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Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

 Chowderhead wrote:
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

Well said.

 Chowderhead wrote:
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.

Some of my brushes were fairly exciting.

Why fear death?

Its not like you can remember being in your dads testicles and it really really sucked so you were relieved when you were lucky enough to be born.

I was dead for ages before I was born and I never suffered the lightest inconvenience from it, death holds no fear for me, in fact, the older I get the more I realise I will probably be pretty happy when it comes.

I really don't understand the terror of a dreamless sleep, I think a part of me would welcome it, not having to deal with all of the donkey-caves anymore will be a big plus point as far as I'm concerned!

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
So I've been having a series of panic/anxiety attacks recently, mostly focused on the fact that I am quickly growing older and that shortly, before I even think about it I will die. Obviously this is a whole bunch of fun, but it's something we all have to face/deal with.

How do you face your mortality?

wow, nice to see I wasnt the only one XD

I stoped thinking about it after watching soul eater, long story short there was a line in there which said that the only thing scary about death is what we immagine there to be afterwards, if you stop immagining whats going to happen you wont become scared. and for me, that worked :3 as soon as you rember that one day you will die, think of something else rather than dwelling on the subject

 DPBellathrom wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
So I've been having a series of panic/anxiety attacks recently, mostly focused on the fact that I am quickly growing older and that shortly, before I even think about it I will die. Obviously this is a whole bunch of fun, but it's something we all have to face/deal with.

How do you face your mortality?

wow, nice to see I wasnt the only one XD

I stoped thinking about it after watching soul eater, long story short there was a line in there which said that the only thing scary about death is what we immagine there to be afterwards, if you stop immagining whats going to happen you wont become scared. and for me, that worked :3 as soon as you rember that one day you will die, think of something else rather than dwelling on the subject

For me and friends we cope by conceptualizing ways to avoid it...the concepts are sound, though it would take decades and lots of work to realize.

Just out of interest, have any of you actually seen someone die? Believe me, invariably it ain't pretty. All this talk of welcoming death, all this bullgak of 'I would welcome it with open arms' and 'going peacefully', it's gak, all of it.....
I sit with people as they are dying almost three times a month, and you what? I have never in 8 years of doing my current job, never, seen anyone go peacefully. Before anyone says 'yeah, but how the hell do you know?!', I work in palliative care. That is a nice way of saying end of life care. And it's hard.

Yeah, you do get somewhat desensitised to the whole thing. But making that phone call is never easy. And facing the family of the deceased is easily the hardest thing you will ever do. Especially if it's a youngster......

And when you've been alive long enough to get used to it, stopping breathing is awful. I've seen the fear in people's eyes when the time comes, no matter how blasé they were about dying in the months leading up to the event. It's still fething scary.

But even after all this, I wouldn't say it scares me. When the time comes I will try my damnedest to just let it come. Don't fight it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just out of interest, have any of you actually seen someone die? Believe me, invariably it ain't pretty. All this talk of welcoming death, all this bullgak of 'I would welcome it with open arms' and 'going peacefully', it's gak, all of it.....
I sit with people as they are dying almost three times a month, and you what? I have never in 8 years of doing my current job, never, seen anyone go peacefully. Before anyone says 'yeah, but how the hell do you know?!', I work in palliative care. That is a nice way of saying end of life care. And it's hard.

Yeah, you do get somewhat desensitised to the whole thing. But making that phone call is never easy. And facing the family of the deceased is easily the hardest thing you will ever do. Especially if it's a youngster......

And when you've been alive long enough to get used to it, stopping breathing is awful. I've seen the fear in people's eyes when the time comes, no matter how blasé they were about dying in the months leading up to the event. It's still fething scary.

But even after all this, I wouldn't say it scares me. When the time comes I will try my damnedest to just let it come. Don't fight it.

I have yet to see someone die, but I know I will one day, what with my new job and eventual nursing degree I hope to do. Or with my volunteer work, I have already seen a heart attack but have yet to see or do CPR. I am of the opinion that I want to see it sooner rather than later just so I can get it over with.

As for me, I think about death as it is only natural, I make jokes about how I want to go etc but it will happen when it happens and how it is meant to happen. Till then live life.

Just out of interest, have any of you actually seen someone die?

Naturaly. Yes. With assistant. Yes.

It's something I try not to dwell on. The best thing you can do I'd guess is just accept that it is inevitable. Earlier this month I took a week to visit my grandfather who was in hospice care. It was the closest I'd ever been to death, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it.

By the time I had arrived, my grandfather had accepted his situation, he was terminal, he had no more then a couple weeks to live (really, he had less then a week). He spent what concious time he had left enjoying the company of his friends and family. Remembering all he did with his life, and what a life that man had. By the time he moved to the point where he was no longer really aware of anything, I believe he was glad for it. He went into death knowing he lead a good life, he was surrounded by those who loved him, and the pain was finally about to end.

I guess when I think about death now, that's the situation I want to be in when it comes. I want to be able to look back on my life, and be proud of the things I did. I want my family and friends to be there with me. I think more then anything else, I just want to be ready for life to end. I don't want to be laying there regretting that I didn't do enough, didn't say things that I wanted to say. I want to be content knowing that my life wasn't wasted, and that I'm ready to face whatever may come next, even if it is just simply oblivion.

I'm interested to see what happens when I die (probably a boring ol nothing) but I'm not in any real hurry to find out.

Think the major "drawback" on death for a lot of people is. They're so use to this life and are not sure whats beyond.

 Jihadin wrote:
Think the major "drawback" on death for a lot of people is. They're so use to this life and are not sure whats beyond.

Humans fear the unknown, we always have, and we always will, even if we have surpassed our ancestors who huddled around fires at night in fear of 'demons' beyond the circle of light. Death is inevitable...but that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it.

Also you have ones who are use to being "opted" out as a daily thing for a life style (deployments). Cuts down on the fear factor. For all we know Death might like fried pickle slices and italian pizza. He might sit down with you to ease the "transition"

 Jihadin wrote:
Also you have ones who are use to being "opted" out as a daily thing for a life style (deployments). Cuts down on the fear factor. For all we know Death might like fried pickle slices and italian pizza. He might sit down with you to ease the "transition"

If we succeed in what we're planning to do...maybe after a few millennia (or whenever) and death arrives, maybe we'll just sit down and discuss what we've learned and experienced in our technologically-extended lifespan.

You must play Necrons Tad

 Jihadin wrote:
You must play Necrons Tad

I would...but not newcrons.

As soon as I reach the point where I am unable to take care of myself and live independently, I fully intend on overdosing on opiates.

 sarpedons-right-hand wrote:
Just out of interest, have any of you actually seen someone die?

Spoiler:

Believe me, invariably it ain't pretty. All this talk of welcoming death, all this bullgak of 'I would welcome it with open arms' and 'going peacefully', it's gak, all of it.....
I sit with people as they are dying almost three times a month, and you what? I have never in 8 years of doing my current job, never, seen anyone go peacefully. Before anyone says 'yeah, but how the hell do you know?!', I work in palliative care. That is a nice way of saying end of life care. And it's hard.

Yeah, you do get somewhat desensitised to the whole thing. But making that phone call is never easy. And facing the family of the deceased is easily the hardest thing you will ever do. Especially if it's a youngster......

And when you've been alive long enough to get used to it, stopping breathing is awful. I've seen the fear in people's eyes when the time comes, no matter how blasé they were about dying in the months leading up to the event. It's still fething scary.

But even after all this, I wouldn't say it scares me. When the time comes I will try my damnedest to just let it come. Don't fight it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just out of interest, have any of you actually seen someone die? Believe me, invariably it ain't pretty. All this talk of welcoming death, all this bullgak of 'I would welcome it with open arms' and 'going peacefully', it's gak, all of it.....
I sit with people as they are dying almost three times a month, and you what? I have never in 8 years of doing my current job, never, seen anyone go peacefully. Before anyone says 'yeah, but how the hell do you know?!', I work in palliative care. That is a nice way of saying end of life care. And it's hard.

Yeah, you do get somewhat desensitised to the whole thing. But making that phone call is never easy. And facing the family of the deceased is easily the hardest thing you will ever do. Especially if it's a youngster......

And when you've been alive long enough to get used to it, stopping breathing is awful. I've seen the fear in people's eyes when the time comes, no matter how blasé they were about dying in the months leading up to the event. It's still fething scary.

But even after all this, I wouldn't say it scares me. When the time comes I will try my damnedest to just let it come. Don't fight it.

My mother died on 5 Aug making that the most recent and raw. I saw my first made on the spot corpse when I was seven. A fork loader impaled a Bobcat operator at me Da's job site. I've seen literally hundreds of people from 5 to 90 die, and I counted bodies in the streets of Sadr City. If you work in pallative care then I thank you for performing essential end of life services but the kind of death you experience isn't the ugly, gritty death people actually fear. Sure they HAVE fear, but if you are in a pallative program you have time to come to grips. It's not being dragged out of your home and beaten to death in the streets, catching a (un)lucky stray bullet, or being pulped by a car.
There's a wide rift between the acceptance of an inevitable conclusion, and saying that you face it without fear.

I don't deal with death.

I react to the concept with complete and utter terror, and it is the only thing in life that scares me.

It's the only logical emotional response... there's nothing wrong with this, in fact, I think if you haven't had this reaction where you literally want to scream "NO" at the very thought of not existing, then you haven't properly thought through what the concept actually means.

Conciousness is generated by the brain. When the brain dies, that's it. Nothing.

There is currently a long-running medical experiment that has taken place over several years to attempt to provide scientific proof of near-death experiences.

So far, there is zero evidence, despite thounsands of NDAs being recorded.

Death is death.

Religions all focus around the concept of an afterlife at their core because humans are extremely incapable of dealing with this simple fact at face value. We have to either brush it off with sweet words, religion or something else. Anything to avoid thinknig too hard about oblivion.

I do however cope with death and function on a daily basis by not thinking about the subject. A lot of my life is largely spent doing stuff to distract me from thinking about the topic. I have an extremely escapist mindset, which helps.

I've developed an odd fear of news articles about new humans species being found and proof of evolution as opposed to creation for our species. Not entirely sure why, I guess its because it represents the final nail in the coffin of any hope that there might be something after we die.

Anyway - to the OP - you're not the only one. I've been through the whole anxiety attacks thing too including a few crazy episodes of shouting "No!" at the top of my voice and punching a door (ouch!) simply because once you've properly (and I mean *really* properly) thought about the topic, that's all there is. Complete and utter mortal terror.

Most people don't think about the topic closely enough to reach that state. I do, you do. It varies from person to person. A lot of young people think "its just like going to sleep", and the actual realisation of the topic only feels real once a close family member dies (pets don't have quite the same impact) or they reach their late teens/ early 20s when this kind of really sharp cognitive thinking tends to emerge.

 scarletsquig wrote:
I don't deal with death.

I react to the concept with complete and utter terror, and it is the only thing in life that scares me.

It's the only logical emotional response... there's nothing wrong with this, in fact, I think if you haven't had this reaction where you literally want to scream "NO" at the very thought of not existing, then you haven't properly thought through what the concept actually means.

Conciousness is generated by the brain. When the brain dies, that's it. Nothing.

There is currently a long-running medical experiment that has taken place over several years to attempt to provide scientific proof of near-death experiences.

So far, there is zero evidence, despite thounsands of NDAs being recorded.

Death is death.

Religions all focus around the concept of an afterlife at their core because humans are extremely incapable of dealing with this simple fact at face value. We have to either brush it off with sweet words, religion or something else. Anything to avoid thinknig too hard about oblivion.

I do however cope with death and function on a daily basis by not thinking about the subject. A lot of my life is largely spent doing stuff to distract me from thinking about the topic. I have an extremely escapist mindset, which helps.

I've developed an odd fear of news articles about new humans species being found and proof of evolution as opposed to creation for our species. Not entirely sure why, I guess its because it represents the final nail in the coffin of any hope that there might be something after we die.

So how do you explain atheists?

 scarletsquig wrote:


Conciousness is generated by the brain. When the brain dies, that's it. Nothing.

Well, there is something a friend of mine came up with using the idea as a base: she said that since the brain functions by means of bio-electric impulses, its possible to cheat death with a real-time link to a supercomputer with sufficient memory and processing power to handle an entire Human consciousness - upon death, one's consciousness can then be uploaded to a prepared clone body.

 Fafnir wrote:


So how do you explain atheists?

I don't...I acknowledge God exists, but my world view is Nitzschean - 'this' world has my focus.

@ Fafnir - Not sure what you mean? I imagine there's plenty of atheists that are terrified of death, and others that aren't, due to having opinions similar to what people have posted in this thread - non-religious coping methods.

@Tadashi - I completely agree, we're only a few centuries away from immortality being standard practice for all of humanity. Ideally in life, I'd like to spend some time myself doing whatever I can to advance life extension or immortality tech, in the hopes of having it emerge earlier... I might be set to cease to exist, but if I can prevent even one person from dying, it'll be worth it. Lacking skills in neuroscience or other relevant fields, my contributions are limited to heart disease and cancer research.. get those issues sorted and we'll be well on our way to living to 200+.

The idea would be to slowly replace parts of the brain with exact computer replicas, done over a long period of time so that conciousness persists.

Every cell in our body dies and gets replaced over time, it's the continuity of our conciousness that matters.

Unfortunately, we were born at an unlucky point in time.

And by that I mean, the current technology level of the human species is high enough that most of us in the developed world have stopped believing in religion/witchcraft/monsters in the closet, but also low enough that we haven't invented immortality yet.

Which kinda sucks, really. A few centuries of us will have to suffer mortal terror, and then its immortality (or at least GREATLY extended lifespans) for all.

Another interesting angle - Children with older fathers at the point of conception live longer naturally due to inheriting longer telemores. We could extend our lifespans easily through eugenics or more realistically, genetic modification.

 Tadashi wrote:
I have no intention of dying...my friends and I intend to combine genetic engineering with nanotechnology to permanently halt aging and be immune to all disease...then we try and figure to establish a real-time communication link with a supercomputer with sufficient memory and processing power to store the entire consciousness of several people. At the instant of death, our consciousness will be uploaded through the supercomputer into prepared clone bodies.

You might want to check on the quantum teleportation/telecopy debate before assuming that would grant you immortality.

 scarletsquig wrote:


@Tadashi - I completely agree, we're only a few centuries away from immortality being standard practice for all of humanity. Ideally in life, I'd like to spend some time myself doing whatever I can to advance life extension or immortality tech, in the hopes of having it emerge earlier... I might be set to cease to exist, but if I can prevent even one person from dying, it'll be worth it. Lacking skills in neuroscience or other relevant fields, my contributions are limited to heart disease and cancer research.. get those issues sorted and we'll be well on our way to living to 200+

The idea would be to slowly replace parts of the brain with exact computer replicas, done over a long period of time so that conciousness persists.

Every cell in our body dies and gets replaced over time, it's the continuity of our conciousness that matters.

Unfortunately, we were born at an unlucky point in time.

And by that I mean, the current technology level of the human species is high enough that most of us in the developed world have stopped believing in religion/witchcraft/monsters in the closet, but also low enough that we haven't invented immortality yet.

Which kinda sucks, really. A few centuries of us will have to suffer mortal terror, and then its immortality (or at least GREATLY extended lifespans) for all.

Not centuries...probably decades. There are four of us who are planning to research and apply our concepts for immortality.

1) Me - a material science student who intends to use nanomachinery to grant complete disease immunity and stabilize my other friends designs
2) Two biology students (I'm not giving names - they intend to go abroad after graduation and study genetics) - lifespan extension via telomeric additions as well as genetically-enhanced/imbued abilities
3) And a computer science and engineering student (the one I mentioned before) - she will handle the supercomputer, real-time link, and consciousness transference part, though she will probably have the hardest time out of us all (naturally, we will handle the clones).

 Kovnik Obama wrote:

 Tadashi wrote:
I have no intention of dying...my friends and I intend to combine genetic engineering with nanotechnology to permanently halt aging and be immune to all disease...then we try and figure to establish a real-time communication link with a supercomputer with sufficient memory and processing power to store the entire consciousness of several people. At the instant of death, our consciousness will be uploaded through the supercomputer into prepared clone bodies.

You might want to check on the quantum teleportation/telecopy debate before assuming that would grant you immortality.

As I said, we're still studying...we'll begin work once we finish our education and have the means to do so. Besides, no one else is qualified to identify ourselves than ourselves...if a Captain Kirk-like individual starts spouting nonsense like "You're not Tadashi, you're just a copy..." I'll just tell him to shut up and mind his own business.

Worrying about something so inevitable doesn't interest me.

Death doesn't scare me that much (said with bravado). Nor really what comes after, it's the concept of eternity- or rather the end of it that gives me night terrors. (Stop reading if you don't want to see the blinding flash and nothingness beyond that I see when I close my eyes and tremble a bit....)

(Seriously)


.... K, so I fear the end of time above all, even death itself. Perhaps for us all, the atheist is right, and nothing is beyond the veil that death uncovers. Perhaps the theist is right, and heaven and hell exist in some way or fashion (no matter what religion).... and it lasts for all time. But really, like everything, there is a beginning and an end. The Universe was created by a big bang. God may have been "Forever", but even the Omnipotent Being(s) had genesis (even if it was self induced or however it is spun) Earth was created, and eventually it will end. Billions, maybe even trillions of years from now the universe will be sundered, split in twain by its vast unchecked expansion. It will collapse back into the nothingness it came from. From there, hypothesis abound from another cycle of the Big Bang, to utter and total annihilation of ALL EXISTENCE. What concerns me however, is no matter what happens between our current point in time, it is completely possible that everything, Heaven, Hell, God, Nirvana, Odin's Hall, the Material Universe, our souls, and beyond will inevitably, through the slow and inexorable march of time come crashing down into dust, and like death, there is simply no "true" explanation as to what may come after "the end of time". After all, according to some, time does not truly exist - it is a concept we made up as a measurement, and once we die, there could be as much nothingness beyond the grave, that may await the universe's own utter destruction.

Sleep well.

Tadashi, do you really believe that you and three friends will unlock immortality?

 LoneLictor wrote:
Tadashi, do you really believe that you and three friends will unlock immortality?

Yes we do, regardless of whether we succeed or fail in the end, we won't give up. If every scientist and inventor gave up what they wanted to do because everyone else and everything that was known at the time they started said it was 'impossible', we would still be living in caves right now.

I consider death to be falling backwards into a dark and soundless void, screaming silently for all eternity.

I hope that makes everyone feel better.