1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die – Introduction

To celebrate the publication of 1001 Ridiculous Ways To Die yesterday, below is an unedited draft of its introduction.

INTRODUCTION

‘To die would be an awfully big adventure’ – Peter Pan

In writing this book we have come to learn that death is arbitrary. Impersonal, uncaring and indifferent to any force you care to invoke for protection against it. Death can strike anyone at anytime. The thing most frightening is that while many of the deaths we chronicle occurred to ridiculous stupidity, an equal number of them happened due to ridiculously bad luck.

Accidents happen. Wrong time, wrong place. Nothing you can do to avoid it. When whatever archetypal figure of death you pull from your imagination comes calling – whether it is a classic grim reaper with scythe or a top hat-wearing Goth girl from the pages of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman – your number is up. In the end, the apparent arbitrariness of the universe is a lot scarier and harder to confront than the mystery of what happens to us when we die. However, you can almost understand why some cultures see death as the ultimate stalker when you read tales of people narrowly escaping one disaster only to be struck by another within seconds.

One strange thing about death we have noticed is what some people, including authors John Keel and Andrew Collins, have called the ‘Cosmic Joker’. At times it is almost possible to believe that there is some universal force which loves irony and playing with coincidence. What else can you do but laugh when you come across tales of an 18-year-old girl called Jennifer Squelch being crushed to by her horse or the high number of reports we came across of undertakers being killed by coffins.

Sometimes the moment of death is not ridiculous, but the bizarre path that leads up to it. While many would argue there are plenty of causes worth dying for, we doubt you would find anyone who would argue it was worth dying over a can of beer, burnt toast or the loudness of someone’s snoring. Yet as we have discovered, the fatal spirals that lead toward death start over the most ridiculous trivialities of life.

We have tried to ascertain the truth of every tale told here. At every turn we have tried to rule out friend of a friend stories, tried to exclude all manner of shaggy dog stories. On some of the most unbelievable we were surprised when our phone calls to the police and other authorities turned up the answer: “Yes, that really happened” or: “I did not see it, but my colleague was on that case.” Of course, for some entries the best we got was: “We have heard that happened, but I cannot personally verify it.” It will be certainly be interesting to try to explain to the taxman why we are claiming calls to everywhere from Dubbo to Uzbekistan, Henan Province to South Carolina on our expenses.

Almost every entry we have included could be tracked back to an original newspaper or broadcast media report. However, having both been newspaper news editors, we are well aware that not everything that gets reported is necessarily accurate. You would be surprised at just what a hard-pressed or lazy journalist will write and try to slip through a news desk. Some papers will unwittingly report urban legends as fact only for their faux story to be endlessly repeated in other publications by those too indolent to carry out even the most cursory of checks. However, if you are ever tempted to think that any death recorded here seems too preposterous just think back and remember that moment in January 2002, when George W. Bush, at the time the most powerful man on the planet, almost choked to death on a pretzel.

All death is a tragedy for someone. However, it seems to us that instead of retreating into the elements of our culture that see it as taboo subject or turn it in a complex dance of fetishes and mythology, laughing at its most ridiculous expressions is a healthier way to go. Of course, by saying that, we are now probably doomed to fall victims to the strange humour of the Cosmic Joker.

In our own lives, both of us have already faced moments when we could have exited the stage of life in manner ridiculous enough to gain an entry in this book. From falling into a bear pit to choking on a bit of carrot or getting death threats from members of the Albanian Mafiya, we have seen that death can lie just around the corner. The only sane response to this knowledge is to laugh, love and live as much as possible. As one of the entrants in this tome, Sherwood Anderson once wrote: 'Life Not Death is the Great Adventure.'