Episode 63, Real-Life Final Destination Deaths: The Cases That Actually Happened — Final Destination (2000)

Hello my little Gremlins!!! Today we kick off a 6 Part series where we cover the cases that actually happened- where real life mirrored the Final Destination films. 

We will go through each movie and the mechanism of death presented in the films, then we will cover the case files that happened IRL. 

Today we will cover:

TWA Flight 800

Northwest Airlines Flight 255

American Airlines Flight 191

Accidental bathroom strangulation and asphyxiation cases

Speeding city busses

Kitchen explosions and impalements

and 

Decapitation by train, and the 1972 Illinois Central Commuter Rail Crash

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This podcast contains murder and mayhem, guts and gore, adult language, and sexual content. Exactly what you came here for. All the listener discretion is advised. Welcome. I am your mistress of the macabre, Sarah Tierra. Grab your Ouija board, light the candles, and grab your jar of teeth because you and I are going to escape for a bit. Pour yourself a cocktail, pull the window shades closed, and find a cool, dark, quiet place. Because right now we delve into the macabre. Hello, my little gremlins. Welcome back to the Mistress of the Macabre podcast. I feel like I haven't talked to you in 8 million years, and I miss you. I am so excited to be doing this series. This was a weird little brainchild of mine that is now a reality. We are gonna do six parts and we will be covering real cases that actually happened that mirror the final destination movie deaths. Also, just a little aside, the fuck is going on lately? Is Mercury and Satan's asshole because everything is fucked. But you know what? I really don't want to get into it. I do want to get into these movies and the real deaths. I went into this thinking I would find a handful of cases that mirrored the deaths in all of these movies put together. But you know me when it comes to research. So I went in on the research and I found cases that were very, very similar for every single movie death. So that is how one little idea became six episodes. Yes, a bitch is thorough, okay? If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it well and very methodically researched. Also, the one that kicked this whole thing off for me in my head was when the man died by being sucked into the MRI machine by his necklace. That was the one that I was like, I wonder if there's more. Turns out there's tons. Am I the biggest fan of these movies? Not really. I mean, they're fine, they're entertaining, you know, whatever. But I don't fucking care. It doesn't really matter for this episode. This is not a Final Destination Stan podcast or episode. I am here for the real life freak accidents, which are way more terrifying, if you ask me, than the movies. But will we also be discussing the films, of course. So yeah, mainly case reports with some movie fun sprinkled in. This is gonna be lighthearted and cute for for me for this show. Not for anyone else on the planet. This is gonna be fucking horrible. You're welcome. Okay, enough of me talking. Wait, that's what we do here. Fuck. What if Death had a plan? That simple question has fueled the Final Destination franchise for more than 25 years. What? 25 years? Oh my god. This is terrifying. Unlike most horror films, these movies do not feature a masked serial killer, a monster lurking in the shadows, or a supernatural entity stalking its victims. Instead, the antagonist is something far more unsettling. Fate itself. A single premonition allows a handful of people to escape a catastrophic disaster, but in doing so, they disrupt what the films call death's design. The natural order in which they were meant to die. One by one, death returns to reclaim the survivors through elaborate chains of seemingly insignificant events that spiral into gruesome, often unforgettable accidents. Broken pipes, loose screws, falling pennies, a gust of wind, a forgotten coffee cup. Individually, all of these things are harmless. Together they become part of an intricate sequence of cause and effect that ends in tragedy. It's a terrifying concept because it forces us to ask an uncomfortable question. How much of life is simply chance? This series explores that question, not through the supernatural or through the movies, but through history. For every death in the Final Destination films, I've searched for the real-world incidents that mirror the fictional accidents as closely as possible. Some similarities are astonishing. Others are loosely connected, sharing a setting or a mechanism of death rather than an exact sequence of events. And in some cases, there is simply no real life equivalent. I mean, I I found one for each one. I take that back. Reminding us though that Hollywood occasionally stretches reality beyond its breaking point. Whenever possible, the cases featured are drawn from documented incidents, including official investigations, government reports, reputable news organizations, medical literature, and historical records. The goal isn't to prove that the movies were inspired by any one specific tragedy. Instead, it's to examine how often real life produces accidents so bizarre, unexpected, and devastating that they feel as though they could have come straight from a final destination screenplay. Because the truth is, reality doesn't always need supernatural help. History is filled with what we commonly call freak accidents, rare, unpredictable events created by an extraordinary convergence of circumstances. A loose wheel bounces across a highway at exactly the wrong moment. A structural defect hidden inside a bridge goes unnoticed for decades before failing in an instant. A lawnmower strikes a rock with enough force to turn it into a deadly projectile. A routine day at work or a family barbecue, a trip to the pool, or a visit to the eye doctor can, through an almost unimaginable chain of events, become the scene of a fatal accident. Unlike the films, I don't believe these tragedies are evidence of an unseen force carrying out a predetermined design. Engineering failures, human error, environmental conditions, random chance, and simple bad luck are enough to explain even the most extraordinary accidents. Basically, the films did not take into account shit fucking happens. Sometimes dozens of tiny unrelated events align in ways that no one could have predicted. Looking back, the sequence can appear almost impossibly perfect, as though every event had to happen exactly as it did for the outcome to occur. That illusion of inevitability is part of what makes both the movies and the real cases so compelling. Our brains are naturally wired to search for patterns. When something tragic happens, we instinctively ask, could it have been prevented? Was there a warning? Was it fate? The final destination films answer those questions with Death's Design. Reality is usually less satisfying. More often than not, investigators uncover a series of ordinary decisions, overlooked hazards, mechanical failures, or unfortunate coincidences that when combined produce an extraordinary outcome. In many ways, that is even more unsettling. The stories you'll hear throughout this series are not meant to sensationalize real tragedies or to diminish the lives that were lost. Rather, they highlight the remarkable and sometimes disturbing ways in which fiction can echo reality. They also serve as a reminder that many of the hazards depicted in these films are rooted in genuine risks, leading to changes in engineering, workplace safety, transportation, medicine, and public policy. And some of these changes have saved lives. And some of these changes have saved many lives. So as we revisit each final destination death, we'll ask one question. Could something like this really happen? Surprisingly, the answer is a resounding yes. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. So starting out the franchise, and this episode is Final Destination, which came out in the year 2000. The Final Destination franchise begins aboard Voli Airlines Flight 180, departing New York for Paris. Moments after takeoff, high school student Alex Browning, played by every girl's crush back in the day, Devin Sawa, experiences a terrifying premonition. In his vision, the aircraft suffers a catastrophic mechanical failure. The cabin rapidly descends into chaos as passengers panic, luggage is thrown through the cabin, flames erupt, and the plane ultimately explodes in mid-air, killing all 287 people on board. Alex's panic causes him and several others to be removed from the aircraft before departure. Moments later they watch in horror as Flight 180 explodes exactly as he foresaw. This opening establishes the central premise of the series, death's design. According to the films, everyone has a predetermined time and manner of death. Alex's premonition disrupts that design by allowing several passengers to escape an event in which they were supposed to die. Death, portrayed not as a person but as an invisible and inescapable force, then begins systemically claiming each survivor in the order they were originally meant to perish on the plane. Flight 180 is more than just the franchise's first disaster. It is the event that introduces the idea that while fate may be delayed, it cannot be cheated forever. The movie appears to be directly inspired by two real-life aircraft incidents. The first real-life disaster is TWA Flight 800. TWA Flight 800 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to Paris, France. On July 17, 1996, at approximately 8.31 p.m., just 12 minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 747 exploded in mid-air and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Mauriches, New York. Mauriches? East Maurichese, I don't know, Mauritches, off the coast of New York. All 230 people on board were killed. The flight crew was highly experienced for this flight. 58-year-old Captain Ralph G. Kavorkian had flown for TWA for 31 years and previously served nine years in the U.S. Air Force, accumulating 18,700 flight hours. Captain and Czech Airman Stephen E. Snyder, 57, had more than 17,000 hours, and Flight Engineer and Czech Airman Richard G. Campbell Jr., 63, had more than 18,000. Also aboard was 25-year-old flight engineer trainee Oliver Crick, who had joined TWA just 26 days earlier and was completing his initial training. Earlier that day, the aircraft had arrived at JFK from Athens as TWA Flight 881, where it was refueled and the crew was changed. Maintenance personnel also addressed problems involving the number three engine's thrust reverser. Maintenance records showed the aircraft had experienced several issues involving its volumetric shutoff system in the weeks before the accident. Flight 800 was scheduled to depart at around 7 p.m., but delays involving ground equipment and a passenger baggage mismatch pushed departure back. The aircraft finally took off at approximately 8 19 p.m. The climb was initially completely normal. The crew received a series of heading and altitude changes as the 747 climbed toward cruising altitude. At 8.30 p.m., they acknowledged instructions from Boston Center to climb to 15,000 feet. The aircraft's final radar transponder return was recorded at 8:31 p.m. 38 seconds later, the captain of nearby East Wind Airlines Flight 507 reported seeing an explosion ahead of him at approximately 16,000 feet. Other pilots and people on Long Island soon began reporting the same thing: an enormous fireball over the Atlantic, followed by burning debris falling towards the ocean. Civilian, military, and police vessels rushed toward the crash site and searched for survivors. There were none. The National Transportation Safety Board were notified about the crash within minutes. And because I'm going to mention them approximately 9,000 times this episode, the National Transportation Safety Board is now NTSB from here on. Almost immediately, investigators faced a much larger question: had this actually been an accident? Witnesses weren't simply describing an airplane exploding. Many have reported seeing something in the sky before the explosion. Out of 258 witness accounts examined during the investigation, 38 described an ascending streak of light moving toward the location where the enormous fireball appeared. Several witnesses then saw the fireball divide into two sections as it descended towards the ocean. Those reports fueled immediate speculation that Flight 800 had been struck by a missile or destroyed by a bomb. The NTSB investigates transportation accidents, not criminal acts, so the FBI opened a parallel criminal investigation. The possibility of terrorism would remain a major focus of the investigation for months. Meanwhile, the recovery operation became enormous. Federal, state, and local agencies, government contractors, and the U.S. Navy participated. New York Air National Guard personnel in a helicopter witnessed the explosion from roughly eight miles away and reached the area while debris was still falling, forcing them to retreat temporarily. Scuba divers and remotely operated vehicles recovered victims and wreckage from the ocean. Later, scallop trawlers were used to recover pieces embedded in the seafloor. Eventually, more than 95% of the aircraft was recovered. The wreckage was transported to a former Grumman Aircraft facility in Calverton, New York, where it became the command center for the investigation. Investigators painstakingly reconstructed large portions of the 747 in an effort to understand exactly how it had broken apart. The NTSB and FBI personnel monitored the transfer of wreckage to preserve its evidentiary value, and the U.S. Navy divers recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder approximately one week after the crash. The victim's remains were transported to the Suffolk County Medical Examiner's office. Families gathered near JFK at the Ramada Plaza Hotel while they waited for news. The hotel became known as the Heartbreak Hotel because it served as a gathering place for relatives after several major airline disasters. That's really sad. The identification process was extraordinarily difficult. Recovered remains began backing up at the medical examiner's office, where pathologists worked under enormous pressure to identify the victims as quickly as possible. Some bodies were relatively intact, but many were burned, fragmented, skeletonized, or decomposing. DNA testing and dental records were required in numerous cases, and by numerous cases, probably all of them, or nearly all of them. The priority became identifying every victim rather than performing equally extensive forensic autopsies on every set of remains. So the thoroughness of individual examinations varied. Ultimately, all 230 victims were recovered and identified, which is crazy, I mean, good work for everyone involved with that. But the final identification was not completed until more than 10 months after the crash. Investigators now had to determine what could have caused a perfectly normal flight to catastrophically break apart without warning. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder showed nothing abnormal about the takeoff or climb before both recordings suddenly stopped at 8.31 p.m. Shortly before the explosion, however, Captain Kavorkian commented on an abnormal fuel indication. The final fractions of a second of the cockpit recording contained a loud noise similar to sounds recorded aboard other aircraft undergoing catastrophic in-flight breakup. Combined with the wreckage distribution and witness accounts, investigators concluded that Flight 800 had broken apart suddenly in flight. I thought we already knew that, but okay. Investigators examined possible structural failure, but found no evidence of fatigue, corrosion, or mechanical damage capable of initiating the breakup. They also considered whether a cargo door could have separated in flight, as had happened in previous aviation disasters, but evidence showed that the door had been closed and locked. Then came one of the most controversial pieces of evidence. Trace amounts of explosive residue were found on three samples of recovered wreckage. That obviously sounded very fucking significant in an investigation already filled with witnesses reporting a streak of light in the sky. But investigators found no physical damage characteristic of a high-energy bomb or missile explosion. No severe pitting, cratering, pedaling, or hot gas washing. Examination of the victims also found no injuries indicating direct exposure to a bomb blast or missile warhead. The NTSB's final report states that forensic examination found the injuries consistent with a catastrophic in-flight breakup and subsequent water impact. Investigators therefore had to explain the explosive residue. As fishy as it sounds that it was even found in the first place, I mean we're gonna get to it, but they found it on three samples of a 95% recovered whole ass Boeing aircraft. That is not very much. So now they're like, well, how the fuck did this happen? Why is there explosive residue? Flight 800 had previously been used to transport troops during the Gulf War. How old is this fucking thing? I don't know when the Gulf War was. Never mind. And approximately one month before the crash, it had been used during an explosive detection dog training exercise. Investigators also considered contamination during recovery, including transfer from military ships, vehicles, clothing, or military boots. I am personally going with the dog training for explosives. I mean that makes perfect sense. Or aliens. We'll get to it. The NTSB ultimately concluded that although the exact source of the residue could not be established, there was no corroborating physical evidence showing that a bomb or missile had initiated the breakup. That still I love that I keep saying initiated the breakup. I mean I do every single time, but this one I did not. No, I was not there. That still left one enormous question. What the hell made this airplane explode in the sky out of nowhere? Investigators eventually focused on the center wing tank or CWT. Only about 50 gallons of fuel remained in the tank, but the important issue wasn't simply the liquid fuel. It was the flammable fuel air vapor above it. Air conditioning packs located directly beneath the center wing tank generated heat that transferred upward into the tank. Testing showed that under conditions similar to those aboard Flight 800, the temperature could become high enough for the fuel air vapor inside the tank to ignite. And once that vapor became flammable, all it needed was an ignition source. Investigators used computer modeling, scale model testing, and full scale testing involving a retired Air France Boeing 747 to determine whether a center wing tank explosion could generate enough pressure to rupture the tank and initiate destruction of the aircraft. And the answer to that question was yes. I kind of love that someone was like, yeah, the only way to figure this out is to blow up a Boeing 747. You know they were so fucking excited to do that shit. After four years of investigation, the NTSB concluded that Flight 800's catastrophic breakup was initiated by an explosion of the flammable fuel air mixture inside the center wing tank. The precise ignition source could not be determined with certainty. The NTSB considered the most likely source to be a short circuit outside the tank that allowed excessive voltage to enter through the wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system. Remember, the captain was like the fuel quantity indication system is doing something crazy? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Confident it wasn't aliens at this point, although it still could be. The investigation resulted in new aviation safety recommendations aimed at preventing fuel tank explosions. Yeah, thank you. Sounds like a pretty good idea. Probably should have done that beforehand. And officially, that is what happened to TWA Flight 800. Of course, this can't just be the answer, because there is still the matter of all those witnesses who describe the streak of light ascending through the sky before the explosion. So questions are gonna linger, obviously. I think we just went through everything, and I think it was a short circuit causing that explosion in the CWT. The possibility of a missile was extensively investigated, as were other potential explanations for what witnesses had seen. The FBI eventually announced that it had found no evidence of a criminal act and closed its active criminal investigation. The NTSB likewise concluded that the breakup was not initiated by a bomb or a missile strike. But the witness reports, the initial terrorism investigation, and the discovery of explosive residue ensured that alternative theories surrounding Flight 800 never completely disappeared. All of the witness statements about the streak of light that they saw before the explosion is not answered, obviously, by the center wing tank conclusion. It was looked into even more, and things like a meteor strike were considered. Or again, maybe it was aliens. Or a government accident. There are still many questions left after the conclusion of the investigations. Now, this isn't the only aircraft disaster that is very similar to the one in Final Destination. The other disaster is that of Northwest Airlines Flight 255. On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Airport at approximately 8.46 p.m. All six crew members and 148 of the 149 passengers were killed, along with two people on the ground. Two pilots and four flight attendants crewed Flight 255. The captain was 57-year-old John R. Mouse, who had worked for Northwest and its predecessors for 31 years and accumulated more than 20,000 flight hours. Pilots who had flown with him described him as a competent, capable pilot with a reputation for operating by the book. The first officer was 35-year-old David J. Dodds, who had more than 8,000 flight hours and eight years with Northwest and its predecessors. Captains who had flown with Dodds described him as competent and thorough and said he was not hesitant to alert senior pilots to potential problems. The crew began their workdays scheduled to operate the same aircraft together for four flight segments. Their first leg took them from Minneapolis, St. Paul to Saginaw, Michigan. From there, the aircraft continued as Flight 255 with scheduled stops in Detroit and Phoenix before its final destination. Ooh, we should make this a drinking game, and every time I say final destination in any context, you have to take a shot. Of Santa Ana, California. The flight from Saginaw to Detroit was uneventful, aside from a minor problem while taxiing to the gate. During the stop in Detroit, a Northwest mechanic inspected the aircraft and its logbook. Flight 255 departed the gate with 149 passengers, including 21 children and six crew members. At pushback, the aircraft weighed just under its maximum allowable wait. At 8:34 p.m., Flight 255 was cleared to taxi to runway 3C. The crew's dispatch information had contained takeoff performance data for runways 21L and 21R, but Flight 255 had instead been assigned to runway 3C, the shortest available runway. The crew therefore reconfigured the onboard computer and recalculated the aircraft's takeoff weight, determining that it remained within allowable limits. The taxi itself became somewhat complicated. The crew initially missed a required turn and also failed to switch to a newly assigned radio frequency when first instructed. After contacting ground control for directions, they corrected the route and continued toward runway 3C. At 842, the aircraft was instructed to position and hold while the crew waited for wake turbulence from a previous departure to dissipate. At 844, Flight 255 was cleared for takeoff with Captain Mouse at the controls. The MD-82 accelerated down the runway and lifted off at approximately 200 miles per hour. Almost immediately, something was wrong. Less than 50 feet above the ground, the aircraft began rolling from side to side. Its rate of climb was severely reduced as well. Approximately 2,760 feet beyond the end of the runway, the left wing struck a light pole in a rental car lot. The impact caused the wing to ignite and begin breaking apart. The aircraft rolled approximately 90 degrees to the left and struck the roof of an Avis car rental building before crashing inverted onto Middle Belt Road. It struck vehicles on the road, killing two people in a car, then broke apart as the fuselage skidded across the roadway. The wreckage disintegrated and burst into flames as it struck a railroad overpass and the overpass of eastbound Interstate 94. All six crew members and 148 of the 149 passengers were killed. This is the crazy shit. Okay, this is fucking final destination, the movie, because that means we have one lone survivor. The sole survivor was a four-year-old child named Cecilia Sicken, who was returning home to Tempe, Arizona with her mother, father, and six-year-old brother after visiting relatives in Pennsylvania. That is so sad. She was with her entire family, and she's the only one that made it out. Firefighters found Cecilia still strapped into her seat, which was facing downward, several feet away from the bodies of her family. Because officials initially believed that no one aboard the aircraft could possibly have survived, they first announced that Cecilia had been a passenger in one of the automobiles struck by the plane. But she had actually survived the crash itself. Cecilia suffered third-degree burns and fractures to her skull, collarbone, and left leg. After the crash, she went to live with her maternal aunt and uncle in Birmingham, Alabama. She largely remained out of the public eye and did not speak publicly about the crash until 2011. In 2022, Romulus firefighter John Feed, the firefighter who found her in the wreckage, said that the two had remained in contact over the years and that he had attended her wedding in 2007. I'm trying real hard not to cry. That is so touching and amazing. The bodies of the victims were taken to a Northwest Airlines hangar at the airport, which was converted into a temporary morgue. The NTSB then began trying to determine why an airworthy aircraft flown by an experienced crew had been unable to climb after takeoff. Eyewitnesses reported that Flight 255's takeoff role appeared unusually long and that the aircraft climbed at a steep angle. Witness accounts differed about whether the aircraft's flaps appeared to be extended, and most observers could not determine their actual position. The cockpit voice recorder provided a much more important clue. Investigators found evidence that the crew had failed to complete the taxi checklist. And that mattered because the aircraft's flaps and slats had not been properly configured for takeoff. Flaps and slats alter the shape and aerodynamic characteristics of the wings to generate additional lift at lower speeds. Without them in the proper takeoff position, Flight 255 could not achieve the climb performance that the crew expected. Normally, however, the aircraft had another line of defense against exactly this kind of mistake. If the crew attempted takeoff without the aircraft properly configured, its central oral warning system, or cause, was supposed to provide an audible warning, but the cockpit voice recorder contained no takeoff configuration warning. A stall warning could be heard. A takeoff warning could not. Investigators traced the failure to a loss of electrical power associated with the P40 circuit breaker, which supplied power to the central oral warning system. And then they discovered something interesting. Investigators learned that the MD-80 pilots could become annoyed by repeated takeoff configuration warnings, particularly because the warning system is just really loudly going slats, slats, slats. So they don't like that. It's annoying as fuck. That could occur while taxiing. According to the investigation, pilots were known to pull the P-40 circuit breaker to silence the warning. The area around the breaker showed evidence of frequent handling. This raised an obvious possibility. Had someone intentionally pulled the breaker aboard Flight 255. Unfortunately, the circuit breaker was badly damaged in the crash, so investigators could not determine its pre-impact condition. The NTSB considered three possibilities. The breaker could have been intentionally pulled by the crew or maintenance personnel. It could have been tripped because of a temporary electrical overload without the crew noticing, or it could have remained physically closed while nevertheless failing to supply electrical power to the warning system. Investigators could not determine which had occurred. The NTSB published its final report on May 10, 1988. It determined that the probable cause of the crash was the flight crew's failure to use the taxi checklist to ensure that the flaps and slats were extended for takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the absence of electrical power to the takeoff warning system, which meant the crew never received the warning that should have alerted them that the aircraft was improperly configured. The exact reason that electrical power was absent could not be determined. And there is one last detail that makes the crash even more frustrating. During its investigation, the NTSB conducted simulations of the accident. According to those simulations, even with the flaps and slats retracted, Flight 255 potentially could have cleared the light pole by approximately 80 feet and recovered. So the initial configuration error did not necessarily make the crash inevitable. But on August 16, 1987, a missed checklist item, an improperly configured aircraft, and a warning system that failed to warn pilots converged during the few seconds in which there was almost no room left to correct them. And then, I know, this is not an airplane podcast, I promise, but I do have one more horrific crash that we have to mention. Of all of these three accidents that we're talking about today, American Airlines Flight 191 may be the closest visual parallel to the destruction of the fictional flight 180. American Airlines Flight 191 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Los Angeles. I make that trip fucking constantly. That's terrifying. On the afternoon of May 25th, 1979, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 began its takeoff from runway 32R in Chicago with 258 passengers and 13 crew members aboard. The flight crew, again, was extraordinarily experienced. Captain Walter H. Lux, 53, had approximately 22,000 flight hours and had flown the DC-10 since the aircraft entered service eight years earlier. First Officer James Dillard, 49, had accumulated more than 9,000 hours, while 56-year-old flight engineer Alfred Udovich had approximately 15,000. But shortly after Flight 191 began rotating for takeoff, something happened that none of them could have anticipated. The entire left engine completely detached from the aircraft. Talk about nightmare fuel. The number one engine and its pylons separated from the left wing flipped up and over the top of the wing and crashed onto the runway behind the accelerating DC-10. Inside the cockpit, the crew apparently heard or felt the separation. The cockpit voice recorder captured a thumping sound, believed to have been the engine tearing away, followed by the first officer saying, damn, then the recording stopped. The departing engine had severed its own electrical connection to the aircraft, cutting power to the cockpit voice recorder and several other systems. This also meant that air traffic controllers were unable to warn the crew that they had just watched an engine physically separate from their airplane. And that's an important distinction. The pilots knew they had an emergency. They did not necessarily know that their entire left engine was gone. The DC-10 continued climbing. As it did, witnesses could see a white mist streaming behind the damaged left wing, a mixture of leaking fuel and hydraulic fluid. The aircraft climbed to only about 325 feet above the ground. The pilots were trained to handle an engine failure during takeoff, and First Officer Dillard followed the flight director's commands, raising the nose and reducing the aircraft's speed towards its prescribed engine out takeoff safety speed. Under ordinary circumstances, that would have been exactly what he was supposed to do. But this was not an ordinary engine failure. When the engine tore away, it damaged approximately three feet of the left wing's leading edge and severed hydraulic lines that held the wing's leading edge slats in position. Aerodynamic forces caused the outer slats on the damaged left wing to retract. The slats on the right wing remained extended. The result was an airplane whose two wings now had dramatically different aerodynamic characteristics. And because of the electrical failures caused by the departing engine, the pilots did not receive the warnings that would have told them what was happening to the left wing. As the aircraft slowed to the prescribed engine out speed, the damaged left wing reached its stall speed. The left wing then stalled. Flight 191 began rolling sharply to the left. The bank became steeper and steeper until the DC-10 was partially inverted, reaching approximately 112 degrees of bank. There was another horrific element to this flight. This is why real life is so much more horrific than any movie could be. Listen to this shit. The aircraft had been equipped with a closed circuit television camera positioned behind the captain's shoulder. The camera fed video of the cockpit to the screens in the passenger cabins. So it is very possible that the passengers could see what was happening in front of the aircraft as it rolled and descended toward the ground. They were like watching it on their TV screens in the cabin. I mean, oh my god. Horrific. That's like the worst thing ever, honestly. Whether those screens continued functioning after the electrical failure is unknown. Only 31 seconds passed between the engine separating and the aircraft hitting the ground. Hopefully their eyes were squeezed shut in those 31 seconds and they were not watching the live stream feed of their own demise. Flight 191 crashed approximately 4,600 feet beyond the end of the runway, near a trailer park on the border of De Plain and Mount Prospect, Illinois. The DC-10 was carrying nearly 21,000 gallons of fuel. That's a lot of fuel. When it struck the ground, the aircraft was obliterated by the impact in the massive resulting fire. Debris was hurled into the adjacent trailer park, destroying five trailers and several vehicles, and the aircraft also struck an old airplane storage hangar. Virtually nothing recognizable remained of the aircraft apart from the portions of the engines and the tail section. All 271 people aboard Flight 191 were killed, along with two employees of a nearby repair garage. Two additional people on the ground were severely burned. With 273 fatalities, American Airlines Flight 191 remains the deadliest aviation incident to have occurred in the United States. Images of the final seconds of this crash became some of the most recognizable photographs in aviation disaster history. Just throwing this out there so you know, if any of the cases we talk about have photographs, I will have them all. They will be on social media and my website. An amateur photographer on the ground captured the enormous DC-10 banking almost completely onto its side immediately before impact. The photograph appeared on the front page of the Chicago Tribune two days after the crash and dramatically increased public awareness of the disaster, but investigators still had to answer the most important question. How does an engine simply fall off a commercial airliner during takeoff? The answer wasn't a defect that suddenly developed during Flight 191. The damage had begun earlier, during maintenance. The engine of a DC-10 was attached to the wing by a structure called a pylon. The manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas, recommended removing the engine from the pylon first and then removing the pylon from the wing when performing certain maintenance. American Airlines had developed a different procedure intended to save time. Instead of removing them separately, maintenance crews removed and reinstalled the engine and pylon together as a single unit, using a forklift to support the enormous assembly. The procedure required extremely precise positioning. If the forklift shifted or the engine and pylon assembly moved even slightly while being attached to the wing, enormous forces could be transmitted into the pylon's mounting structure. And that is exactly where investigators found damage. The maintenance procedure had produced structural damage in the pylon attachment area. That damage developed into cracking that remained hidden until Flight 191 accelerated down runway 32R. During rotation, the damaged attachment finally failed. The engine and pylon tore away. And in doing so, they initiated the chain of aerodynamic and system failures that brought down the aircraft 31 seconds later. The NTSB ultimately determined that the probable cause was the asymmetrical stall and resulting roll caused by the uncommanded retraction of the left wing's outboard leading edge slats, combined with the loss of the aircraft's stall warning and slat disagreement warning systems. The underlying damage that allowed the engine and pylon to separate had resulted from American Airlines' improper maintenance procedure. And there is a particularly cruel aspect of this accident. The pilots essentially responded to the emergency correctly. They had trained for the loss of an engine during takeoff, but what they had not trained for was an engine physically tearing itself from the wing, damaging the wing's lift-producing surfaces, and simultaneously disabling all the systems that could have warned them that the normal engine out procedure was now dangerous. They had approximately half a minute to recognize an emergency they could not fully see, diagnose failures they were not warned about, and somehow save an aircraft only a few hundred feet above the ground. They never had the altitude or the time to figure it out. I still think about the opening scene, a final destination when I'm like taking off from a flight. I still think about that shit. Now I will be thinking of all three of these also. So now I have four terrifying things to think about every single flight I get on. I don't know why I do this to myself. Yes, I do. And I'm also doing it to you. Don't you love it here? This podcast should be called Sarah Ruins Fucking Everything. Cause that is more appropriate. I mean, someone has to. It's me. I'll do it. Okay, now that we are all aircraft engineers and pilots and mechanics, after that section, we are moving on. Next up, in the order of movie deaths, we have Todd Wagner, who is strangled by a clothesline in his bathroom. After surviving the explosion of Flight 180, Todd is home alone when a series of seemingly minor accidents turns his bathroom into a deadly trap. Water leaking from the toilet creates a slippery floor. Todd loses his footing and becomes entangled in a clothesline hanging in the bathroom. The line wraps around his neck and tightens as he struggles to free himself, eventually strangling him. Because of the circumstances of which his body is found, Todd's death is initially mistaken as a suicide. Death's plan relies on a chain reaction of otherwise harmless events. The leaking toilet creates a slippery floor, a misplaced bar of soap contributes to Todd losing his footing. The clothesline becomes caught around his neck, and his attempts to escape only tighten it. None of these things would ordinarily be deadly on their own, but together they create a sequence that completes death's design. Looking into real-world deaths similar to this one is particularly sad because many of the accidental bathroom strangulations and asphyxiations involve children. One of the closest cases I found occurred in Brooklyn, New York in 2006 when nine-year-old Gabriela Elias died after apparently becoming accidentally entangled in the hose of a handheld shower head. Gabriella was found shortly after 9 p.m. on her knees in the shower with the hose wrapped around her neck. Her mother attempted CPR, but Gabriella could not be revived. The circumstances were so unusual that investigators initially had to consider multiple possibilities. Police said they did not suspect foul play, but because of the bizarre manner in which Gabriella was found, they had not immediately ruled out suicide while the medical examiner continued investigating her death. According to her family, however, nothing suggested that Gabriella intended to harm herself. She had been healthy and in good spirits and was particularly excited about going to school the following day when she was supposed to have lunch with her teacher as a reward for filling her classroom star chart. Earlier that evening, Gabriella had attempted to take a shower but found the water too cold. She wrapped herself in a towel and returned to the living room to watch television with the family. After her mother checked the water and determined that it had warmed up, Gabriella returned to the bathroom. Approximately 10 minutes later, her mother went to go check on her. She found Gabriella partially kneeling in the bathtub with the flexible shower hose wrapped around her neck. According to Gabriella's grandfather, the hose had not been tied around her neck, and Gabriella was neither fully kneeling nor suspended from it. Even more tragically, her fingers were reportedly wedged between the hose and her neck, suggesting she had been attempting to pull it away. Her family believed that she may have become dizzy or slipped and accidentally had become entangled in the hose. At the time, the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission recorded a small number of deaths involving young children slipping in bathtubs each year, but officials reportedly were not aware of another accidental strangulation death involving a handheld shower hose. It is an incredibly rare accident. But it demonstrates something that makes Todd's death particularly disturbing. A person does not need to be fully suspended for ligature strangulation to become fatal. Something as ordinary as slipping in a bathtub can place the body in a position where the person's own weight maintains enough pressure on the neck to prevent escape. And outside the bathroom, accidental strangulation involving clotheslines has occurred as well, again, disproportionately involving children. In Minneapolis, residents in the McKinley neighborhood discovered a nine-year-old boy with a clothesline around his neck in the backyard of an abandoned house. His feet were reportedly still dragging or touching the ground. Neighbors removed him from the line and performed CPR, but he later died from his injuries. Investigators initially knew only that the boy had apparently been playing with a group of children before he was found. Because of the unusual circumstances, Minneapolis police treated the death cautiously rather than immediately declaring it as an accident. The department's Crimes Against Children unit became involved while investigators waited for the medical examiner to determine exactly how he had died. Police considered whether the children had been playing some kind of game or whether something else had occurred, but cautioned the public against drawing conclusions before the investigation was complete. And once again, the fact that the boy's feet were near the ground did not mean that strangulation was impossible. That is one of the uncomfortable realities behind Todd's otherwise fantastical death scene. You don't necessarily have to be hanging in midair for a ligature around the neck to kill you. Next up in the movie Deaths, we have Terry Cheney, who is struck and killed by a speeding bus. After insisting that death's pattern is nonsense, Terry angrily walks away from the group during an argument. She steps backward into the street and without warning, a speeding city bus barrels through and strikes her, killing her instantly in front of the others. Unlike Todd's death, Terry doesn't require an elaborate chain reaction. Death's design relies almost entirely on false security and perfect timing. Terry believes the idea that Death is pursuing them is ridiculous. She lets her guard down, steps into the street at exactly the wrong moment, and is killed before anyone has time to react. It's also the movie's first demonstration that death doesn't necessarily need to construct some elaborate plot. Sometimes the design is simply putting someone in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong second. Unlike accidental strangulation by a clothesline, there is unfortunately nothing particularly unusual about pedestrians being struck and killed by buses. I found several cases that are eerily similar to Terry's death. In June 2023, 67-year-old Janice Bauer was walking through a designated crosswalk at Congress and Griswold Streets in downtown Detroit. Why is it always Detroit? At the same time, Detroit Department of Transportation bus driver Geraldine Johnson was making a left turn through the intersection. As Johnson accelerated through the turn, the city bus struck and killed Bauer, who had been lawfully crossing the street. But what made the case particularly disturbing was what investigators discovered afterward. This was not the first pedestrian that Johnson had struck and killed while driving a city bus. Eight years earlier, in 2015, Johnson had struck and killed another pedestrian, Joey Shinnis, under similar circumstances. Despite that previous fatality, Johnson had eventually been permitted to return to driving a city bus. The fuck? Following Bauer's death, Johnson was charged, and in 2024 she pleaded no contest to moving violations causing death. She was sentenced to one year in jail, followed by 24 months of probation, and her commercial driving privileges were permanently revoked. I mean, they should have been the first time. Also, one year, and you've killed two people? That's fucked. Another case occurred on Christmas Day 2024. Ugh, I feel bad for the family. Any tragedy that happens on a holiday is so sad for any family members and friends. I hate that. Okay, Christmas Day 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 53-year-old Milwaukee County bus driver Montrell Farm was driving along Villard Avenue when his bus struck and killed 79-year-old Robert Clemens, who was on foot. But investigators had something in this case that made it possible to see what was happening immediately before the crash. The bus's onboard surveillance footage. Prosecutors said the footage showed Farm repeatedly closing his eyes and nodding off behind the wheel while the bus traveled at dangerous speeds. The bus eventually veered from its path, struck Clemens, and then crashed into two parked vehicles. Farm later pleaded no contest to homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle, and in March 2026 he was sentenced to two years in state prison. And in California, a Fresno Area Express transit bus struck and killed pedestrian Paul Silva in 2020. The bus was being driven by Rudy Aldorett, who failed to stop or yield as Silva crossed an intersection in the early morning hours. The front of the bus struck Silva. But unlike the other drivers, Aldorette didn't stop after hitting him. He drove away from the scene and was later caught and convicted of vehicular manslaughter and felony hit and run. None of these deaths required the absurd series of coincidences we usually associate with Final Destination. They've required a pedestrian, a massive vehicle, and a matter of seconds, which is exactly what makes Terry's death so effective. There's no elaborate setup, there's barely even a warning. She's there and then she's not. Next is Valerie Luton, who is impaled by a kitchen knife after a catastrophic chain reaction inside her home. Following Todd and Terry's deaths, Valerie becomes increasingly shaken by the possibility that death really is targeting the survivors of Flight 180. While she's alone at home, a series of seemingly minor mishaps transforms her kitchen into a death trap. A cracked mug begins leaking alcohol onto her computer monitor, causing it to short circuit and explode. The resulting fire spreads through the house, and Valerie is injured by flying debris, but she survives. Then, while trying to escape the burning house, another explosion knocks her to the floor beneath a knife rack. A kitchen knife falls point down onto the back of a chair directly above her. The chair eventually collapses and drives the knife into her chest. Valerie's death returns to the elaborate chain reaction we saw with Todd, but on a much larger scale. Fire, alcohol, electrical equipment, explosions, and ordinary kitchen objects all become pieces of the sequence. And Valerie repeatedly survives. She escapes one hazard, only for that escape to move her into position for the next, establishing one of the franchise's central rules. Avoiding one part of Death's design doesn't necessarily save you. It may simply move you into position for the next one. So if y'all remember the scene, it's pretty batshit crazy. There's a lot happening. Obviously, I did not find someone who spilled alcohol on a computer, started a house fire, survived an explosion, and then was impaled by a kitchen knife through a chair. I mean, if it existed, I would have found it, but no. But that does not mean that I didn't find anything. So instead of trying to recreate this entire sequence, I'm going to break Valerie's death down into individual components: a kitchen appliance, an explosion, and accidental impalement by kitchen knives. And somehow, reality still managed to be fucking bizarre. In June of 2017, 33-year-old French fitness blogger Rebecca Berger was killed in a freak accident involving a pressurized whipped cream dispenser at her home in Mulhouse, France. While Berger was using the dispenser, the pressurized device catastrophically failed. Part of the dispenser was violently propelled into her chest. The force of the impact caused severe injuries and cardiac arrest. Berger was taken to the hospital but died the following day. Her family subsequently used her social media accounts to warn others about the defective whipped cream dispensers, writing that tens of thousands of potentially dangerous siphons remained in circulation. And Berger's accident wasn't the first warning. The French consumer magazine, 60 million di consumatos, had reportedly, that's my French accent, had reportedly been warning consumers about exploding cream siphons for years and had documented approximately 60 incidents involving various models, not like Instagram models, models of whipped cream dispensers. Reported injuries included broken teeth, fractures, tinnitus, and even the loss of an eye. One previous victim suffered six broken ribs and a fractured sternum after being struck by an exploding dispenser. The problem here involved pressurization. Some dispensers used nitrous oxide cartridges to pressurize the container and force the cream through the nozzle. Listen, these aren't the aerosol ones you buy at the grocery store. We're talking about the kitchen grade ones, the ISI containers that you see on like Top Chef. It's like a stainless steel container and you screw on the top, and then there's the little nitrous oxide cartridge thing that you screw on the top. So this cartridge is defective, and all of that pressure, instead of forcing the cream out of the nozzle, is shooting it into people's bodies and apparently eyeballs. According to consumer warnings, defective components on certain models could fail to withstand that internal pressure. When they failed, pieces of the dispenser could essentially become projectiles. Some affected products had been recalled, but many apparently remained in people's homes. One manufacturer reportedly sold approximately 160,000 defective dispensers, while only about 25,000 were returned during the recall. So Rebecca Berger was killed by something that sounds like it belongs in Final Destination: a whipped cream dispenser exploding in her kitchen and launching part of itself into her chest. As for the kitchen explosion itself in the movie, one of the most significant kitchen-related cases I found occurred at JJ's restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri in 2013. On February 19th, an outside drilling crew accidentally damaged an underground natural gas line near the restaurant. Gas escaped and accumulated inside the building. Eventually, because it's a fucking restaurant with a kitchen, it found an ignition source. The resulting explosion devastated JJ's, collapsing much of the restaurant and injuring numerous people. 46-year-old restaurant employee Megan Kramer was inside when the building exploded. A coworker who became trapped beneath the debris managed to free himself and later recalled hearing Kramer calling for help. Her body was recovered from the rubble the following day. The Jackson County Medical Examiner determined that Kramer died from thermal burn injuries, which is fucking horrible. I feel so bad for her. So we have our kitchen appliance, we have our explosion, and now we need the kitchen knife. And unfortunately, there are several real cases involving one extremely specific household hazard: an open dishwasher filled with knives pointing upward. In 2001, a man in his mid-50s was visiting his mother's home in Vernon, British Columbia. Terribly sad sidebar? He was there for his father's funeral. While cleaning his mother's kitchen, he reportedly tripped over the lowered door of an open dishwasher. He fell forward onto kitchen knives that had been loaded point up in the cutlery basket and was fatally impaled. I uh fucking feel so bad for his mother. She just lost her husband, and then like two days later, her son dies in a freak accident. That is some rough shit. Then in 2003, an extraordinarily similar accident occurred in Airdrie, Scotland. Stop trying to do accents. Airdrie, Scotland. A 31-year-old woman slipped in her kitchen and fell onto an open dishwasher. Again, knives had been placed inside with their blades pointing upward. She was impaled by the knives. Another person in the household called emergency services and she was taken to Monkland's General Hospital, but her injuries were fatal. Police described her death as a tragic accident. Do you do y'all do y'all put your shit point up in the dishwasher? I mean, it just seems so dangerous. I've never in my life been like, let me just stick the s the butcher knife face up, pointy side up, just for fun, and we'll see what happens. No. Not that I'm blaming these people. I've just I've never even heard of that. And then this keeps happening. So we are not even done yet. 12-year-old Mark Rockingham from Kettering, Northamptonshire, also died after apparently falling onto an open dishwasher while reaching across it toward a cupboard. A knife punctured his chest and severed an artery. Paramedics responded after his family called emergency services, but Mark later died at the hospital. That's so sad. Three different people, three ordinary kitchens, and the same incredibly mundane object transformed into something lethal simply because the dishwasher door was open and the knives were pointing upward. Which brings Valerie's completely ridiculous-looking death slightly closer to reality. No, I didn't find someone who survived a computer explosion, crawled through a burning house, then had a knife driven into their chest by a chair. But people have been killed by exploding kitchen equipment, people have died in catastrophic kitchen and restaurant explosions, and people have actually fallen onto ordinary kitchen knives and been fatally impaled. Death's design may be fictional, the hazards are absolutely not. Next up is Billy Hitchcock, who is decapitated by a flying piece of metal after a train derailment. After Alex seemingly interrupts Death's plan and saves Clear, who the fuck is Clear? I don't know. From being hit by a speeding train, Billy believes the nightmare is finally over. But as the survivors begin to relax, the passing train strikes debris laying across the tracks. A jagged piece of metal is launched through the air directly toward Billy. It slices through his neck and decapitates him instantly. Billy's death relies on delayed consequences and false relief. Alex successfully prevents Clear's death, seemingly interrupting the sequence. But saving one intended victim doesn't stop death's design, it simply changes what happens next. The passing train sets another chain of events into motion, transforming an ordinary piece of debris into a lethal projectile at exactly the right moment. And once again, the survivors learn that successfully escaping one danger doesn't necessarily mean the danger is over. This is another death that looks ridiculous on screen. Surely, this has not happened in real life. Well, not exactly. But the NTSB, those bitches, remember them. Their archives contain two extraordinary accidents involving trains, metal, and fatal decapitation. And the first one is disturbingly close. In December of 2022, 43-year-old conductor trainee Walter James Griffin III was riding inside the cab of a moving Norfolk Southern freight train in Bessemer, Alabama. It was dark and the train was traveling approximately 54 miles per hour. On an adjacent track sat another freight car. Loaded onto that car was a large, heavy piece of angle iron, and it was sticking out. The metal beam had been improperly secured and was protruding horizontally from the stationary freight car directly into the clearance path of the moving locomotive. By the time the engineer could see the obstruction, there was no time to stop. The locomotive continued toward it at 54 miles per hour. The protruding metal beam crashed through the locomotive's cab window and decapitated Griffin. I mean, this is horrifyingly close. It's not a piece of metal launched by the train like in Billy's death, but instead the train itself carried Griffin directly into the path of a stationary piece of protruding metal. The fundamental elements are almost identical. Train, unexpected metal obstruction, window, instant decapitation. And unlike some of the freak accidents we've discussed, Griffin's family strongly objected to describing his death as a freak accident. His widow later filed a wrongful death lawsuit, and her attorney argued that the beam should never have been protruding from the freight car in the first place. He described Griffin's death as preventable, arguing that proper inspection of the load should have identified the hazard before the freight car was allowed onto the track. So while the mechanics of Griffin's death sound like something written for final destination, his Family's position is that there was nothing random about the circumstances that allowed it to happen. The second case we have takes us back to Chicago on October 30th, 1972. You remember? What were you doing on that day? I was 112 years old, just a little baby vampire out murdering people. That's what I was doing. It was morning rush hour and an Illinois Central Commuter Train was approaching the 27th Street station near Michael Reese Hospital. The train was unusually crowded. Its driver approached the station too quickly and overshot the platform by approximately 600 feet. Rather than continue to the next station, the crew decided to reverse the train back toward the platform. That decision placed the train into a dangerous flaw in the railway's signaling system. The train had traveled far enough beyond the station that the signaling system registered it as having left that section of the track. When it began reversing, however, traveling backward past the signal did not register that it had re-entered the previous section. As a result, the system allowed another commuter train, train 720, to approach the station on the same track. And train 720 was moving really fucking fast. Investigators later estimated that it had been approaching at approximately 50 to 55 miles per hour before the emergency braking system was employed. Moments later it slammed into the rear of the reversing train at approximately 44 miles per hour. The collision produced a horrifying phenomenon, often described as a can opener effect. The frame of the striking train drove beneath and into the double-decker rail car ahead of it. As the trains telescoped into one another, the collision ripped through the lower portion of the passenger car, tearing apart its floor and metal walls. Sheets of crumpling and shearing metal were driven through the occupied passenger compartment. The result was catastrophic. Passengers suffered crushing injuries, traumatic amputations, and there were also multiple decapitations. 45 people were killed and 332 were injured. And incredibly, the death toll might have even been higher if the crash had happened almost anywhere else. It occurred immediately outside two major hospitals, Michael Reese Hospital and nearby Mercy Hospital, allowing medical personnel to respond almost immediately and injured passengers to be transported an extremely short distance for treatment. The NTSB investigation eventually found that there wasn't one simple cause. This is a lot like the movies because this was a chain of stupid shit leading up to one huge, horrible catastrophe. This was not just because the first train had dramatically overshot the station and then reversed. So it did do that. And then the signaling system failed to properly account for the train moving backward into the previous block. The following train was traveling faster than it should have been. Also, on top of that, it was a gray overcast morning, so visibility was really terrible. And then the train in front of it, the front train, was gray colored. They painted it gray and black. So it was a gray and black morning, and the train was gray and black. And it is reported that this train blended unusually eerily well into the surroundings. So like you couldn't even see it. And the driver of the approaching train misunderstood the significance of a yellow signal that should have warned him to expect a stop ahead. The NTSB ultimately described a collision produced by multiple failures converging at once rather than one isolated mistake. Also, fun fact the dude driving the second train really fast, he was like, oh shit, at the last second, jumped back into the passenger section, and he survived. Anyways, but yeah, so all of these failures happening at once or one after another sounds a little familiar at this point, because Billy Hitchcock isn't killed simply because there is a train. He's killed because several individually survivable circumstances align at exactly the right moment and turn a piece of metal into a blade. And while the movie exaggerates the physics of this, the underlying idea isn't entirely fictional. When enormous amounts of kinetic energy are transferred through trains and metal structures, seal can buckle, shear, and tear through occupied spaces with devastating force. It just usually doesn't detach itself into a perfectly aimed flying guillotine. And that is it for part one. Uh part two, I think, is really long. There's a whole fucking derailment, whole side quest in that one. This one feels short. I'm it's it's kind of nice. But yeah, the other ones are gonna be a bit longer. But that's it. That's all the deaths in the first movie and all the real life cases I could find. And now I'm gonna tell you something fucking adorable just because I want to keep you from being depressed. It is time for nature. It's fucking cool. There are more than a few horror stories and movies about the discovery of some strange, presumably lifeless artifact that springs to life, usually to wreak havoc. Look at the movies The Relic, The Thing, The Mummy. Something like this actually happened once in the real world, except it didn't turn into a bloodbath, and it was actually pretty adorable. In 1850, an exhibit from Egypt that had been in the British Museum for years and that had been labeled throughout all of this time as dead returned to life. It was not a mummified pharaoh, unfortunately, just in case that's what any of you were thinking. It was a snail. In 1846, a lawyer donated a bunch of snail shells he had collected in Egypt and Greece to the British Museum in London. Two of these belonged to the snail of the desert, also known as Eramina Desatorum. Curators fixed the shells to pieces of cardboard with some adhesive, labeled and dated them, and added them to the museum's mollusk collection. It stayed that way for four years. Four years later, zoologist and shell expert William Baird was examining some other specimens in the same case when he noticed a, quote, thin, glassy-looking covering, end quote, that had spread over the opening of one of the desert snail shells. This is like a fucking tongue twister. The covering was an epiphram, a mucous membrane that some snails build to keep themselves from drying out. It appeared to Baird to have been recently formed, leading him, as science writer Grant Allen put it in 1889, to, quote, the suspicion that perhaps a living animal might be temporarily immured within that papery tomb. End quote. We need to talk like that again. I say it every time. Baird knew that this kind of mucus instead suggests the snail was in a deep torpor. In the desert, snails have to deal with extreme heat, extreme cold, and extreme dryness. During the day, they shut down, sealing their shell either with a mucous membrane, an epiphram, or a special plate built into the shell. That short period of time, just during the day, that torpor is called an estivation. Snails can also manage a much longer hibernation. The snail seals itself all winter and even slows its heartbeat almost all the way down so it doesn't need to feed. Most slugs die during the winter, leaving just their eggs behind to create the new generation. But the snail survives the winter just fine this way, even bearing temperatures of 40 below zero. The Iramina Desatorum specimen hadn't awoken from its hibernation, perhaps because the climate in England never gets as warm as the Egyptian spring. Baird unstuck the shell from its cardboard tablet and placed it in a basin of warm water. After a few moments, a head popped out of the shell, surveying its new home. The snail was quite alive and began to move around. Baird moved the snail to a glass jar and fed it a diet of cabbage leaves, which he said it preferred over lettuce or, quote, any other kind of food I have yet tried. End quote. He even gave the snail some company after its long lonely dormacy and placed another snail, Helix Hortonsis, in its jar. The pair, he wrote, seemed to live quite harmoniously together. As the snail adjusted to active life again, it became a minor celebrity and sat for a portrait by the museum's zoological artist for inclusion in a book on molluscs. It continued to live under Baird's care and spent most of its time repairing the lip of its shell, which had become broken before it came to London. About a year later, it became torpid again and died. This time, for sure, in 1952, leaving behind an unusual museum tale. And that is it for today's episode. I hope you had fun. Is that the right word? No, absolutely not. None of this was fun. I hope you found it interesting. I hope you liked the case studies I came up with. But of course, our hearts go out to the victims and their families, whether it was a train crash in the 70s or a freak accident in 2006. It's still devastating and so sad. But yeah, I hope you liked this weird little brain child that I came up with, and I hope you're ready for more because holy shit, we got a lot more to go, and they are all really interesting. With that, I'm sick of talking now and I'm gonna leave. But I love you. Okay. Bye. Full source notes are available at mistressofhecabpodcast.com as well as photos pertaining to each episode. Follow along on Instagram for all the insane and gory photos at Mistress of the Macab Podcast. Please leave a five-star rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps the show grow, and I will love you forever. And tell a friend if you even have any. Bonus content is available at patreon.com or on Apple Podcast Subscriptions. I'm just one young teenage girl writing, researching, producing, editing, and recording the show. Your support goes a long way. If you have topic ideas, questions, comments, animal facts, or unsettling stories you'd like to share, email me at mistress of the macabre podcast at gmail.com.