Natural Selection In Action Poster

Natural Selection In Action Poster

June 6, 2024・

44 min read

Natural selection is mother nature’s way of making sure people get smarter, but even after 200,000 years of human evolution, some of us are still making really terrible choices. Some people have protected our gene pool by removing themselves from it in the most idiotic ways possible. Let's delve into 75 unbelievably dumb ways people died.

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1- Disaster struck for a Canadian tourist when he attempted to ride a zipline across a forested creek in Chiang Mai, Thailand. While the recommended max weight for zip-liners at the spot was 275lbs, the man reportedly weighed upwards of 300lbs. It remains uncertain whether he disclosed his full weight, or whether the organisers decided to turn a blind eye to his obesity. But, regardless, the outcome proved a man of his size should never have been allowed to take the plunge. That’s because, the moment he leapt from the platform, the rope and safety locks pulled tight, and immediately broke, sending him plummeting 160 feet into the forest below . As you can imagine, it was far from a soft landing, and ultimately proved fatal.

2- A 49-year-old climber was with his family, enjoying the incredible views from the mountains near Belluno in northern Italy when, in an utterly insane move, he snapped his mountain climbing clasp onto a disused cable car cable, and tried to slide down it using his hands. For some reason, he seemed to think he’d be able to control his super steep descent using only his hands, and while everyone around him – even passers-by - tried to stop him, he ignored them and did it anyway. Perhaps the cable still had a layer of grease on it from its old cable car days, or maybe he just didn’t have the strength he thought he did. Whatever it was, he quickly lost control, which saw him smash into several rocky outcrops before coming to a dead stop on a metal support pylon about 650 ft down the cable.

3- Believing she’d been contacted by some type of intergalactic power, one woman convinced a willing companion to accompany her in carrying out the instructions of her alien contacts in 1982. She claimed they’d commanded her to drive out to an isolated location in the North-eastern Minnesota wilderness and await further instruction. Assuming this would be a hugely-significant moment in the interstellar advancement of humankind, the pair did exactly that, despite the extremely snowy winter weather. Once parked up in the designated location, they dutifully awaited the arrival of their extra-terrestrial acquaintances. And they waited. And waited. Unfortunately, their food supplies ran out after a week, and they lost access to water when the nearby lake froze over. Still, they refused to leave their post, on the off-chance that the aliens appeared while they were gone. Putting total faith in the idea that the aliens would appear before anything bad happened to either of them, they stayed in the freezing cold, with nothing to eat or drink. Eventually, frozen, starving, and fatally dehydrated, the woman died. Shortly after, the man accompanying her – in his much-weakened state, and with the car having been rendered unusable by the icy conditions – crawled through a quarter-mile of snow to save himself. He survived, but his alien-contacting partner did not, and their little green guests never showed up. The aliens must’ve got the wrong address.

4- Known online as "The Bikini Hiker", a 36-year-old Taiwanese woman made a name for herself hiking mountains around Taiwan wearing only bikinis. While her outfits may have been great for the beach, they don’t offer the protection of standard climbing clothes; something the Bikini Hiker learned the hard way on several occasions. But the grazes to her legs she sustained after a tumble in 2018 were nothing compared to the fall she took in January the next year. Hiking alone in Yushan National Park in the snowy coldness of winter, she fell down a ravine, and was unable to climb out. She called for help on her satellite phone, but poor weather caused delays in the rescue, and by the time help arrived, she was frozen to death.

5- In 2004, police were called to the scene of an accident around the back of a house in Georgia, USA, that left them stumped. A large tree had toppled on top of a truck, both of which were charred and smouldering. Inside the truck was a body, burned beyond recognition. It appeared that the gentleman behind the wheel of the truck had been attempting to remove the tree from the yard by tying the truck to the tree and flooring it. He’d assumed the tree would use some sort of cartoon physics and fall away from the truck, but because we live in reality, the tree fell in the direction of the applied force and landed on top of the truck, crushing the driver. The engine overheated, setting both the truck and tree ablaze.

6- When police arrived at a scene in Rome, New York back in 2001, they struggled to understand what they were seeing. A woman’s body was on fire in the grassy area adjacent to her home and, while there was a lighter and melted gas-can discovered nearby, there was no immediate sign of foul play. This woman had been smoking a cigarette, and – according to her neighbours - indulging in her habit of dousing ant hills in her yard with gasoline. While she was holding the gas can, an ember from the cigarette fell into the gasoline stream, which quickly ignited and travelled up the stream, bursting the can and immolating the woman in an instant.

7- Back in September 2000, one man in Germany was in his birthday suit in the medieval city of Rothenburg, taking photos of himself on top of a high stone wall. He set up his camera on a tripod, hopped up on the wall and started pulling a few poses when, suddenly, he lost his balance and fell 16 feet onto the ground below.

8- Back in 2020, in Dehradun, India, a labourer for the Uttarakhand Power Corporation decided to take a leak. Because he was on the job, he figured he shouldn’t go far, and so found a pole to relieve himself next to. But this guy must’ve forgotten where he was and that he was working for a power company, because he chose a pole that was right next to an electrical box. As soon as he let the stream rip onto the box, a fatal bolt of electricity surged up it and through his body, frying him instantly.

9- Having dropped off a fare at the Santos Dumont Airport in Rio De Janeiro back in 2002, one taxi driver decided to follow the road around, assuming it’d lead away from the airport at some point. But soon, he was confronted by sign after sign telling him he was actually approaching the runway. Flashing lights warned him a plane was on the runway and ready to take off, but apparently ignoring this, the taxi drove straight on. Despite the completely unobscured 737-passenger jet on the runway about to take off, he continued his journey behind it, when both the plane’s engines revved up. At their peak, each 737 Jet engine can produce a huge 50,000 lbs of thrust and a single taxi is no match for all that force. The engines blew the taxi away, flipping it more than 80 ft into the nearby sea.

10- Instead of paying a professional, one man in 2008 hired an industrial tree shredder and placed it at the base of an old oak tree in his yard which had recently been struck by lightning. He was planning on cutting away the dead section of the tree himself by climbing up and trimming it away, dropping any stray branches down into the hopper beneath him. However, he hadn’t used harnesses, safety equipment, or anything to secure himself to the tree! So, entirely unsecured, he clambered up the ladder, stepped out onto a branch, and began cutting away when suddenly he lost his footing, and fell straight into the shredder.

11- While fishing through a large hole he’d cut out of the ice in February 2020, one man from Detroit accidentally dropped his phone into the water. Clearly lacking in any notion of self-preservation, he dove straight in the hole after it. Unfortunately, he failed to realize that sudden submersion in ice-cold water can be pretty bad for the human body. It can send you into shock, can instantly paralyse your muscles if you haven’t received training beforehand, and can even cause a heart-attack due to intense constriction of your blood-vessels. Whether one of these physiological problems took hold, or whether he simply became disoriented under the ice remains unclear. All we know for sure is that he didn’t re-emerge until several hours later, when emergency responders pulled his lifeless body from the water.

12- A boy from India was on his way home from a wedding when he spotted a black bear. Seeing this as a great photo opportunity, he got close to the bear, and attempted to take a selfie with it. As he did, the bear mauled him. He died shortly after due to his injuries. Bears may be cute, but if you photograph them at an angle that makes them look fat, its game over.

13- When a Brazilian farmer discovered a beehive on his property in 2002, he knew precisely two things. Bees could sting and they needed to be removed with fire. No one knows why he decided that fire was his best option. All we do know is that he fashioned a makeshift helmet from a plastic bag to save himself from both the smoke and the bee stings. But besides all his careful planning, he didn't bother to think that he might have to breathe and failed to poke air holes into the plastic bag. When he didn't return home, his wife set out to find him and soon discovered him suffocated beneath the beehive. He was untouched by the bees, though.

14- Back in 2002, on the 29th of July, a TV channel in Ukraine reported on a story from the suburbs of Luhansk that nobody watching could believe. Late that evening, a deputy of the local administration board had been out walking his dog when he encountered a young police cadet, who noticed the dog wasn’t on a lead or wearing a muzzle. So, doing his duty, the cadet informed the deputy that what he was doing was illegal. The deputy, having been upstaged so publicly, began to argue with the cadet. Things were getting tense, but the situation really escalated when the deputy suddenly revealed he had an RGD-5 grenade, pulled the pin, and hurled it at the cadet! But because his dog wasn’t on a lead or wearing a muzzle, the deputy’s faithful four-legged friend ran to retrieve the grenade like a ball, and brought it right back to him! The master (and dog, sadly) both met an explosive fate.

15- Back in 1990, our would-be criminal made the big brain decision to target a gun store located near Seattle, Washington, around 4:40 in the afternoon, when the store was super crowded. He waltzed in, fired a few wild shots into the air, and announced to everyone in no uncertain terms that he was robbing the joint. It was only after he’d fired off his shots that he noticed a uniformed policeman having coffee with the store owner. All of a sudden, several people being "held up" pulled out their own firearms and let loose on the robber, including the policeman. After taking a barrage of bullets, he was put down, and no one else in the store was injured.

16- A bunch of college students were having a big old party in Vidovic, Croatia, in 2001 when one of them decided to try and impress his friends by juggling a few items, one of which was a hand grenade. Having pulled the pin, he proceeded to juggle with the live explosive. Grenades work via a chemical reaction, giving the thrower a few precious seconds to get out of range before it explodes. This guy, for whatever reason, didn’t think this applied to him, and the grenade exploded as he was juggling it. The blast injured six equally dumb onlookers, but our juggling clown was removed from the gene pool completely.

17- Back in 2008, a 50-year-old man was bird hunting in upstate New York, with his faithful canine companion at his side. Suddenly, the dog found a deer leg bone and began chewing on it. The owner tried to take it away, but the dog refused to give up its bone! Frustrated, the hunter began to wield his shotgun like a club, swinging the butt of it at the dog! Each time he did, the dog dodged, until this idiot slammed the butt of the shotgun into the ground. The shock triggered the gun to fire, with the muzzle pointed directly at his stomach. The huntsman was airlifted to hospital, but didn’t make it, though he did live just long enough to confirm this account to the police! At least the dog got to keep its bone.

18- While filming a forklift safety video in Australia in 2017, the owner of a safety training school was thrown from the forklift he was driving and fatally crushed by its payload. An investigation revealed that, despite what the intentions of the video had been, the man had broken several crucial rules to forklift safety. He was driving over rough, uneven terrain, at high speed, all while not wearing a seatbelt. Alongside an unhealthy sprinkling of driver error, it proved that sometimes, you really should listen to your own advice.

19- One day in 1982, a man was wandering the desert near Lake Pleasant, Arizona with a shotgun and decided to open fire on a 27-foot-tall cactus, causing a large and heavy arm of the plant to fall off. He was crushed to death by the spiny, four-foot-long saguaro arm.

20- When the staff at 17th Street Market and Dweli in Knoxville, Tennessee opened up shop one morning in June 2019, they expected a day like any other. However, when they turned the in-store stove on, ready for the day’s hot food, they never expected the screaming that began coming from inside the building’s ventilation duct. An intruder had attempted to climb down the vent and into the store but the vent proved to be too small to fit through, and he became thoroughly wedged. When morning crew started the cooker, the heat transferred up the vent, making the metal walls incredibly hot. By the time the police pulled him out, he was already badly burnt and unconscious, and he expired in hospital a few days later.

21- As robberies were becoming increasingly frequent in his local area, one Brazilian man in 2010 decided to keep his car protected by building a powerful electric fence around it. For a while, it seemed to work well, seeing as nobody stole the car. But things soon came to a shocking conclusion, when he forgot he’d left the electric fence turned on when he attempted to move it aside to get into his car. He was electrocuted, and he’d built his contraption with such a high current that it killed him.

22- One night in August 2019 at the Showtime Speedway in Florida, one man snuck in and started racing around the track in go-karts. But while zooming along, the rookie racer failed to spot a guardrail across the lane he was driving in, and he crashed into it at full speed. Wearing no helmet, and with no safety harness on his go-kart, he took the full force of the impact, and was later declared dead in hospital.

23- Back in 2003, one woman made a supremely dumb decision in a bid to really get her adrenaline pumping at the Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari in Indiana, USA. Riding the bird-themed "The Raven" rollercoaster with her fiancé, the pair had their lap bar and seat belts checked by staff before the coaster set off. But a few moments later, she undid her seatbelt, tucked the two sides into the cushions of her seat, and wriggled out of the lap bar! She wanted to stand up as the coaster went down the drops, in a bid to catch what roller coaster enthusiasts refer to as "airtime"! But during the fifth drop, which was some 69 ft high, she lost her footing and was sent tumbling over the edge to her demise.

24- A young rugby player from Sydney, Australia was at a party in 2010 when a slug sped across the table. His friends dared him to eat it, and he did. Not long afterwards, he contracted a rat lungworm, a parasitic worm spread by rodents. The parasite infested his brain, putting him in a coma and leaving him paralyzed. Several years later, he died as a result of this prank gone wrong. Seriously: don’t eat slugs.

25- On 2005’s Lunar New Year, a man was watching people set off industrial scale fireworks that shot more than 150 ft into the air outside a club in suburban Kualar Lumpur. Curious, the man decided to get a better look at these powerful fireworks, and bent face first over one of the launching tubes they were shooting out of. He was peering down the tube when one came screeching out into his face, sending him flying 30 ft backwards and giving him a few fatal head injuries.

26- Back in 1997, an Allegheny County Jail inmate decided that he needed to make a speedy exit. So, he tied together a couple of bedsheets he’d pilfered from other inmates, broke the supposedly shatterproof window of his cell, and then used the bedsheet-rope to rappel down the outer jail wall. But there were just 2 problems with his plan. The first, was that his makeshift rope was about 60 ft long, but his cell was on the 17th storey, so his rope was roughly 90 ft short of the ground. The second, was that he hadn’t cleared the window frame of the remaining glass shards. These cut the bedsheets as he was climbing down, eventually sheering his makeshift rope in two and sending him plummeting more than 8 storeys to his demise.

27- On a cold night in September 1927, a French-American dancer was preparing for an evening out in a friend’s sports car, wearing a long, flowing silk scarf around her neck. The driver began to drive off, when the scarf was whipped up in the wind, and drifted over the edge of the car. It had soon wrapped itself around the open spokes of the vehicle’s wheels, and was rapidly pulling Isadora onto a shorter and shorter leash. She was yanked out of the vehicle, into the road, and under the car. The wheel ran over her neck, breaking it instantly, and she was left wedged in between the wheel and mudguard. A gruesome end, and a timeless example of the dangers of putting fashion first.

28- In 2016, two women were trying to transport a mattress, but the thing was too big to fit in their van. They decided that one would ride on top of the mattress, pinning it to the roof of the van, while the other drove. Unaware of how the laws of motion worked, and massively overestimating the mattress surfer’s strength, the whole thing flipped off as soon as the driver put their foot on the gas. The mattress hit the road, and so did our unlucky lady.

29- One evening during the 2007 Belgrade Beer Festival, a drunk Serbian man proceeded to head over to Belgrade Zoo, broke in and climbed into the bear enclosure! The bears, Masha and Mischa, wasted no time making a meal of the idiot, and it was only in the morning that the Zookeepers discovered him half-eaten and wholly dead.

30- Back in 2015, a gentleman was visiting Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, and decided to get his adrenaline fix on The Raptor, a steel inverted rollercoaster which whips riders along at a top speed of 57 mph. During the ride, the man realized his phone had fallen out of his pocket. Once the ride was over, he peered over into the restricted section and saw his phone lying near the coaster’s tracks! Completely ignoring the big "do not enter" signs, the fences constructed to keep people out, and the fact he knew the ride was currently in operation, he hopped the fence and reached for his phone. To no-one’s surprise, he didn’t even bother to check if another cart was coming, and he was struck by an oncoming cart.

31- Back in 1984, in Safety Harbor, Florida, a man had been attempting to get a can of soda from the vending machine in his apartment complex’s recreation center. Whether he paid his cash and the machine failed to dispense his goods, or whether he just decided to shake it to try and get a free drink, remains unclear to this day. All that’s known for sure is that an hour later, he was found utterly crushed, with the vending machine on top of him.

32- Back in July, 2022, news outlets all over the world began reporting on a story from Athens, Greece, where a tourist was struck down by a helicopter rotor after getting too close to the blades. The tourist in question had been riding as part of a group on the helicopter and, after it landed, had disembarked with the others and was chaperoned to a nearby lounge, safely. However, it was at this point the tourist, who appeared to be calling someone on his phone, left the lounge, and made a sudden beeline back to the helicopter. As he approached the still running vehicle, ground staff suddenly clocked him, shouting for him to stop. But over the noise of the helicopter, he couldn’t hear them, nor could he see how fast the rear rotor was spinning. The pilot, who was wearing headphones, only heard the ground crew shouting right as the tourist made the unthinkable decision to duck under the tail section of the aircraft, but misjudged how close he was to the whirring blades, and was fatally caught by the tail rotor.

33- Back in December 1992, during the very early hours, a man in the town of Newton in North Carolina was woken by the sound of the landline telephone ringing next to his bed. Sleepily, in the darkness he grabbed the phone and put it up to his ear. Only, it wasn’t the phone he grabbed, but the handgun he’d left on his bedside table. For some reason, this incredibly sloppy gun owner had left his handgun there with the safety off, and when he brought it up to his ear, accidentally pushing the trigger down in the process.

34- According to an unconfirmed report from 2002, one man over in Croatia thought the idea of paying for firecrackers was far too safe and decided to make his own for some New Year’s celebrations. He proceeded to using whatever he had to hand, which turned out to be a chainsaw and a hand grenade. Sawing into an explosive device is a really bad idea, one that cost this idiot his life.

35- In 2017, a Londoner learned that water and electricity don't mix, when he tried charging his phone while in the bath. As he relaxed in the tub, he balanced an extension cord on his chest, keeping it out of the water. Whether he slipped, or whether he absent-mindedly dunked his phone in the water, he was killed by the ensuing shock.

36- Back in July 2022, a man from Naples, Italy, was having a barbeque when he decided to add a little fuel to the fire by pouring alcohol on the flames. In an instant, fire had travelled up the stream of alcohol to the bottle it was being poured from, and the whole thing blew up in his face. The injuries he sustained were so severe, he didn’t survive.

37- Back in 1999, a a sword swallower from Bonn, Germany, was showing off his skills with an umbrella, when he apparently hit the automatic release button on the umbrella’s handle! The umbrella opened while still lodged in his throat, and the avid entertainer didn’t live to perform an encore.

38- Back in April 2022, a thirsty thief in the city of Cattolica, Italy, ended up in a situation that was more than he could swallow. On the Easter Monday, he decided to break into a clearly closed grocery store, and grab himself a drink. But instead of pulling a bottle from one of the shelves, he chose to grab a bottle from the middle of a huge tower of crates that had been stacked up by the staff. Anyone who’s ever played Jenga knows this is a rookie error, and as you probably guessed, the entire stack collapsed, crushing him beneath all that water weight.

39- In 2020, a Russian influencer decided to make their birthday a memorable one by inviting some of their friends over to a pool complex they’d hired out and ordered 55 lbs of dry ice which they then dumped in the pool. All they knew about dry ice was that it was very cold and when it met water, it produced a cool steam show effect which would look great on their socials. But dry ice is the solid form of carbon dioxide, which only stays solid at a temperature of −109.2 °F. Above this, and without the right pressure conditions, it transitions straight into gas, without an intermediate liquid stage. So, dumping that much in a pool, which was not a well-ventilated space, released a lot of carbon dioxide, a gas humans famously cannot breathe! The influencer themselves and a few others managed to get out just in time, but 3 guests suffocated, including the influencer’s own husband.

40- Don't you just hate it when your lava lamp doesn't heat up quickly enough? Well, twenty-four year old Philip did. After plugging in his lava lamp and waiting a few minutes, he was disappointed to see that nothing was happening. Eager to get it working, he decided to speed up the process by placing it on a hot stove. But with the contents of a lava lamp only being designed to withstand temperatures of up to 40 degrees, it quickly overheated and exploded. He didn't survive when the glass from the lamp shattered and penetrated his heart.

41- One man in Rio De Janeiro back in 2006 was so keen on getting his hands on some scrap metal, he’d do anything to crack open an old disused Rocket Propelled Grenades he’d found. He decided to carefully smash the thing open with a sledgehammer. To no one’s surprise, the sledgehammer worked in a manner. Not only did it manage to open the grenade, but the force of the resulting explosion also opened up our man and the repair shop he’d been working in.

42- In 2020, a poorly-chosen seating arrangement on a bus resulted in the unexpected demise of several people in Manatu, India. While being transported to a wedding venue on a very over-crowded bus, several of the guests climbed up onto the roof-top for the ride. Their downfall came in the form of some high-tension, relatively low-hanging electrical wires. At their lofty perch, the riders were at head-level with the wires, and before they had the chance to react, 3 of them struck the exposed wire directly and were electrocuted.

43- Rather than just stealing cars and abandoning them when they were reported stolen, one car thief in Pittsburgh would also set fire to them, reasoning that this helped the owners claim insurance. But this horrendous habit would eventually become his downfall. Back in 1998, he decided to steal an old van that wasn’t in the best of shape. Soon after, it was reported stolen to the police, so he planned to set the vehicle ablaze by lighting a fire in the passenger seat. However, he didn’t know that the door handle on the driver’s side of the cab was broken. So, when he tried to get out, he quickly discovered he was trapped! Police found him the next day, charred to a crisp!

44- Helium can be hilarious! Because the gas is 6 times less dense than air, sound waves travel through it much quicker, so if you inhale it, your voice sounds much higher. But helium shouldn’t be inhaled for too long, because even though it’s a gas you still need oxygen to breathe. Back in 2006, in Tampa Bay, Florida, two 21-year-olds spotted a huge promotional balloon 8 ft in diameter used to advertise condominiums for Lake View at Calusa Trace. They decided to pull the huge balloon down and get inside it, for maximum high-voiced humor! They cut it open and shoved their top halves inside as the balloon gradually deflated, enjoying the squeaky high notes. But it didn’t last long because when our lungs are filled with helium, it means we’re not filling them with oxygen, which our organs rely on. Depending on how much helium is inhaled, a person can lose consciousness quickly and die from lack of oxygen, also known as asphyxiation. Which is exactly what happened. Dizzy and confused, these two idiots lost consciousness, and were only found the next morning when a local sheriff spotted the bottom halves of their bodies sticking out from the deflated balloon.

45- According to witnesses, three regular frenemies were drinking heavily at a café in Cambodia and exchanging insults with one another, when one of them suddenly pulled out a claymore landmine and threw it under the table. He drunkenly explained he’d found it in his back yard, and wanted the men to play the ultimate game of Russian roulette with it! These three intoxicated idiots took turns stamping on the pressure-triggered explosive in an attempt to set it off! Several minutes and stamps later, the bomb detonated, taking all three men with it.

46- For reasons unknown, one Philadelphia medical student had decided it’d be a good idea to jump between the rooftops around his apartment in the northern side of the city. But after several successful jumps, his luck ran out. On his final leap, he came up short, and fell two stories to the ground below. Though the fall might’ve seemed survivable from afar, he hit his head on the way down, which proved fatal almost immediately.

47- In 1999, one janitor was cleaning his building’s elevator when he noticed something dripping from the ceiling. Eager to do a good job, he rode a second elevator up the shaft, climbed out a hidden service door, and stepped onto the roof of the first elevator. He began mopping up the puddle when, all of a sudden the elevator jolted. In his rush to get to the leak, he’d forgotten to immobilize the first elevator! Unable to do anything, the first elevator rose to the very top of the shaft, crushing him at the top.

48- Back in 1984, a young lawyer was attending an early 4th of July party at his office in Chicago. Apparently, he got into a heated debate with one of his colleagues about the Olympics and, to settle their dispute, they agreed to have a race down a corridor of their building. The young lawyer needed glasses to see long distances, but had taken them off before the race so they didn’t fall off his face. Also, his office was in a glass paned, Highrise building, and the pair were racing around the 39th floor. As he was running headlong down the corridor, the young lawyer lost his perspective and went crashing through one of the plate glass window panes . While he may have lost the race, he did make the 400 ft journey from the 39th floor to the ground floor in just 6 seconds!

49- Back in February 2022, early in the morning, a young man was driving along a road on the outskirts of San Diego. Without warning, he veered off to the side of the road, hitting a parked vehicle and causing a six car pile-up. When rescuers arrived at the scene, they opened the guy’s door to find protein powder all over the vehicle. It coated the seats, the dash, the airbag that had deployed after he crashed, and the knife which – as he’d been distractedly using it to mix the protein drink in his lap – had been propelled back by the airbag and into his body.

50- Back in 2015, one boy was so bored that the only thing he could think of to alleviate the boredom was to grab a trash can, lay it down on the road, and hop inside it, using it to sled down the street like the world’s worst taboggan. However, unlike a taboggan track, a road has cars. The trashcan soon collided with an oncoming car and was yeeted into the side of someone’s house. The boy didn’t survive but he did prove that sometimes the trash takes itself out!

51- In August 2019, one Brazilian man’s disastrously dumb, drunken risk-taking did indeed catch up to him. When he and his friends stumbled across an orange snake with white and black stripes, instead of heeding nature’s natural colour warning, they did the opposite. With the misplaced confidence only excessive drinking can afford, the man picked up the snake in his bare hands, and waved it around, mocking the creature. Reportedly, this was normal behavior for the man, and something he’d often be seen doing after a few too many beverages. But the reptile would have the last laugh, because it just so happened to be a coral snake, one of the most venomous species in the world. Eventually, it decided enough was enough, and bit the man on the hand. At first, he laughed it off, and continued to hold the snake. But mere moments later, he was on the ground, fighting for his life, as the venom made its way around his body. By the time he made it to the emergency room, it was already too late.

52- In 2008, one motorcyclist took the ride of a lifetime near Manasota Key in Florida. Witnesses reported seeing the risky rider, wearing nothing but swim trunks and sneakers, speeding towards the Manasota Key drawbridge, which was in the process of being raised up. He ignored the flashing red lights warning drivers to stay away from the bridge, and instead attempted to accelerate, hoping to jump the every-growing gap. He crashed head-first straight into one of the gates and was instantly swept from his bike and onto the asphalt, while the bike itself continued up the ramp, across the gap, to the other side!

53- One woman was on a pleasure-trip to a natural waterfall at a tourist hotspot in Cauca, Colombia in January 2020 and, while searching for the perfect selfie angle, the woman ignored safety warnings about wandering too close the edge of the waterfall. Paying more attention to her phone than where she was headed, she ended up plummeting over the waterfall’s edge, straight down into the boulder-and-rock-filled pool below.

54- Over in a liquor parlour in South Africa, they decided to put Jägermeister’s potency to the test. They set up a drinking competition offering a prize of 200 rand to anyone who could drink and entire 24 oz bottle of the stuff. Not only did the winner down every last drop, he also did so in less than 2 minutes. He was awarded his 200 rand prize, when all of a sudden he collapsed on the floor. But he wasn’t just drunk, or asleep, he was gone. Alcohol isn’t good for you in massive quantities, it’s a toxin which can build up in the blood and literally poison you. After consuming an entire bottle of Jägermeister in just 2 minutes, our man’s blood alcohol content would have shot up from 0% to around 0.44%, a fatal dose.

55- One 25-year-old man, from Calgary, Canada and his buddies had been out drinking, and they decided to continue the party at a friend’s apartment complex. That’s when one of them challenged the rest of the group by saying “Who’s gonna ride the in-house water slide?”. Spoiler alert, it was not in fact a water slide, but the complex’s garbage chute. Unfortunately, our man of the hour drunkenly took up the offer. What he obviously didn’t realise in his drunken state was that there would be an industrial trash compactor waiting for him at the other end. Although, that was the least of his worries, as the chute down was a near vertical 12 storey drop, over 100 ft.

56- Back in November 2022, one wannabe TikTok creator went viral for all the wrong reasons. Deciding he needed to add a little edge to his next TikTok dance, a man from Texas decided to get up on top of an 18-wheeler, and then began to record himself dancing while the truck was moving. The driver of the truck had no idea, and so he continued on his route as per usual. This included driving across a route with several overpasses. Other drivers soon noticed the TikTok terror, watching as he’d duck down to avoid being hit by some of the overpasses. But he was too focussed on his dance moves, and didn’t spot one coming up at speed! He was promptly knocked off the top of the truck and into moving traffic and he didn’t survive.

57- Back in 2021, one pastor from Zambia promised to prove to his congregation that he was the reincarnation of the son of god by recreating one of Jesus’s famous heavenly abilities. He demanded his congregation bury him alive, and then dig him up 3 days later, mimicking the famous resurrection. As instructed, the church members dug him a grave, tied his hands together and buried him. He remained there, as the good book said, for three days. And when he was exhumed on the 3rd day, something unbelievable happened. The pastor did not, in fact, survive three days buried in 6 ft of earth with no air and was very much stuck in the pre-resurrection stage.

58- In August 2020, an attempt to pose for a picture in an unusual spot ended very badly, showing just why you should be careful what you lean on. The photo opportunity in question occurred for one man at a large statue of a cross in São Paulo, Brazil. The man climbed up the central concrete column of the cross and onto one of the arms, where he posed for a picture giving a thumbs up. However, he overestimated the strength of the upper beam, which he leant against while the picture was being taken. As he leant on it, the beam came loose and toppled right over, sending the man straight down to the ground. And to make matters worse, the heavy beam landed right on top of him.

59- Having parked his car at the edge of a reservoir in Fresno, California, one man got out only to watch as his car slowly rolled forwards towards the water’s edge. While the logical thing here would be to jump into the car and put it in park, this guy had another idea. He leapt in front of the car as it rolled forwards, assuming he’d be strong enough to act as some sort of immoveable object. But he thought a bit too much of himself, and the car just rolled over him, pinning him beneath the water.

60- Back in July, 2022, the chief minister of a north Indian state visited the holy Kali Bein rivulet, marking 22 years of its cleaning. Despite its historical significance, the rivulet had once been a sewer drain, but more than 20 years of community rejuvenation brought the rivulet back to life! On the heels of a clean water campaign in the state, the chief minister was so keen to prove to everyone at this event that the Kali Bein was both clean and safe, he grabbed himself a glass of its water and drank it down. However, water-borne infections like e-coli, parasites, and raw sewage can contaminate even the freshest looking water sources. The next day, multiple media outlets reported that he was airlifted to hospital with severe stomach cramps. He attempted to deny it, claiming it was a routine checkup. However, who needs an emergency airlift for a simple checkup?

61- According to multiple tabloids, back in 2017, a pastor of the Saint of The Last Days Church in White River, Mpumalanga, promised his congregation he would demonstrate the strength of his faith by walking on water. In the whole week leading up to the event he fasted and prayed, and when that fateful morning came, he waded out 100 ft into the river. But before he could attempt the biblical recreation and claim he was Jesus reborn, huge crocodiles quickly swam up and devoured him.

62- Blast fishing is when people use explosives to stun or kill entire schools of fish out in open water for easy pickings. It’s a very dangerous, and largely illegal practice. But it’d take more than that to stop a couple of Illinois idiots from indulging in a little illegal Sunday afternoon blast fishing back in 1998. The two friends hopped in a 14 ft aluminium boat and sailed out onto the waters of Fox Lake. Once they were far enough out, they lit up a quarter stick of dynamite, threw it into the water, and waited for the fish to float up to them. What they hadn’t realised was that they’d thrown the dynamite downwind of the boat, so a few seconds later, their boat was blown right over the dynamite. The explosion ripped a huge hole in their boat, sinking it about 100 yards from the shore.

63- Back in April 2022 in San Diego, a man drove into an automated car wash, and then – without starting up the cycle – tried to get out of his vehicle while his car was still in gear. Apparently dragged by the vehicle, he ended up fatally pinned in between the left side of his car and the car wash machinery.

64- Back in 2008 in Paranaguá, Brazil, a catholic priest was planning to break the 19-hour balloon cluster flight record to raise money for a spiritual rest area for truck drivers in Paranaguá. The priest packed a 1000 helium balloons, five days of food and water, a thermal flight suit, a parachute, a helmet, several cell phones, and a GPS device. Only thing was he didn’t actually know how to use the GPS device. When he was released, the weather was really overcast, so people on the ground lost sight of him very quickly. Balloons follow the wind, so, without any way of steering himself, when a rogue gust of wind blew the flying Father off course, he was carried out to sea. Later that evening, perhaps realising he couldn’t work his GPS, he rang the military police, who confirmed he was actually about 16 miles out from the islands of Tamborete. And after that, they never heard from him again. Clusters of balloons were found in the ocean the next day, and three months later the bottom half of the floating father was discovered 62 miles out from Macaé. It seems he didn’t realise he was that far out over the ocean until it was too late, and then crash landed. He might have survived for a short time out in the water, but with his cell phones and GPS waterlogged, not even he could have survived three months out in the open sea.

65- One woman put too much faith in her ability to not get eaten by wild animals in Kiawah Island, South Carolina in May 2020. While in a drunken state, the woman decided to get waist-deep in a local pond, which she knew was home to an alligator. The gator, of course, wasn’t too keen on this idea, and grabbed her with its powerful jaws.

66- Back in June 2022, over in Largo, Florida, a couple of people were enjoying a round of frisbee golf in a local park. The game was progressing pretty normally, when someone accidently flung their frisbee off course into a nearby lake. Florida is famously home to some 1.25 million alligators, and because of this, almost every body of freshwater across the state has signs warning people not to step foot in the water, lest they fancy becoming an alligator’s snack. Despite this, the Florida man decided in his infinite wisdom to wade right on in and grab the disc, gators be damned. Before he could find the frisbee, an alligator found him.

67- At a particularly faith-focused Church in Zambia, the congregants gathered one April day in 2019 for what they assumed would be a normal service. But soon, their clergyman, who referred to himself as a prophet of God, proposed a new way of purging his congregation of their demons. Insisting it would be an act of faith, he commanded his followers to drink from a bottle of bleach. And with the pressure of their faith overpowering any senses of reason or self-preservation, an alarming number of the congregants drank up, right on command. As a result of blindly following a man who appeared to be insane, 27 of the churchgoers died, and another 18 were put in critical condition.

68- Back in 2017, a man from Putnam County discovered a rattlesnake on his property. So, he did the responsible thing and put it in a tank with the intent to release it somewhere far away the following day. Surprisingly responsible for a Florida man story, right? Well, in the meantime, he told his neighbours what he’d found, who had a less responsible reaction. They immediately decided to play with the wild snake, before one of them said he was going to kiss it on the mouth! As he puckered up for a big, open-mouth, snaky smooch, the rattlesnake bit him on the tongue!

69- Back in April 2022, 3 bored teenagers decided to cook up some fun by using some body armour and a handgun. It’s not clear where they got the gun, but the teenagers took turns wearing the body armour and shooting each other, recording the whole thing and uploading it to Snapchat. One of them donned the armour and laid himself out like a human target, but the other teen’s aim was ever so slightly off, hitting him fatally in a part of his chest that wasn’t covered by the vest.

70- Back in 2004, one man in South Africa was watching a team of lumberjacks across the way with loud chainsaws cutting down some large trees. They’d cordoned off the area with tape, ensuring no one would be accidentally smooshed by the falling timber. Despite this, our man suddenly made a beeline for the area, ducking under the tape to use the pavement to meet his girlfriend in a near by shop. And at that exact moment, a huge tree the lumberjacks had quite clearly been working on came crashing down. Despite their frantic shouts, the guy ignored them and kept walking forward, and was crushed by the tree.

71- Back in July, 2022, a man from Erftstadt, Germany, was driving along when all of a sudden he lost consciousness. His car came to a stop when it hit the side of a house, and the local fire brigade was called. They assumed this guy had fallen asleep at the wheel and caused the accident, but when they got there, the unmistakeable smell of charcoal filled their noses. And when they opened the back doors of the car, out fell several small barbeque grills with glowing coals still in them. Apparently in a rush, he hadn’t bothered to extinguish the still-glowing coals in the kettle grills which he loaded into the back of his car. When they’re burning, coals release a colorless and odorless toxic gas called carbon monoxide even when they’re not smoking, which is why having a coal barbeque in an enclosed space is always a bad idea. After a while, this guy’s car had filled up with the toxic gas, causing him to pass out and crash.

72- Madame Blanchard was a French aeronaut and the first woman to work as a professional balloonist! She would ascend in a chair attached to hydrogen balloons to entertain huge crowds of people below her. She would regularly perform using pyrotechnics called Blue Light or Bengal Fire to really spice up her high-flying act. The only problem is that hydrogen is incredibly flammable. On 6th of July 1819, a particularly gusty day, she struck up her fiery display and waved down to the crowds when, all of a sudden, her balloon caught alight! The fire spread quickly and she began to descend rapidly, when wind caught her craft, blowing it out of the gardens and into the side of several nearby buildings, where she fell fatally.

73- Back in January 2015, a male fitness model in Burbank, California, decided he wanted to shoot a promotional video for an energy drink company he’d co-founded . But instead of shooting something like a big burly guy in a gym lifting weights with one hand and chugging his energy drink with another, he wanted something different. He planned to make it look like drinking this drink would give you the power to outrace a literal train. His plan was to run on a set of tracks that were parallel to the trains coming up behind him, so – shot from the side - it would only look like he was running ahead of the train. Despite the blaring sound of the train’s horn, our man just kept running in a straight line, until the train ran over him.

74- April 15th is the most common day of the US tax filing deadline and, in 2001, this fell on a Sunday, meaning there were limited post office hours available to send off any last-minute tax documents before the IRS came knocking. This was something a man from Tennessee desperately wanted to avoid, and so he was in his car racing to the post office in the hopes of submitting his taxes on time. But as he was driving, he noticed a slow-moving train heading for a crossing which would have blocked his route for several minutes at least! In an attempt to avoid this, he floored it and sped over the crossing just before the train reached it. But as he did so, another car racing from the other direction was also trying to beat the train, and the two collided on the tracks! One driver perished, and the other was wounded, but by some cosmic miracle, the crash occurred just to the side of the tracks! So, the train passed by unimpeded, and no passengers were injured!

75- Copper theft is a huge problem all over the world. Because of its ability to conduct electricity, it’s become an incredibly sought-after building material. One Scottish man planned to saw copper cables in Glasgow railroads in the time between the train passings, when no electricity was travelling through it. He might have gotten away with it, but the timetable he’d based his brilliant plan on was out of date! As he was sawing, the train began approaching,10 minutes before he’d expected it to! Thousands of volts of electricity suddenly jolted through his body, charring him to a crisp!