What was your generations way people used to stupidly get themselves killed?

35 comments

1. Lawn Darts… Played the correct way where you throw it straight up and the last one to run away wins.

2. [Jumping into this quarry](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/empire-state-quarry) located in Bloomington. There are two lower rock formations that aren’t too high up that are relatively safe, though the rocks within the water can shift and still be dangerous. But the high point jump, as demonstrated in the movie [Breaking Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmYs0S-6ry4&pp=ygUUQnJlYWtpbmcgQXdheSBxdWFycnk%3D), has led to several deaths and injuries.

   I visited myself and even swam in it, but none of my group did the high point jump. In addition to the dangeers of the water/quarry itself, it was also close to active quarry sites and much of the path leading up to the quarry was used for partying and drugs. Lots of broken glass and needles near the path, dangerous if you were wearing sandals or flip flops.

3. Biking or skateboarding without a helmet.

4. Late 90s, copying WWF moves and putting your pal Jimmy into a wheelchair doing a tombstone

5. Joining a gang

6. I remember neighborhood laser tag being rumored to be a great way to get yourself shot by the cops. Didn’t stop us from having epic laser tag battles up and down our street though lol. This was back in the mid/late 80s with the black/red stripe laser tag guns.

7. Autoerotic asphyxiation

8. Car surfing maybe?

9. Drunk driving or being hit by one as well as driving too fast. Drugs usually took awhile.

10. Going by the people who died at our school when I was in High School:

    * Underage drinking and driving
    * Drug overdoses
    * Hunting accidents

11. Opioids and 4Loko.

12. Jackass was big when I was in high school. People I went to school with would make Jackass videos before even YouTube was a thing. Now, I don’t know of anybody who died doing that and I, personally, wasn’t involved, but I do know a guy who got a concussion trying to jump a gocart over a pond and a guy who got a broken collar bone being shoved into an outside wall of the local Wal-Mart in a shopping cart.

    Also, we used to swim in toxic sink holes.

13. Not my generation, but my great-grandfathers brother climbed a light pole at age 12 to put his hat on top to impress a girl. He got electrocuted and died, and my great grandfather(13) had to climb the pole to carry his brothers body down.

14. Drinking and driving

    Skating without a helmet

    Replicating Jackass stunts in the backyard 😎

15. I don’t know if anyone died because of the [cinnamon challenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_challenge).

    But it sure fucked people up.

16. 1970s and 80s: drunk driving.

17. Not wearing a seatbelt.

18. The choking game was big when I was in HS. Stupid 16-year-old boys would choke each other for fun in the hallways constantly.

19. Born in 88. Mostly prescription drugs and suicide

20. Millennial here-people in my generation mostly die from alcoholism or drug overdose. I so admire gen z and younger because they have a way healthier attitude about substances and they don’t glorify getting fucked up.

21. Car accidents, especially drunk driving. When I was growing up (born 1965) the drinking age was 18 and there wasn’t that much concern about DUI. Plus the cars themselves were pretty unsafe: seat belts weren’t required to be worn, shoulder belts weren’t universal in cars, airbags were science fiction, and to top it all off suspension, tires and brakes sucked.

22. I’m GenX, we were left alone in houses for hours on end from about the age 8 or 9. Sooo many things could have killed us during those hours.

23. Texting and walking…..off a cliff. True story.

24. Millennial. Pills -> Heroin -> Fentanyl

    It got to the point that I started forgetting people so I started putting post it notes in my yearbook. It goes Car Crash, OD, OD, OD, OD, OD, OD, Suicide, OD, OD, infection from sharing a needle, OD, OD, suicide, OD, OD, OD, heart condition. My graduating class had like 200 kids mind you

25. Born is 67. Getting in the plain white van. Helping the neighbor move something in the basement. Hotch hiking.
    We were abducted so much that they put missing kids picture’s on milk cartons.

26. My area it’s always drowning because I live on the shores of Lake Michigan. Every time I hear a helicopter, I think “damn, who drowned now?” Because a sky search is the most common use of helicopters in my area to try to recover bodies. When you hear them, you just know deep down they’re already dead and there’s no hope. All you can hope for is that the lake coughs the body up sooner rather than later.

27. DUI. It used to be a slap on the wrist, or the cop would threaten to call your dad if you didn’t go straight home. The legal consequences started to get more serious in the late 80’s and 90’s, but a lot of kids drank and drove and died before that. The drinking age was lower too in many places, so that just made it worse.

28. Where I grew up, a lot of kids seemed to end up dead by swimming in places they shouldn’t. An old cistern. By jumping off an old railroad trestle into the river. Night skinny dipping at the lake.

29. Drinking and driving cars

    Drinking and driving ATVs

    Drug overdoses

30. Everyone who had a trampoline broke at least their arm once. I knew a girl who was trying to jump from her trampoline to her pool and broke her neck and drowned, but was found in time to be revived. She was in a wheel chair for life.

31. A guy in my class fell (or was pushed ) off a dam

32. I’m a Zoomer and people bring up the tidepod challenge a lot; but there are a surprising amount of random TikTok trends that have gotten people killed. One I heard about recently was the 4 teens killed by jumping off boats for social media. Or the “angel of death” challenge.

33. I’ll go with the stupid shit I’ve done. Born in the early 90s.

    Put on a few jumpsuits and was pulled behind a 4 wheeler. In the grass mostly.

    Roman candle wars. Still have that scar.

    Blow things up in fire pits. Still have that scar too.

    Rolling down a hill in a cardboard box. That one hurt.

    Almost went down that same hill in a tractor tire. Mom stopped that one cause she caught me.

    Doing wheelies with my dads zero turn mower. Blades running. He laughed when he caught me but made it clear I wasn’t to do it again.

    Working on getting my dads tractor to do wheelies. He got real mad with that one.

    Got ran over. Won’t go into detail on that one as it’s very identifying. Just call it redneck shit.

    Making a makeshift firework mortar launcher and almost blowing myself and a few friends up. It was beautiful when it worked.

    There’s more but lets just say I thoroughly enjoyed the Jackass movies.

34. Huffing

35. The Viet Cong and NVA.

    Enlisting in the Army or Marines and asking to be sent to Viet Nam. You were usually sent straight there via priority express anyway, but looking forward with great anticipation to going over was often an indication that the poor grunt was likely to have an abbreviated service record.

    Also (assuming he survived) re-enlisting for subsequent tours. Because hey, they didn’t kill me this last time, so I must be on a lucky streak, right?

    Being a college student in northeast Ohio in May, 1970.