Cats can be deadly, and probably not for the reason you think.

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

We also used replies from these two threads.

NOTE: This post contains mentions of suicide and disordered eating.

"You are more likely to be killed by this than by a shark."

"In high school, a kid named Garrett kicked the vending machine glass in the cafeteria because his Doritos got stuck. The glass broke and ended up embedded in his leg, leaving a bloody mess reminiscent of a horror movie. He ended up having to get his leg amputated, along with being expelled from the only public high school in a 50-mile radius. The medics that arrived on the scene were stunned."

"My partner had heat exhaustion last summer — watching the signs happen irl was scary, and I didn't put it together til he started throwing up, but it was textbook: Confusion, aggression, heavy sweating, super thirsty, loss of balance. Thankfully, I was there and was able to put two and two together, but it was really scary how it seemed that he was just tired from working on his bike for a few hours and really upset that something wasn't working right, versus being scary close to having full-blown heat stroke. Late 20s and totally healthy — it can absolutely happen to anyone "

"My brother is an ER doctor. He drilled it into my head when the kids were younger to never, EVER, let them play with balloons that weren't already blown up. That and trampolines keep him in pretty good business."

"They can also bite balloons that are already blown up and create a similar problem."

"I was *never* allowed to play with balloons when I was a kid. My family knew a boy that had inhaled a balloon and survived— he had such extensive brain damage that he could no longer walk, talk, move, etc. I can't remember his name, but my aunts and uncles would always reference him by name whenever we kids wanted balloons. Now I'm hyper vigilant around kids with balloons, especially my nieces and nephews."

"My dad dived into murky water. It had a piece of rebar (think iron rod) underwater like a spike...he ended up with a glancing blow to the shoulder. Literally inches away from a Final Destination moment. (He's fine)."

"A coworker I had at an old job was drinking and out boating with friends. Supposedly, they parked the boat near a shore/cove. He dove in headfirst off the boat. It was extremely shallow. He is now paralyzed from the waist down. So wild."

Anorexia in particular has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Five percent of people diagnosed with anorexia die within four years of diagnosis, and up to 20% die with long-term anorexia over the decades. Anorexia can lead to organ damage and has an increased risk of suicide. Bulimia and other eating disorders can also lead to death, but anorexia is the most deadly. 

Shoveling snow is hard work, and the cold conditions only make it more strenuous. Your blood pressure also increases due to your body's attempts to protect you from the cold; this puts strain on the heart. Perfectly healthy people can have heart attacks after or during shoveling snow, but the risk is higher if you already have heart issues or high blood pressure. The recommendation? Either hire someone else to do it, use a snow blower, or take frequent breaks and dress warmly (though remove layers if you get hot).

"After a certain age, a fall is a death sentence."

"I'm a med student: As we age, we lose bone density (some more than others), and over time, the neck of our femurs cannot withstand the weight of our bodies, and they will break, leading to a fall. "

And: "As you age, if you want to stay healthy, you have to be moving all the time. When you break a hip, you're bedridden for a while, and some people's bodies just start shutting down. Then there's the risk of blood clots from surgeries. And as you age, surgeries are much higher risk. It's a lot of factors all at once."

"My dad was 78 when he broke his hip. I forget what the numbers were when I looked, but I think it was 80% mortality within a year. My dad made it through surgery, and then about three weeks of recovery before it got him."

If you're worried about this happening to you: "Barbell lifts like squats and deadlifts have been shown to maintain or increase bone density, even in geriatrics. You don't have to be Eddie Hall or anything, but be consistent."

"A co-worker's husband fell off a deck at home during a social. Ended up dying. Heads are fragile."

"A guy in my neighborhood fell playing football with some kids; he hit his head and died of internal bleeding. He was around 30."

"My buddy's dad died in high school, falling off a razor scooter in the garage."

"I have heard of three people dying from falling down the stairs in my 29 years of life thus far. I feel as if that is more common than people expect."

And: "Walking down the stairs with your hands in your pockets." (So you can't catch yourself if you fall.)

Pro tip: "When you go down the stairs, flip your hand on the banister and hold it from underneath. In case you trip, you can stop yourself from falling."

"I'm 49, and I realized a few months ago that I can have at most one more Maine Coon after my five-year-old reaches the end of his life because he's big and strong enough to rock me on my heels when he plows into me. 20ish years from now, that could mean being knocked over and breaking a hip."

"I don't have stairs in my house (I'm in a suite that’s one floor) and every time I trip over my cat, I think, 'thank goodness I don’t have stairs.' Once, I was carrying a glass of red wine, and he ran in front of me. Red wine everywhere."

"I'm a Registered Dental Assistant, and I've been really scared for more patients than you'd believe over my 36 years in the field. We sent two different ppl directly to the ER when we saw them last year"

"One of the ways dental infections kill is by spreading to the soft tissue of the neck. In some situations, this literally causes the airway to close, and if you don't get sent to the ER right away, they won't be able to secure an airway before you choke to death."

"This is if someone has a dangerous dental infection (abscess). In this case, we send them to the ER for IV antibiotics. The last person we sent had to go for IV antibiotics every eight hours for three days. Then he was taking antibiotics in pill form for another 7 to 10 days."

"I came pretty close last year. Two tiny fragments of wisdom tooth in the back of my jaw got infected. Jaw locked shut. I was actually taking prescribed antibiotics for about five days, but they were doing nothing. Went into ER, and they were like, 'Hey, sit here while we go wake up some dental surgeons. Have some morphine while you wait.'"

"Also, tooth decay can affect your heart heavily!"

"It's literally one of the most dangerous things women can do in their lifetime"

"The US has the highest maternal death rate of any developed nation, according to the Commonwealth Fund and the latest data from the World Health Organization. Yikes."

"Maternal hemorrhage. I am routinely shocked by expectant mothers who want to give birth at home, arguing that they can always transfer to the hospital if there's a problem.' No, no, they can't. If the wrong type of bleeding begins, they'll be dead before the ambulance gets there."

"There are cases, too, where people take Tylenol to kill themselves, then wake up fine. They regret the attempted suicide, and out of embarrassment, they don’t tell anyone what they did, and end up dying of liver failure later because they think the Tylenol didn’t work. when in reality it just hadn’t killed them yet."

"Doesn't take much either. I work in EMS, and the lowest dose I've heard someone dying from was 5000mg of paracetamol (non-US version of Tylenol), which is 10 tablets. She took them, regretted her decision later, and called an ambulance. She died a few days later."

"The folks who don't realize so many OTC medicines are the same drugs in various combinations make me so nervous.

People taking DayQuil, Theraflu, and Tylenol all at once, thinking it'll help them feel better, not realizing they just took a *triple dose* of acetaminophen."

As with men, women experience pain or discomfort in their chest, jaw, shoulder, upper back, abdomen, and one or both arms, along with shortness of breath, nausea or vomiting, lightheadedness, fatigue, and sweating. However, women often attribute some symptoms to hot flashes, the regular effects of exercise, acid reflux, or illness. Women also may experience upper back pressure (described as being akin to a rope tied around your back) and more symptoms in the back/shoulder area compared to men, along with anxiety, more extreme fatigue, and an upset stomach. Their symptoms may seem more like indigestion, and might include more subtle chest pain or even no chest pain at all.

"A small cut on my husband's leg; he ignored it. Sepsis, then kidney failure. Ten days in the ER couldn't save him."

"Had a family friend who fell off a ladder and lost a finger that got caught on the way down. He would have died if his (at the time EMT, now doctor) daughter hadn't seen him fall and been able to stop the bleeding and call it in."

"My best friend's husband's dad died this way. Was in the yard doing something, fell off the ladder, and landed facedown in a very shallow puddle of water. No one found him until too late."

"I was on an Amtrak train that hit someone. We stopped for about three hours while the emergency crews responded.

Apparently, it was a guy walking down the tracks with headphones on.

I tried to look up a news article about it a few days later, and there were so many search results for train deaths in my area I couldn't even find this particular incident."

"My friend's father got into a verbal altercation with someone. They pushed him. He fell and hit his head on the pavement. The lights went out immediately, and he was brain-dead. They had to take him off life support, not even 12 hours later. So sad every time I think about it. He was a good man."

"I know someone who got into a fight, and when he hit the guy, he fell back and hit his head and killed him. He got six years in jail and got hooked on heroin. He's dead now"

"Man, one of the biggest wake-up calls for me was when I started to pay attention to just how many people were on their phones as I passed by them on the road. Truly wild. I'm in LA, and it's probably 2/3 people I drive past have their phone in one hand."

"Or looking at your display, talking on the phone. Any distracted driving or brief look away. I knew a guy who leaned over to change a CD. permanently paralyzed."

"My brother-in-law died because his dad fell asleep at the wheel. Left behind his pregnant wife. I will never drive drowsy."

"Once you fill your lungs completely with helium, the alveoli can no longer process oxygen correctly. So while it's all fun and games to have that squeaky voice, one super deep breath can end your life."

"I actually nearly did this at my auntie's wedding reception. I took like six helium balloons and inhaled them all to see how high I could make my voice. I walked up to a family member and was gonna say something, but she looked horrified and shouted 'your lips are blue,' and that's the last thing I remember before waking up, and the music had stopped, and the lights were on."

"I tried them once in high school. Two weeks later, a kid at another school died from using them THE FIRST TIME.

A couple of weeks after that, I was offered them again. I told them fuck no and asked if they hadn't heard about the dead kid. They looked at me and seriously replied, 'Oh yeah, it's okay. He used the wrong brand. He used the blue bottle, instead of the purple bottle.'"

"My adoptive brother huffed air duster, and it killed him. My mom and his pregnant fiancé found him. That shit is insanely deadly. Anytime I hear about someone doing it, I tell them the story and hope to persuade them to stop"

"That's not from the inhalant, though; that's from aerosolized cooking oil coating his lungs so he couldn't get any oxygen. That's horrifying."

"Read about a young college kid who decided to try inhaling from a Pam bottle. Coated his lungs with butter and suffocated on the spot."

"A friend of the family was ravaged by a horse (stamped and trodden on in one spot) and wears a colostomy bag."

1. Run itself to death trying to get the fuck away from whatever spooked them, or  

2. Curbstomp the fuck out of whatever spooked them. 

Here's the fun fact: absolutely everything spooks them."

"I always say this about horses: they're half-ton (or more) prey animals. They get spooked super easily and will take everything out in their way. They can kick you and kill you instantly, buck you off of them, step on you, and/or bite the ever living shit out of you."

"A friend of mine who raises horses and is very experienced with the few she owns still got kicked in the head a few years ago. The damage was wild, and unfortunately, her little girl saw it. She immediately ran to get help; otherwise, my friend would've likely died. She sustained a TBI and still suffers with all that comes with it."

"My cousin died from an aneurysm. He was puking violently at home, with horrible migraine symptoms; he was really distraught and scared, saying he thought he was dying. He was brain-dead within an hour or so, sometime between home and the hospital. Off life support a few days later, after his mom said goodbye. It terrified me. "

"Brain aneurysms don't kill you; ruptured ones do. It's important to make the distinction. 

I had a brain aneurysm that I had surgically corrected one year ago yesterday. It hadn't ruptured; it was found on a CT scan for something else. I got very lucky. Doing well. 

My research online showed that it's estimated that approximately 6% of people are walking around with brain aneurysms. That's about the same as colon cancer. I advocate that everyone get a scan! If we're doing colonoscopies at the rate we are, we should be doing brain scans, too."

"If your tick bite gets a bullseye shape around it, go to the doctor, possible Lyme disease.

If your spider bite gets raised and white, go to the doctor, as it may be a necrotic lesion from a recluse.

Don't live in fear of these things and squash everything with crawly legs. Do some research (tons of bug info online, free from many universities, tons of insect/spider/etc subreddits), and be smart. Wear tall socks in long grass and check yourself and pets."

"My grandfather is one of the men that just seems to know everything, and he's always told my family and me to keep ticks in a ziplock bag when you get them off of you. Also, make sure to put the date you found the tick on the ziplock to help medical professionals find out which tick-borne disease you may have."

"Carbon Monoxide poisoning can also give you permanent brain damage similar to lead poisoning. I've heard stories of people never being the same again mentally after nearly dying from Carbon Monoxide."

"I knew a girl from school; she and her family were all killed from carbon monoxide poisoning while staying at a cabin on New Year's weekend 2017. Her husband and two young kids. I still think about them going to bed, never to awaken."

"So many people died in Florida after the hurricane came through because of carbon monoxide. Grilling with charcoal in a garage because there was no electricity was a top reason."

"One nearly killed me! I never really had asthma issues as an adult, and joined the army as a cavalry scout. I went to Fort Polk, LA, for the Joint Readiness Training Center. I went down with bronchitis, and combined with the major sweltering heat of LA in July, along with a ton of dusk and being sick...I ended up getting a severe asthma attack like SP02 at 62%. I could of 100% died if I went out into the field that day."

"Stress is a state when your body feels threatened and produces hormones to defend itself, which will typically boost your muscles and reduce other functions to a minimum, like digestion, your kidneys, and overall all organs that aren't involved in fighting off a bear.

If you're always stressed (chronic stress), you will damage your organs. All of them. At once. Chronic stress is a poison; you must avoid it."

On that note: "A toxic work environment. It can cause depression and anxiety, which many sufferers will not realize at the time. Stress overall destroys the body in so many ways."

And: "Heart attacks from everyday stress also sneak up on folks all the time."

"I knew a guy that got struck by lightning on the golf course last year. He and his dad both got hit in the same strike. He didn't make it, but his dad survived. Super random too; the storm wasn't even close yet."

"Fun fact: Lightning has been observed to be capable of striking up to 25 miles (~40 km) away from the parent cloud. From weather.gov: 'Most lightning victims are not struck during the worst of a thunderstorm but rather before or after the storm reaches its greatest intensity. This is because many people are unaware that lightning can strike as far as 25 miles away from its parent thunderstorm, much farther out from the area of rainfall within the storm.'"

"I live near Tahoe, and it's sad how many people drown every year despite massive campaigns to get people to wear life jackets. Last year, a boat capsized in a storm after the pilot made several bad decisions. Only two of the 10 people were wearing life jackets, and they were the only ones who survived."

"Even if you're a strong swimmer. A few years ago, a tourist from New York City drowned in one of the lakes here in Massachusetts. A local police officer tried to save him, but he was caught up in the currents. Both drowned."

"Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death in toddlers between one and four years old. I am terrified of water now that I'm a mom"

"I never understood stories of people who drowned when witnesses said things like, 'He jumped in the water and never came up.' It seemed so weird to me until I was in a lake one day and caught a cramp in my calf. Luckily, I was on a pool noodle. If I hadn't had a flotation device, there's no way I could have made it back to the boat. I would have sunk like a stone. It's not always about whether you're a strong swimmer. Something as simple as a cramp can end you really quickly."

"I went whitewater rafting twice. They tell you if you fall out of the boat, don't stand up, the water will push you forward, pin you down, and you'll drown. Sit and float with your feet downriver, and a guide will get you."

"And riptides. They're hard to spot and will pull you out to sea for good."

"Part of the problem, too, is that until you experience it, you just really can't understand how strong water is and how quickly it can go bad.

As a child, I was in the ocean, having fun, like waist high in the water as a nine-year-old. A wave hit me, I went under and couldn't resurface, and another wave kept pushing me down. Eventually, I got up and screamed for my mom, who was A LOT further away than she should have been.

Then I ended up under again, and after a few seconds of that, some guy was hauling me above the water by my hair.

I don't know how far out we were, but he was an adult unable to touch the bottom, so far enough. It was so fast. There are only two things I remember vividly from that day: screaming for my mom and thinking 'it was so fast' as I was being carried back to shore."

"A friend from high school had the spring on her garage door break as she was about to leave for work. It cut all the way through the roof of her minivan and eight inches through the hard plastic of the center console. Both her kids were in the vehicle, but it cut between them. Aside from getting hit by little bits of debris, everyone was okay."

"When I was in high school, I was up in my room doing some homework, and my dad was outside fixing something on the garage door. We were the only two at home. I suddenly heard him screaming my name like bloody murder, and ran down to find him over the bathroom sink, blood everywhere — and I mean EVERYWHERE — holding his head, telling me to call 911.I guess while he was trying to fix the garage door, the metal bracket holding the spring broke and whipped back into his head and left a long gash going from the top of his forehead to partway up his scalp. If he had been looking slightly up instead of down, he 100% would have lost an eye as he wasn't wearing safety goggles. Or it could've hit his neck. All things considered, he got EXTREMELY lucky."

"Damn. I was feeling awful and lightheaded at work last week, so I went to sit down in the bathroom because I just wanted privacy and quiet. I woke up on the floor and had urinated all over myself. I was taken to the ER, and it turns out I had a seizure. 🥲"

"I slipped (or passed out, we don’t know) in the shower two years ago, hit the front and back of my head. I was lucky my husband was home and heard the banging. Woke up to him shaking me and on the phone with 911. Bad concussion, seriously, the worst headache of my life. I lost six months of memory that I never got back. Had mild aphasia and the shakes for a few weeks after, and a personality change. But I feel very lucky it wasn't worse."

"I've known two people my age that died in their 20s. One was a young lad that was very smart. He died while taking a shower. Slipped, hit his neck on the bathtub, and well, that was it! Dead in an instant.

I really wish grab handles were a legal requirement to be built in bathrooms of apartments nationwide, like the electrical code and fire hazard codes; they really should be part of it. I've only seen one apartment so far with them in it, and I'm surprised they're not more common. I'd put some in myself if I could."

"A lot of older people die from going to the bathroom. Basically, their blood pressure drops when they poop, and they fall over and hit their head or get stuck between the toilet and bathtub, unable to call for help."

"Constipation. My friend was a funeral director, and lots of people died on the toilet.

He had one that fell off the loo and got their head stuck behind the pedestal of the wash basin. He had to smash the pedestal to get the bloke out."

"A heart attack makes a lot of people feel like they need to poo. They get a very bad feeling and don't know they're having a heart attack, so they sit on the toilet, and that's where they die. "

"Iirc the reason they're dangerous isn't that people aren't aware that Blue Ringed Octopus are deadly poisonous. It's because they're not aware that they don't always have blue rings; they just show them when they're stressed. So people find little octopus in tide pools and such and think they must be fine since they don't have any blue rings."

"One guy was saved this way, but they didn't realize that while he was paralyzed, his eyes were also paralyzed open and staring directly into the blazing sun for all that time. He had his eyes totally sunburned into blindness and experienced it happening the whole time. How horrific."

"Minor correction on the off chance this ever becomes relevant: if you catch it quick enough, they need ventilation (i.e., mouth-to-mouth), but not full CPR as tetrodotoxin paralyzes the diaphragm but not the heart."

"Genuinely, in my history working in healthcare, I have never seen a more concerning disease. Antibiotic-resistant UTIs should be incredibly concerning to all. "

"A family friend had it, and he knew but just stopped taking his meds. One day, his adopted daughter got put on the wrong bus, so he went up to the school with his wife to sort it out. The birth mother had a bad habit of trying to get her kids back. The resource officer at the school told him his daughter probably wanted to see a boy (she was 12 at the time). The friend got mad, face got red, started sputtering, and then fell over. He never regained consciousness. The bleed was in the brain stem, and his wife had to pull the plug three days later. He was 39, and they had three adopted children after over a decade of trying."

"Apparently, they kill about 500 people a year — more than double the headcount for lions? Plus, hippos have stamina. They can chase you for a long time and run at around 18 1/2 miles an hour...which is faster than the world record pace for the men's 800-meter race. Which, for reference, is a fuck load faster than the average Redditor. TLDR: stay the fuck away from hippos."

"Fun fact: Crocodiles allow young hippos to chew on their tails.The hippos sometimes grab and use them like a chew toy, but the crocs know that if they fought back, they would definitely lose. Since the hippos are only 'playing' the crocs can usually wait it out, then get away relatively unscathed."

"Decades ago, setting up for a party where the plan was to feature a punch bowl with dry ice fog. I went to an industrial dry ice plant nearby to buy a block of the stuff. Turned out they only sell in industrial quantities, but they said I could take as much as I wanted.

So I filled my car hatchback with maybe 250 pounds of dry ice and drove off.

Guy from the facility comes RUNNING after me, screaming 'Open your windows!!!'

"There's a show on Netflix where bartenders compete by making cocktails. Once in a while, they'll use dry ice for the presentation. The smart ones keep it contained, separated, or removable. The...less-smart ones toss it directly in the drink,  the judges refuse to drink it, and they usually get eliminated that round. The judges explained that even a small loose chunk can get caught in your throat, sublimate CO2 directly into your respiratory system, and suffocate you."

"I've worked in restaurants for 16 years, and the walk-in coolers occasionally break. One owner, years ago, casually said, 'Yeah, I sent Joseph to pick up dry ice to put in there to keep it cold.'

"Natasha Richardson fell skiing and hit her head, but continued on with her day for some time before it became a crisis. She eventually was declared brain dead and was removed from life-supporting care."

"Bob Saget died after bumping his head on a hotel shelf. He went to sleep and never woke up."

"Let's say you’re coughing and embarrassed, and go alone to a bathroom or a hallway. Once there (still coughing), your coughs bobble that food into a position where your airway is truly blocked. Now you’re asphyxiating, and there's no one around to help you. "

"This happened to a friend's dad. He was choking on a hot dog at a bar/restaurant and went into the bathroom and never came out."

"Man, I nearly choked to death on a canapé at a bloody convention/exhibition sundowner drinks. My FIRST instinct was not to try to get help, but to hide in a booth. Thankfully, someone noticed I was turning blue."

Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.

Dial 988 in the United States to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The 988 Lifeline is available 24/7/365. Your conversations are free and confidential. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. The Trevor Project, which provides help and suicide-prevention resources for LGBTQ youth, is 1-866-488-7386.If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, The National Alliance for Eating Disorder helpline can be reached at 866-662-1235 in the US. The helpline is run by clinicians and offers emotional support for individuals and their family, as well as referrals for all levels of eating disorder care.