At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Putin
famously said that it would take only 10 days to seize control of Ukraine. But now
we know that this was a particularly bold claim. Maybe it would’ve been true if
Russians didn’t already have an affinity for perishing in surprising, unusual,
and often downright hilarious ways. Welcome to the “Dumbest Ways
to Die, Russian Edition.” One of the most common myths involving Russians
and humorous deaths is the supposed death of Queen Catherine the Great (reigning from 1762 to 1796).
In one of the theories behind her death, it was suggested that her love of horses was too much to
bear. Apparently, during a particularly amorous activity with a horse, its suspension cords
broke, and the animal crushed Catherine to death. While the rumor certainly fits the bill of a dumb
way to die, Catherine the Great never consorted with horses and, in reality, died in old age from
a stroke. The rumor was most likely circulated to discredit her reign. However, people have died
from having sex with horses after their colons were perforated by the horse’s member. We couldn’t
find reports of Russians succumbing this way, so it can be a story for another video.
But what we could find was a plethora of injuries that seemed preventable
with a bit of common sense. Starting off strong, we have one of the
first claimants for the infamous Darwin Awards—a website that tracks people who have
“accidentally removed themselves from the gene pool”—from Russia back in 1989. At the time,
the Soviet Union still existed in all its glory, or lack thereof. While socialism, or more
accurately Marxism, was the name of the game in Soviet Russia, that didn’t stop Russians
from developing strange beliefs and ideas. Such was the case of E. Frenkel. You see, Frenkel
thought he was a psychic. But rather than limit himself to “finding” missing people like the
modern TV-faring peddlers of the trade, Frenkel believed he had the power to control other people
and even objects, especially if he was in danger. To test out his powers Frenkel went out
into the street and tried to stop drivers from hitting him with just the power of his
mind. But to his credit, limited as it may be, he did test his theories gradually, starting
with cyclers and smaller cars. Being the Soviet Union in the 1980s, traffic was much lighter,
and cars moved slower, so cyclists and drivers could see Frenkel and brake in time or
avoid his maniacal behavior altogether. Unfortunately, that only fueled Frenkel’s belief
that he had powers that could save him from harm. You may already see where this is going. Frenkel’s
last test was him stepping in front of a freight train. According to the Darwin Awards website,
the train engineer saw Frenkel toss his suitcase aside and step onto the tracks with arms raised.
The engineer pulled the emergency brake, but it wasn’t enough to stop the train from driving
through Frenkel and killing him on the spot. While Frenkel’s belief killed only himself,
another of his Soviet comrades endangered the lives of many in true socialist fashion.
The person in question was a shift manager in 1968 at the Mayak Production
Association, a nuclear complex, research facility, and reprocessing plant.
While Mayak was the site of one of the first massive nuclear failures in 1957 that resulted
in around 200 deaths from cancer, the Russians obviously didn’t learn from their mistakes.
The shift manager was overseeing plutonium purification methods and requested two
operators to use an improvised setup to transfer a potentially unstable organic solution
of concentrated plutonium from a tank that also contained another watery solution into another
holding tank. Note the word “improvised,” as the entire procedure was entirely made up on the
spot with little regard to safety protocols. Even worse, it used what the official report classified
as an “unfavorable geometry vessel” to draw the solution from one tank to the next.
Close to the end of the transfer, some of the watery solution got mixed into the
“desired organic solution,” and the operators stopped to receive further instructions from the
shift manager. The manager’s course of action, which was logically incomprehensible
from the start, was to order one of the operators to decant the organic solution from
the vessel and throw the watery solution back, before he left to tend to other duties.
While doing so, the operator inadvertently caused a chemical reaction that sounded the
alarms in the facility. Immediately upon seeing a flash of light and heat, the operator did the
smart thing and ran away, albeit a bit too late. It would turn out that he started a nuclear
chain reaction. The shift manager returned to see that the emergency protocols were triggered
and immediately cut off the contaminated area. Here comes the truly stupid part. Instead of
leaving, the manager overruled the emergency protocol supervisor and went back into
the now-irradiated zone. The reasoning behind his move was debated, but it
was suggested he tried to throw out as much of the plutonium solution from the tank
before it could become enveloped in the reaction. Whatever he actually did, he ended
up causing a bigger chain reaction, activating even more alarms throughout the
entire complex. Even if you have a limited knowledge of nuclear reactions and radiation, you
should know that radiation exposure is deadly, and that it kills slowly and gruesomely.
The shift manager died one month after the incident from radiation sickness and associated
injuries. The operator who caused the minor reaction received a lower dose of radiation,
which didn’t kill him but was still enough to cause severe burns and required the amputation
of both legs and one of his arms. He lived for another 31 years, but it’s difficult to say
if he had a good life after the incident. While you may think that moving away from
socialism made Russians think more about personal safety, you’d be wrong. It turns
out that Eastern Europeans had a proclivity for digging up old wounds and getting caught
up in issues with potential nuclear fallout. On the first day of the Ukraine invasion in 2022,
the Russian armed forces invaded Chernobyl (or Chornobyl as it’s called in Ukrainian). Yes,
the same Chernobyl that was the epicenter of the biggest nuclear disaster in history.
Apparently, the Russians decided that capturing Chernobyl, without any additional
protective gear, was a worthy war cause. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the area around the
infamous town, is home to less than 200 people, with around 3,000 shift workers coming into the
area to deal with various tasks to decommission leftover nuclear reactors, monitor the radiation
levels, and provide adequate protection and guidance to tourists visiting the area.
As such, it’s pretty odd that it would be one of the first locations to find
itself under siege by invading forces, but that’s a discussion for war strategists.
While the occupation of the Chernobyl Zone was successful on paper, reports soon started flooding
in with soldiers digging up the highly irradiated soil to build trenches and erect defensive
platforms. It should be noted that while the wider area around the reactor itself is relatively
safe, the soil and dust that come off it are still some of the most irradiated on the planet.
While the troops abandoned the siege without much fanfare, the long-term damage from increased
exposure is unlikely to surface soon. No matter, even if the soldiers in question live
through the gruesome war—which has managed to rack up another few entries on this
list—they now have an increased risk of death from cancer in their later years.
There’s a saying that revenge is a dish best-served cold, and these soldiers would
be prime examples. However, one husband in Khabarovsk, a city in Eastern Russia, in the year
2000 should’ve listened to this sage device too. Once he learned that his wife was cheating on him
with another man, he confronted the couple and swore his revenge. The lovers naturally thought
it was an empty threat. But the husband decided to escalate things to an explosive level, creating
a homemade bomb. His plan was to rig the bomb to the other man’s apartment while they were inside,
which would blow up when they tried to leave. However, the man’s knowledge of incendiary
devices failed him. He definitely made a bomb that could explode and kill someone, but he couldn’t
figure out how to time it properly. As a result, the bomb blew up when he tried to set it up,
killing only him. At least the wife didn’t have to go through divorce proceedings.
Let’s step away from nuclear blasts and explosions for a moment. This next death
is much more mundane but no less stupid. A construction worker on a drill site in Moscow
in 2005 was working on a garage project in one of the suburban streets. During what was probably
an unmemorable shift, he noticed a shiny object stuck to the rapidly revolving auger. Do
you remember the saying, “Curiosity killed the cat?” Well, this cat was curious indeed.
Instead of stopping the drill to investigate further, the worker tried to grab the object with
the drill still running. What happened next could easily have been featured in a cartoon. His
jacket caught onto the drill and pulled him into the machinery. By the time he could figure
out how to untangle himself, it was too late. When the other workers noticed the commotion
and stopped the drill, there wasn’t much left of their colleague. According to local news, “only
the man’s legs below the knees remained intact.” Whether or not that was an exaggeration,
it was certainly not a pleasant way to go. Unfortunately, this type of death wasn’t
particularly uncommon. Another incident in 2020 involved a 56-year-old man being pulled
into a lathe. According to the news source, the worker was too close to the machine when
he was sucked into the lathe and screwed, both literally and figuratively. A restricted
and definitely Not-Safe-for-Work subreddit had posted gruesome pictures of the deceased,
which will haunt us forever and have probably turned some people away from this type of work.
Trust us on this, you don’t want to see them. A similar tragedy occurred in 2021 on a
poultry farm in the Kaluga region. One of the newer workers wasn’t properly instructed on
how to operate a large conveyor mechanism that processed chicken carcasses. When she tried to
snatch a chicken away from the machine, presumably to inspect it, her hand got caught on the hook
that held the carcass. The machine chugged along, drawing the chicken and its unsuspecting
victim towards the processing mechanism. By the time other workers noticed that something
was wrong, the worker was sucked into the grinder and died, with the autopsy claiming the main cause
of death as a chest injury. According to the news portal that covered the event, and provided a
censored video recording of it, the accident was partly due to inexperience and partly due to
the abject failure of the facility management to provide proper training and protective equipment.
It was almost as if they were trying to save money at the cost of human lives.
All hail the capitalist machine. But we don’t want to grind your gears
with these gruesome deaths. Let’s turn to something less deadly for a minute
that still caused irreparable harm. This Darwin Award nominee was a small-time thief
who burgled people’s homes and took anything of value he could find. He probably had a bit of
success in his endeavor that urged him to go onto more lucrative ventures, including breaking
into homes when their occupants were sleeping. As it turned out, what was probably his last
escapade turned out to be into the home of a 30-year-old disabled man who used a crutch to
get by. As the thief got to work, the homeowner woke up and noticed a shadow rummaging through
his bedroom. When he cried out in surprise, the thief tried to elevate his charge from
burglary to home invasion by attacking the owner. The owner managed to grab his crutch and,
in a move right out of Tom and Jerry, hit the thief right in the crotch. The thief
howled in pain and leaped out of an open window. The window was on the first floor, so the
thief sustained only minor injuries from the fall. However, in what defies logic, the
crutch has managed to do more than blunt damage. When the homeowner struck the thief,
he managed to steal something back: a testicle. While the Darwin Awards website failed
to produce a news link, it cited that the homeowner put the testicle in cold water and
phoned for the ambulance. Even more humorously, it said that the emergency services hung
up on the homeowner the first few times, probably because they thought it was a prank call.
The thief ended up trying to get away from the crime scene before being found unconscious
and taken in by the police. In the end, the thief’s entire scrotum needed to be removed
to prevent gangrene. And then he actually had the balls to file a complaint against
his would-be victim for the damage done. If you’ve followed so far, you’d think
that Russians had a penchant for dying or getting maimed in stupid ways due to a
lack of intelligence or aspiration. However, even some “smart” Russians have managed
to off themselves in pretty stupid ways. As a prime example, take this university
student. It was said Sergei was destined to become a chemist from an early age when he claimed
he’d make a potion of immortality. While this was squarely in the realm of magical alchemy, Sergei
pursued his vision with pseudo-scientific zeal. His persistent experimentation led him to
regularly consume small amounts of mushrooms, arsenic, and cyanide salts. These were apparently
not enough to kill him and instead bolstered his claim that he was immune to such poisons.
If you think Sergei was stupid, you’d probably be correct. The practice of consuming poison in
ever increasing amounts was recorded in history and mythology as the method rulers used to make
them immune to assassination attempts and remain in power. It’s called Mithridatism after the
Greek ruler whose myth popularized it. However, it has no sound scientific roots and doesn’t work
except in very few isolated cases, such as alcohol tolerance, and even then has very mixed results.
But back to Sergei. Despite his illogical proposition, Sergei worked
tirelessly for his cause, managing to get accepted into two universities
as a promising chemistry and anatomy student. After one of his regular consumptions of
poisons, he probably bit off more than he could chew and started developing immediate side
effects of mild cyanide poisoning. Instead of drinking plain water, he diluted the rest
of his cyanide salt stash and drank that. What went through his mind at that moment, we
will never know. However, what went through his body is generally understood by science.
Even in lower doses, acute cyanide poisoning causes weakness, dizziness, and breathing
difficulties. The body eventually loses consciousness and enters a coma, with seizures
and cardiac arrest following in seconds. In the end, Sergei discovered what the scientific
community already knew: cyanide kills. Maybe he should’ve stayed in school for a bit longer.
While we’re on the subject of students, a student in Ukraine suffered a similarly
stupid death. While this one wasn't Russian, it only goes to show that they may
not as different as it may seem. The student in question had a habit of dipping
his gum in citric acid to add more “zest” to it. One day he managed to confuse his usual citric
acid stash with an unidentified chemical. While the chemical was unknown, its effects certainly
were. The student’s mother reported hearing a loud “pop.” The student’s jaw was blown off,
and he died from his injuries shortly after. Speaking of people who should’ve stayed in
school, this welder should’ve probably gone back. The subject of this story worked as a gas and
electric welder in a construction enterprise. It seems the welding life got quite boring for him
so he decided that that to spice things up he’d try to become a daredevil. He managed to source
a disused howitzer—a type of artillery weapon similar to a cannon—and place carbide and water
into the barrel. Carbide has a pretty explosive reaction with water and is a good approximation
of gunpowder for the purposes of this experiment. Then, he put a fire extinguisher down the muzzle
to serve as a projectile. What happened next shouldn’t be a surprise. The chemical reaction
created heat and pressure, which caused the lodged fire extinguisher to explode. As it
happened, the welder’s head was within range of the shrapnel that erupted from the howitzer.
Worse yet, the “accident” (more like coordinated suicide) transpired at the welder’s workplace.
How he managed to roll in a howitzer to work without anyone noticing or asking any questions
is beyond us, but it hopefully tells you something about the Russian mentality that somewhat
explains why this video is not done yet. Not even Russian doctors are infallible,
and one unfortunate case of a misdiagnosis led to two deaths—of the same person.
A 49-year-old woman in Kazan City experienced chest pains and was brought to the nearest
emergency center after losing consciousness. The doctor correctly deduced that she had had
a heart attack and then pronounced her dead. The funeral took place two days later. When
the “deceased” was placed in the coffin and the relatives started to say goodbye, she woke up
and screamed. Apparently, she had only entered a short-term coma after the heart attack.
However, the shock of seeing her own funeral caused the poor woman to have another
heart attack, which would be her last. She was rushed to the nearest hospital, hopefully not
the same one, where she was pronounced dead—for real this time. Hopefully, her husband
managed to make peace with the situation. Russia is known for its fabulous nature.
After all, it’s the largest country by area in the world, so there’s bound to be some nature
reserve you can drive to and enjoy the scenery. What this Russian couple did was certainly
enjoyable, at least for a bit. The pair, a 22-year-old teacher and his girlfriend, decided to
loosen up on a trip through the Volgograd region and make love in the back of their SUV while next
to a lake. Notice we said “next to” rather than “parked.” The vehicle was presumably in neutral,
and perhaps the pair forgot to pull the handbrake, meaning the rocking from the couple’s strenuous
activity caused the car to start moving. The pair realized their mistake too late and
didn’t manage to escape the vehicle once it plunged into the lake. The police were called only
after the couple was reported missing. After a long search, they found the tire tracks next to a
lake. The car was pulled out with the two corpses in the backseat. Talk about sex being deadly.
While some people get a thrill from having sex in odd places, others decide that the sky
is the limit. One such example is a 2015 Russian Instagram “celebrity” whose tactic
to gain views was to scale tall buildings and snap selfies on their roofs or antennae.
During one such excursion, the safety rope that he used snapped and the 17-year-old plunged
to his death. According to Russian news sources, he wasn’t the only one. At least 10 people
died, and 100 more got injured by trying to take selfies during that year. It became such
a problem that the government had to create an official campaign to dissuade the Russian youth
from attempting to replicate these selfies. The proliferation of social media in Eastern
Europe has also made its way into the army, which allowed us a unique view into
the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, and all the stupid deaths that resulted from it.
Take the example of one Russian soldier who, with all the mental training afforded by the
army, decided to swap out one of his body armor plates for a looted MacBook. Now, the plates that
are slotted into modern armor have one purpose, stopping bullets. The same can’t
be said for your average MacBook. In an unsurprising turn of events,
the soldier was killed in Ipsin, and the MacBook was recovered in partially working
order. Now, the soldier would’ve probably died even if they had the protective plate on,
but why take the risk for a piece of tech? Speaking of risks, perhaps the biggest risk many
Russians have taken so far is the entire Russian invasion of Ukraine. The supposed 10-day invasion
has lasted close to two years as of the making of this video, and the casualties suffered by the
Russian side have been staggering. According to NBC, Russia’s death toll is about 315,000
soldiers, with the standing army starting at 360,000 when the war began.
The war has undone years of progress—technological, economical, and
societal—in Russia, shaking the country to its core. Some of the more educated or capable
Russians are cognizant of the issue, with reports of around 200,000 Russians fleeing the country
to avoid conscription or prosecution due to practicing free speech and opposing the invasion.
Even Russian oligarchs aren’t safe. The ongoing list of Russian casualties states, prominent
business people, generals, and even their families who’ve died under “mysterious circumstances”
has grown to more than 50 people. Most of them still have unresolved deaths, and the real reasons
will probably never be made public. So if you have any form of power in Russia, you should stay away
from windows, railings, and hospitals. Otherwise, you might just end up on this list.
For an American counterpart check out “Dumbest Ways to Die - Florida
Edition”. Or watch this video instead!
