonos died in Konotop, Ukraine, after mistakenly coating his chewing gum in a highly explosive powder rather than citric acid. He liked to chew his gum for a long time while studying, and when it lost flavour he’d just dip it in a dish of citric acid powder and keep chewing. Unfortunately he confused a dish of an explosive chemical powder for his citric acid and the explosive substance reacted instantly with his saliva, detonating immediately. The explosion blew off his jaw and the lower portion of his face and killed him instantly, according to local police and reports.

That story of the woman in Nova Scotia that burned alive in the Walmart walk-in oven haunts me

There was a show on the Spike Channel called 1000 Ways to Die narrated by Ron Pearlman. Any way anyone died on that show was the worst way to die. From dying after smelling bad breath and choking on your vomit, to playing with a sword in the backyard and getting electrocuted, there was something for everyone.

Executed on wrongful conviction.

These definitely aren't as painful or gruesome and thus might be seen as honorable mentions compared to other things people have said on here, but there are two illnesses that I would hate to die from most and wouldn't wish on my worst enemies: Fatal Insomnia and ALS. The first slowly renders someone physically unable to fall into deep sleep and it often takes months to die from. ALS slowly and progressively robs you of your ability to control your muscles and it can sometimes take YEARS to die from. The first of these is insanely rare and is usually confined to families and ALS isn't as common as other killers like Cancer or Heart Disease, but I'd rather get one of the latter two any day. I don't support physician assisted suicide most of the time but I honestly think it should be an option for people once these two diseases become unmanageable.

Reading the same variations of this post on asklistnook for decades and then dying a sad life alone

The Byford Dolphin Incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin?wprov=sfti1

Braveheart

There was that guy who jumped into a Yellowstone hot spring after a buddy's dog. Realized too late why it's a terrible idea to jump into boiling hot waters. +all the others who met a similar fate in Yellowstone.

I heard today about a gentleman who stepped partway out of an elevator before it crashed down. He was folded in half - hands and feet were outside the car, and the rest of him was in - and the other elevator occupants were stuck with his torso until they could be freed. 

Read about a guy who got trapped between a grocery store freezer and a wall. The noise muffeled out his screams for help and he starved to death. They only found him when he started to smell

John Jones in the Nutty Putty cave.

The leaders of the Anabaptist revolt in Munster died a pretty horrible death.

Gursimran Kaur. She was accidentally roasted at work, when she got trapped in an oven.

Stepped on a pile of Lego.

Fighting for a fat pedophile who’s in charge of the USA

Scaphism

That guy who has sex with that horse on video

Falling into a cesspool and drowning in shit.

There was a guy in Indianapolis who tried to force his way through the big motorized gate at a business, he squeezed partially through, then the motor kicked on and squished him to death! I know a guy and his wife who were sleeping during a tornado and their bodies were found about a mile away from their destroyed house, that would have been a wild ride!