Particularly horrible ways to die?

Completely skinning a live person scalp to toes. Reportedly some victims survive the whole process completely alive and awake and sometimes are still breathing when they're dumped or put on display. And that doesn't take into account the stuff that was done to them over the course of days and weeks prior the live flaying finale.
 
copd.
 
Inmates of Auschwitz and other places, who had been massively starved became known as musselmen. This was because they had so little strength that, falling to their knees, their foreheads would touch the ground in front of them: in effect, kowtowing.

Worse than starvation is dehydration. A most uncomfortable end, I hear.
 
Alzheimer's.
 
^ :)

Reminds me of the line repeated in Beavis and Butthead:

"Life sucks, and then you die".

Bah, I really hate the 1-click rule, because Nas elaborated on it far, far better.
 
Bah, I really hate the 1-click rule, because Nas elaborated on it far, far better.

You could, you know, just tell us the song.

Anyway, I already made this thread, and my method is still king:

Nano-robots that target brain receptors in a precise way to cause not only the pinnacle conceivability of sustainable pain and not only the pinnacle of sustainable emotional severity but also manifest new mechanisms of conscious negativity through radical adjustments in perception consciousness, plunging the individual into a reality completely unknown to them and creating an unimaginably expansive trauma-soaked delirium.

Don't show this to any Lesswrongers, by the way.

If we're looking for something more down to Earth, I'd recommend this wonderfully imaginative debate.

Consider the following:

Meatros said:
You wake up, strapped upright and naked to a chair, in the middle of a room. A large clock that is counting down from one hour is looming large on the wall in front of you, seven or eight feet in the air. Directly underneath the clock, standing against the wall, is your loved ones and your family. Your children are watching on in abject terror. On your immediate right is a glucose drip and what you can only assume, given your heart rate, an amphetamine drip. One your immediate left is an individual who you learn has been tasked with performing the gruesome tasks ahead. The individual informs you that, in addition to the amphetamines, he has dosed you with a significant amount of a hallucinogen named Datura. The individual points to the clock on the wall and informs you that you will be dead at the end of the hour.

At this point you realize that you are breathing rapidly and that your heart is beating so forcefully that you fear that it’s going to explode. Your vision is slightly blurry as you stare at your helpless family. Tears are streaming down your child’s face and although he is only ten feet or so away from you, you cannot make out what he is saying. Thoughts are uncontrollably streaming through your head as panic settles in. You hadn’t noticed it before, but whether it’s the drugs or another sadistic improvisation from your torturer, you have become aware that music is playing. It’s Justin Bieber’s chart busting song “Baby”, which under normal circumstances would curdle your stomach.

Your voice quivering you question your executioner. Why is he doing this? In response he comes closer to you, a grotesque instrument in his hand. This instrument appears to be similar to cutting shears that one would trim their bushes with. The man brings these shears to crotch level and then pauses for a moment, perhaps to let what is about to unfold sink in. Your mind races, you blubber that you will give the man anything he wishes if only he’d stop right at this moment. Before you are able to get the last syllables of your defense out the terrible ‘snip’ takes place. Pain shoots throughout all of your extremities as unbearable agony fills the deepest recesses of your being. The man’s visage warps into that of a terrible demon and you are not concerned in the slightest whether this is a result of the drugs or the immense pain you are in.

Picking up the useless flop of skin, the man tosses your manhood towards your family with a sick, perverse smile on his face. You can see your family gasp and turn from the horror of the flap of flesh now resting a few feet from them. The man turns towards you and bends down, picking something up that lay just off to the side of your now trembling foot.

You discover that your tormenter has just picked up what appears to be a large paint bucket. It is no ordinary bucket though and you soon discover to your misery that it is completely filled with sulfuric acid. Your tormentor slowly and methodically pours the acid all over your body, from your chest to the tops of your legs.

The acid eats away at your skin, dissolving your innards slowly. Your blood vessels are cauterized and once the acid has gotten through enough of your layers, it begins to eat through your organs. Time seems to dilate as you shake with pain. The smell pervades your nostrils and the agony is unending.

At this point, you are just a useless blob of flesh. The pain is immense as the torture comes over to you. You glance up at the clock, there are less than ten minutes left. You welcome death. Your torturer shows you his latest tool; it is a metal rod with a blunted end. He slowly raises it to your eyes and then even more slowly pushes the rod in and then through your right eye. The pain is intense and you cannot control your bellowing. Your left eye follows.

What seems like an eternity follows. The music abruptly stops. All you can hear is your family begging for your life. The clock has got to be almost finished you reason. The sounds of a struggle and then of someone gasping for air fill your ears. You hear members of your family pleading with the sick executioner not to strangle your child, to no avail. You hear your family cry out when the deed has finished.

As they are crying you hear the executioner’s footsteps as he comes closer to you. Your last moments of life are filled with a blunt pounding of some object (likely a hammer) to your head as you expire.

Chamaeleon said:
I'm not going to focus so much on the psychological pain because, frankly, I think that when people are in excruciating physical pain, they don't have a lot of extra thought to spare for whether or not things are going well for the rest of the world. Unfortunately for this debate, there is only so much pain a body can take before the consciousness is disrupted to the point that it will shut down. That's why my imaginary victim will also have amphetamines coursing through him. However, I'd have to dose them before the proceedings because there won't be any support for an I.V. drip for very long, heh heh.

My victim will enter this scenario very tightly bound, all over, by hundreds of strands of fishing line, so that their circulation is being cut off pretty much everywhere. The cruelty begins when they are released. Yup, released. Have you ever had an arm or leg or hand fall asleep from having the circulation cut off and then you get that pins and needles effect when the blood starts flowing again? You ever had it so bad that it was painful to even move while the blood vessels where re-inflating? It's like a hyper-sensitivity that can take a good few minutes to go away.

So the victim is released, and gets to experience this nice, full-body pins-n-needles to extreme that feels like someone actually is poking him with pins and needles. While this is going on and the victim's skin is hyper-sensitive, we will string him up by his wrists and begin flaying him alive...let's say with Ginsu knives. Not all at once, mind you: we don't want our victim passing out now, do we? And since we don't want him bleeding prematurely to death either, we'll be so kind as to cauterize the flayed areas with a hot iron, giving just enough time between these procedures for the victim to recover his pain threshold. We'll also pull off his fingernails and toenails, slowly so as to allow him to relish the sensation, aaaand then cut off those fingers and toes, being mindful to cauterize those wounds as well, before continuing with the flaying, including a lovely end to that process by scalping him (we'll keep the smelling salts ready cuz even the amphetamines might not keep someone conscious during a scalping).

Once most of the skin is gone (we'll leave a few low blood flow areas un-cauterized, to be sure he still has enough raw nerve endings exposed), we'll string him back up again and give his exposed nerve endings a soothing spray of water from out nearby garden hose (which would probably feel a little more like a soothing spray of shrapnel, to our dear victim). By now most of the victim's dermis is pretty useless for inducing pain anymore, so we'll have to settle for an ending that involves internal injuries. And although we aren't focusing on the psychological pain, I so no reason to exclude it entirely, so I think we'll wind down this episode of 'Worst Way to Die' by beating our victim the rest of the way to death with his own children, of course killing the children in the process (we'll just assume the kids are still small enough to heft by their ankles like a pillow case, and WHAM! over and over again until their all dead, and daddy along with them.)

Ok, I need to go scrub myself raw in the shower after that debate, and maybe huddle, shivering in the corner for a bit.

As a comment on your method, your victim would die almost as soon as he was doused with sulfuric acid, despite the amphetamine drip, for several reasons. One, the anchor and tubing for the drip would be eaten away by the acid, meaning the amphetamines would stop flowing, but even if they didn't, the victim would pass out and die from the fumes alone, which would quickly seize up the respiratory pathways (especially considering that he is hyperventilating) and stop the heart. So all your victim would experience is having his dong snipped off, followed by a few moments of full-body acid burn and suffocation. Certainly not pleasant, but the trim job couldn't take too long, so the suffering would probably only be...like...ten minutes outs of of your hour. And more importantly, he wouldn't have had to endure that terrifying Bieber music or the knowledge that his family is being killed too. My dude got beaten to death by his family, so...yeah, lol.
 
Sniper attack. The bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, so you could die before you even hear the shot. The idea of going without having any awareness that you're dying is absolutely terrifying to me. The only thing worse would be Alzheimer's, which operates on a similar principle, just a lot more slowly.
 
Sniper attack. The bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, so you could die before you even hear the shot.

That sounds like the best way to go. Quick and painless. Much better than all the suffering and agony of some of the other methods described in this thread.
 
Over the course of years, while your body is slowly debilitated and your mind slowly eroded. Meanwhile, maybe having to watch your loved ones go through the same thing.

Alzheimer's.

The only thing worse would be Alzheimer's, which operates on a similar principle, just a lot more slowly.

That's where I was going, mostly. I watched my grandma get eviscerated over the course of six years. In the next 20 years, I have 2 parents, 2 aunts and 2 uncles each of whom will have ~50% chance of developing the disease too. So, chances are, I'll have to watch it happen to a family member again, unless we crack it medically.
 
1) Starvation and dehydration while listening to Justin Bieber 24/7 being electroshocked whenever falling asleep.... (those sleep deprivation)

2) Being Giggled to death
 
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