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Even though I'd be too chicken to commit suicide, your statement made me think the same thing. Over the years some of these people committed suicide but wanted their death to be listed as accidental. Insurance money is a good reason.
I don’t care at all about insurance money, but if it’s a) impossible to survive a fall from the Grand Canyon and b) most likely to be a quick and instant death, then it really doesn’t sound like a bad suicide option to me. At least you’ll get to see some nice scenery first.
People seem to think that since it's a national park run by nanny government, they can do as they please with no consequences, but even a "nanny" government is powerless to stop fools from running in.
Obviously, the solution here is for government to step in, regulate these dangerous areas "for the public's own good", perhaps put a big wall in front of the entire area to keep people safe.
If people are stupid enough to go to the edge of the canyon, turn their backs and try to take selfies, that's Darwinism at work!
The canyon is over 270 miles long, not counting side canyons on both sides
We need more people winning Darwin awards. We spend all this wasteful money to thwart people from claiming Darwin awards and allowing them to breed and create more future Darwin award contestants.
Several years ago I went to the GC with my 80-year old dad. Both of us were regularly surprised and frightened by how many people insisted on standing right on the edge for "just the right selfie." I'm actually surprised that there aren't a lot more people falling to their deaths.
For the last several years we've been taking road trips and visiting the National Parks. We are repeatedly seeing people practicing dangerous and destructive behavior all around us. We're old enough to get in free so it goes without saying that we have noticed a marked change from the more safety-oriented behavior of decades ago.
Only last summer in Yellowstone we saw many people getting out of their cars to approach a bear for pictures and a woman walking through a sulfur spring with her dog in tow. In both cases these people were within steps of signs warning about the behavior they were doing.
I can only wonder if human beings are losing their sense of self-preservation. Seems everyone's an exception to the rules these days.
Perhaps younger people have been lulled into a false sense of security in the wild by their disconnection from the natural world.
Several years ago I went to the GC with my 80-year old dad. Both of us were regularly surprised and frightened by how many people insisted on standing right on the edge for "just the right selfie." I'm actually surprised that there aren't a lot more people falling to their deaths.
I read a True Crime book one time about a man from Seattle, who killed 2 of his wives, for insurance money, with his camera. Both of his wives were afraid of heights, but he sweet-talked, charmed them into hiking up a mountain with a cliff. "Honey, just take a few steps back, it'll make for a better picture!" And down they went! Suffering all those bruises, broken bones, it would be difficult for a homicide detective to discover if she had been pushed.
He got caught the third time, except the next time he picked a wife that couldn't swim, and she took her out on a boat and deliberately cap-sized it. But there were witnesses this time, and he was shooting for a $350k life insurance settlement.
Could it be, in one or 2 of these falls, it was a camera that killed them?
Obviously, the solution here is for government to step in, regulate these dangerous areas "for the public's own good", perhaps put a big wall in front of the entire area to keep people safe.
No one - no one - is saying any such thing.
But, hey, enjoy flailing away at that strawman you've created!
(some people are basically incapable of refraining from injecting their own political obsessions into everything, even things that have not one iota to do with politics)
The book is called Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon by Ghiglieri & Myers and it's a fascinating book.
I noticed a lot of the themes in this book were the disorientation brought on by the views. People think that side of the canyon is "just over there" when just over there is actually 3-5 miles in a how many hundred foot decline, a long walk, and then an incline, in extreme temps.
Everywhere you go in Yellowstone there are warning signs written in dozens of languages: Don't approach the animals. Stay on the path around the hot springs.
Yet when we were there, people were strolling up to bison and elk as if it were a petting zoo.
One day we were there, there were three different deaths. One was a German guy who fell off a horse during a escorted ride. But the other two were deaths from animal encounters.
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