Article created by: Ieva Pečiulytė
The uncomfortable truth that we all want to avoid is that someday, we’ll all die. However, until that moment comes, it’s up to us to ensure that our lives have purpose and meaning, that we leave behind a positive legacy, and that we get to enjoy as many awesome things as we can. The longer we live, the more time we have to do all of those fun things with great people. That’s why we take care of our health and avoid taking dumb risks.
However, when you sit down and think about it, there are far more risks to our health out there than many of us realize—and many of them aren’t all that apparent. Redditor u/adventure21mc started up a viral thread on the r/AskReddit online group, asking internet users about the things that cause death “more than people realize,” and many shared their thoughts. You’ll probably be more careful in the future, as you’ll never look at things like driving while sleepy and avoiding treating dental problems the same way again.
Keep in mind, though, that the purpose of this article isn’t to make you scared, simply to make you more aware of what reality can be like, without any frills. There is no such thing as being ‘perfectly safe.’ We can do our best to avoid many dangers, and we shouldn’t stop living our lives because we’re too frightened of getting hurt.
We reached out to redditor u/adventure21mc for a friendly chat about their viral thread, how to balance safety with living to the fullest, and how to make life feel more purposeful. The OP was kind enough to answer Bored Panda's questions. "I think my post resonated with many people due to them discovering that many common causes of death go unreported or underreported. While I did get a few responses I was expecting (alcoholism, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc.), I did not know stairs and tripping kill thousands of people every year," they said.
"In addition, what inspired me to make this post was the hundreds of thousands of people who die every year due to medical malpractice, which is a very common form of death that nevertheless goes underreported or ignored by society." Read on for the rest of our interview with the author of the thread.
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Ladders. Ladders [take out] around 300 people/year in the US.
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Covid. People don't take it seriously enough. They don't mask. They don't get vaccinated.
One of my friends lost two members of her family at the same time from covid - and both of them were fairly young people, not old people.
Covid can also mess you up. One of my family members has long covid, and she has been seriously damaged now for seven months. Sleeps 16 hours a day, has trouble eating, brain fog, weakness.
Covid kills and it also cripples, and people pretend we aren't still in the middle of a pandemic. They act like it's no big deal.
It's a big deal.
Falling coconuts cause about 150 deaths annually
Coconuts [take out] around 150 people worldwide each year, which makes them about ten times more dangerous than sharks.
But the moment you suggest coconut week everyone acts like you're the weird one.
Driving while sleepy.
I legitimately say smoking cigarettes. I watched my mom (lung cancer), dad (bladder cancer), both grandfathers (lung and throat cancer), one grandmother ( brain cancer) and an aunt ( throat cancer but never smoked, had lived with smokers since birth)die very slowly and very painfully from decades of smoking/exposure. I smoked for 20+ years, quit 8 years ago while I was still in my 30s, but I have 2 older sisters that smoke like crazy and I hate to say it, but I am starting to see the really bad signs I saw with my other family members who passed.
If you smoke, it's going to [take you out].
Yeah, yeah, yeah.. you gotta die sometime, but do you really want it to be while you're gurgling words through a hole in your neck, begging for an extra push of morphine to dampen the pain as all your organs slowly fail?
Just. Quit.
Untreated dental problems. A cavity left untreated can lead to heart attacks and strokes.
Grief. People think it's a myth but you can die of a broken heart.
Child birth. Oddly enough still somewhat dangerous. Obviously much safer than it used to be, but there can be pretty serious complications. People seem to think its totally risk free these days.
Female heart attacks. We tend to feel pain from other places other than the chest. Never even realized it was a heart attack.
Chiropractors.
Although the exact number of deaths is unclear due to lack of documentation, it's estimated that at least 40 people per year (in the US) die from chiropractic manipulation.
Mosquitoes.
Selfish_Princess replied:
That's right! Mosquitoes [take out] one million people a year. One MILLION. For context, the next animal is comically humans themselves, with 135 thousand homicides.
Abusive romantic partners.
Mozzarella sticks. Statistically the most choked on food.
Loneliness.
Air pollution from fossil fuel burning & heavy industry, mostly in China & India. The number of premature deaths from air pollution is estimated at 6 - 7 million per year. Put another way, fossil fuels cause more deaths every 2 - 3 weeks than nuclear power has in its entire history even if you do the completely dishonest thing of including Hiroshima & Nagasaki in that total.
Selfies, in obviously dangerous situations.
silent_manu replied:
Schools banned field trips in our region before for a year or two due to three different incidents of students trying taking a selfie during a field trip.
Influenza. Just regular old flu. Many people ignore it thinking it'll go away on its own. Globally the number per year is usually between 300k and 500k. In the US it can be anywhere from 12k to 50k per year.
“Hey! Watch this!”
Left-handed people using right-handed tools.
Tripping. On average around 17k people a year in the US die from injuries incurred after tripping and falling.
High Blood Pressure. It sneaks up on you and you don't know about it or don't care but its the underlying cause of so many deaths.
