Heart disease has long been the number one killer in the United States. But a new study out this week is the latest to suggest that it’s only a matter of time before the second leading cause of death—cancer—becomes more commonly fatal for the average person. On the bright side, though, that’s largely because we’ve…
As we’re all essentially just killing time ahead of our inevitable death, Gizmodo this week explored death and deadly things in all of their various forms.
For at least 11 years, an unnerving story has made the rounds on Disney fan blogs: people regularly scatter the ashes of loved ones at Disneyland and Disney World. Well, today, the Wall Street Journal has confirmed the urban legend. And we’re not talking about a couple of isolated cases. This happens on a monthly…
Somewhere between a second and a millennium from now, you will die. Your body and all of its parts will cease functioning and rejoin the Earth as regular, lifeless stuff. The Earth, too, will die, engulfed by an expanding, aging Sun. The Sun will burn off all of its fuel and end up a white dwarf, then burn out and…
In case you were, for some inexplicable reason, feeling optimistic for future generations, an extensive new report is here to bring you down a notch. It predicts that, despite all our medical advances, the average person born in the U.S. in 2040 will only barely live longer than an American born in 2016. Meanwhile,…
To honor Halloween (no, not that one), Gizmodo and io9 are presenting a very special editorial package focused on death in its many forms—we’ll be running essays, investigations, and a work of short fiction on what goes on beyond the veil. And as part of it, io9 is announcing an open call for works of short,…
The devastation wrought by opioids in recent years is only part of a much larger drug crisis in the United States that stretches back four decades, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. Since 1979, the study found, the overdose death rate has been exponentially climbing, even as the deadly drugs of…
A daily low dose of aspirin won’t help healthy older people stay alive any longer, suggests new research published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. It might even raise their risk of dying early of certain things, like cancer.
Not everyone who is close to death—or thinks they are, at least—has a “near-death experience.” But those who do often hallucinate that they leave their bodies, meet otherworldly beings, see bright flashes and tunnels of light, and more. Those who take the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine, or DMT— a compound found…
More people are dying from drug overdoses in the U.S. than ever before, according to a new preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal government. There were an estimated 72,287 drug overdose deaths last year, the report found, with the majority caused by opioids. The toll is yet another record high.
A team of Russian scientists is lining themselves up to be the opening cast of a John Carpenter film. Earlier this month, in the journal Doklady Biological Sciences, they announced they had apparently discovered ancient nematode worms that were able to resurrect themselves after spending at least 32,000 years buried…
You may not have heard of him, but his work is far more influential than you realize.
The older we get, the greater our likelihood of dying. Or at least that’s what we thought. New research suggests mortality rates level off after we turn 105, and that no upper limit exists for the human lifespan. It’s an extraordinary conclusion—one that’s not going over very well with other aging researchers.
The death toll of the US opioid crisis has been seriously lowballed, suggests a new study published Wednesday in Public Health Reports. It found that many states have failed to identify fatal drug overdoses specifically caused by opioid use over the past two decades. Since 1999, there might have been as many as 70,000…
Since 2016, at least 12 people have died worldwide soon after receiving a intragastric balloon, a new noninvasive procedure meant to help people lose weight, according to an alert released Monday by the Food and Drug Administration. Seven of the patients were in the US. In response, the FDA has approved new warning…
The US likely experienced its third consecutive year of a sagging life expectancy in 2017, based on preliminary data published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Increased deaths from suicide and drug overdose probably played a role in the decline.
I never thought I’d see the day, but vaping—the bejeweled fedora of nicotine delivery methods—is starting to seem a lot less ridiculous. Or, at least, somewhat less ridiculous. Juuling teens are still reliably funny. But at the same time, there are real, credentialed doctors out there making a case for vaping as a…
Animals fatally maul, sting, trample, and chew about a million humans per year. Pretty nice of them, given the numbers on our side—the average of 750 million chickens we kill in the U.S. every month, for instance. In an ideal world, no one would ever get mauled by a bear, or contract rabies from a feral squirrel. But…
Night owls may be more fun at parties, but a preference for staying out late may come with some serious drawbacks, suggests a new study published this week in Chronobiology International. Namely, it might increase your chances of dying early.
Living creatures do amazing things. They grow toward the sun, build cities, lay eggs, and some even bone. But living things must die, and when they do, they tend to get smelly and mushy pretty quickly. But the moments after death, before decomposition, can be amazing in their own right. Scientists have just learned a…
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