When life starts seeming mundane and routine, it’s nice to step back and realize that there are terrible things that could happen to you in a heartbeat and destroy you forever. This month, we discuss death.

So what’s the worst way to go?

Well, according to most psychologists, the answer is alone. No matter what happens to them physically, the majority of humans don’t want to be by themselves when the time comes. This need to have another soul in the room with you when you breathe your last and then crap yourself drives some people to the insanity of loveless marriages, which are terrifying in their own right.

But that’s not why you’re still reading. So what, then, are the worst ways to go from a sheer pain-and-suffering point of view? Well, after discussing the matter with an unnamed doctor friend of mine, we concluded with the following list:

1. •Bowel Obstruction – Due to the development of a tumor at any point in the 26 feet of your digestive tract, eventually, you can no longer pass solid waste. This backs up, leading you to become poisoned with your own feces.
   

2. •Arterial Rupture – You develop an inoperable tumor on your carotid artery that, after an excruciatingly painful deterioration of body and emotions, causes the arterial wall to burst, leading you to die in a spray of gushing blood.
   

3. •Necrotizing Fasciitis – “Flesh-Eating Bacteria” slowly devour you from the outside in, causing horrible pain and the daily experience of watching your body rot and die before your very eyes.
   

These, of course, are all more or less natural causes of death, but what ranks among the worst ways overall? That comes down to personal phobias. But in my research, I think I found the worst way any human can be dispatched: scaphism.

From the Latin word meaning “the boats,” scaphism involves placing a person inside two, narrow, rowboat shells with the victim’s arms, head, and legs exposed, resembling something not unlike a human turtle lying on its back. The person is then smeared with honey and forced to gorge on milk and honey. The honey and resulting diarrhea attracts insects in droves that sting, eat, and lay their eggs in the person who is completely unable to do anything. Madness sets in within the first few days, with death resulting from a combination of dehydration and gangrene. Plutarch wrote that one victim sentenced for murder survived for 17 days before dying.

And that’s something awful you didn’t know.