Posts tagged: death
1946-49: Chinese civil war (1.2 million) 1946-49: Greek civil war (50,000) 1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000) 1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1 million) 1947: Taiwan’s uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000) 1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000) 1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000) 1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000) 1949-50: Mainland China vs Tibet (1,200,000) 1950-53: Korean war (3 million) 1952-59: Kenya’s Mau Mau insurrection (20,000) 1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000) 1958-61: Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” (38 million) 1960-90: South Africa vs Africa National Congress (?) 1960-96: Guatemala’s civil war (200,000) 1961-98: Indonesia vs West Papua/Irian (100,000) 1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000) 1962-75: Mozambique Frelimo vs Portugal (10,000) 1962-75: Angolan FNLA & MPLA vs Portugal (50,000) 1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3 million) 1965: second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir 1965-66: Indonesian civil war (250,000) 1966-69: Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” (11 million) 1966-: Colombia’s civil war (31,000) 1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000) 1968-80: Rhodesia’s civil war (?) 1969-: Philippines vs the communist Bagong Hukbong Bayan/ New People’s Army (40,000) 1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000) 1969-02: IRA - Norther Ireland’s civil war (2,000) 1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000) 1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000) 1972-: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (Moro Islamic Liberation Front, etc) (150,000) 1972: Burundi’s civil war (300,000) 1972-79: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe’s civil war (30,000) 1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000) 1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1.5 million) 1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1.7 million) 1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000) 1975-87: civil war in Lebanon (130,000) 1975-87: Laos’ civil war (184,000) 1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000) 1976-83: Argentina’s military regime (20,000) 1976-93: Mozambique’s civil war (900,000) 1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000) 1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh (GAM) civil war (12,000) 1977-92: El Salvador’s civil war (75,000) 1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000) 1979-88: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (1.3 million) 1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (435,000) 1980-92: Sendero Luminoso - Peru’s civil war (69,000) 1984-: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000) 1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000) 1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000) 1983-: Sri Lanka’s civil war (70,000) 1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million) 1986-: Indian Kashmir’s civil war (60,000) 1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500) 1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000) 1988-2004: Somalia’s civil war (550,000) 1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000) 1989-: Uganda vs Lord’s Resistance Army (30,000) 1991: Gulf War - large coalition against Iraq to liberate Kuwait (85,000) 1991-97: Congo’s civil war (800,000) 1991-2000: Sierra Leone’s civil war (200,000) 1991-2009: Russia-Chechnya civil war (200,000) 1991-94: Armenia-Azerbaijan war (35,000) 1992-96: Tajikstan’s civil war war (50,000) 1992-96: Yugoslavian wars (260,000) 1992-99: Algerian civil war (150,000) 1993-97: Congo Brazzaville’s civil war (100,000) 1993-2005: Burundi’s civil war (200,000) 1994: Rwanda’s civil war (900,000) 1995-: Pakistani Sunnis vs Shiites (1,300) 1995-: Maoist rebellion in Nepal (12,000) 1998-: Congo/Zaire’s war - Rwanda and Uganda vs Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia (3.8 million) 1998-2000: Ethiopia-Eritrea war (75,000) 1999: Kosovo’s liberation war - NATO vs Serbia (2,000) 2001-: Afghanistan’s liberation war - USA & UK vs Taliban (40,000) 2002-: Cote d’Ivoire’s civil war (1,000) 2003-11: Second Iraq-USA war - USA, UK and Australia vs Saddam Hussein and subsequent civil war (160,000) 2003-09: Sudan vs JEM/Darfur (300,000) 2012-: Iraq’s civil war after the withdrawal of the USA (?) 2004-: Sudan vs SPLM & Eritrea (?) 2004-: Yemen vs Shiite Muslims (?) 2004-: Thailand vs Muslim separatists (3,700)
A cruel coincidence, a joke the solar system has played on us this week; doses of gamma waves as you are just finishing up your whole-brain radiation binge. Our stellar benefactor bends the ionosphere with its supercharged energy bombardment. An unholy heat wave the entire family can enjoy.
I carried you up the stairs. So weak & small you are in my arms. How you wither like a lone tree on the prairie, how beautiful your eyes are up close. We were never good friends but we were always family. I would tell you how hard I am working to pay your bills, to keep your kids fed. Demand acknowledgement for the burden I have undertaken with your illness.
But I am not the boy I used to be. I am a collection of particles & elements & electrons that recognizes how hard it is for you to merely walk a few feet. It is a glad burden I carry for you. The sweat of our toils will nourish the earth we pace waiting for redemption. Let us be unashamed in tilling the fields of sickness together & pull a wonderful harvest from these wretched rows of suffering.
& know that you suffer needlessly if you are near death, my friends. Pain & fear only exist while you are alive. It is our selfishness that holds us back from realizing our potential. Once that moment in history ends you will be free. We are so much more than human. We are literally elemental.
Someday you will be an apple, or a tree, or a pig. Perhaps some sort of dust floating through the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Water vapor on a clear day over California. Breath in the lungs of a newborn.
It is not reincarnation. It is not magic.
It is simply a matter of time.
The 2011 BFQOTY panel debating whether or not Jamie Oliver should have poisoned everyone at the G20 Summit dinner.
Hugh Aldersey-Williams (Periodic Tales: The Curious Lives of the Elements)
… and continued:
“Oxidation betrays the march of time and the inevitable triumph of entropy. The gas gives life, and in doing so brings death closer.”
(via jtotheizzoe)
Yesterday I watched (& participated in) a series of deaths in the emergency department at Yale. One patient was responsible for the tally: she died three times under our care.
A woman in her fifties with a history of aneurysms arrived in the morning, catatonic. Her husband activated the emergency system in response to a number of focal seizures she had suffered since waking up. The paramedics started an IV in the field & noted that her blood pressure was 252/110. Hypertensive crisis. Her circulation was poor & the oxygen saturation in her blood could not be accurately determined over the next few hours.
A CT scan revealed no herniation (imagine your brain seeping out of your skull into your spinal column) or bleeding. The attending physician was convinced the nature of illness was neurological due to the seizures and history of cerebral vascular accidents. She was relegated back to the ED for observation, hooked up to 1000cc bags of saline. We catheterized her, as she was incontinent. Minutes, hours passed with no improvement. Beta blockers were administered to bring her pressure down, a plan to maintain her airway was developed. She would be intubated.
Once the ventilator was breathing for her through the tube in her bronchi, she was stable for awhile; IV bags were drained, then replaced. Then she crashed. I was standing next to an ER tech watching her heart rate circle the drain, her pressure was in the shitter. In fifteen seconds the pump that gave her life was in asystole - circulation had ceased. I got on a trauma step stool & provided CPR compressions as the doctors pushed epinephrine & atropine. I cracked all the cartilage in her chest trying to keep oxygen moving around with her blood. Dopamine was added to the forest of lumen tubes delivering fluid to her IV sites. In three minutes her heart began pumping again. We regrouped & I heard the attending ask a chilling question:
“What are we missing here?”
The blinds had been drawn across our section to discourage onlookers. Five nurses hovered around the bedside like tangled ghosts in blue scrubs. A respiratory therapist fiddled with the touch screen on the ventilator as frothy pink blood bubbled from her lungs into the tube that held her air supply. It was a tense moment of indecision & profuse sweat for the staff.
Then she died again. I got back on the stool to beat on her heart, the drugs went into the IV again, & the strange dance of a code alarm began in haste. Another ninety seconds of asystole before spontaneous heartbeat was restored. The attending demanded we take her to the CT scanner again. The neurology team quickly concluded this was not their problem.
I knew the problem. I had been watching the monitor all day as her oxygen saturation declined. All day we filled her with liters of fluid she could not handle - starting with the paramedic, continued by the attending, perpetuated by me each time I was asked to provide another 1 liter IV bag. The high blood pressure was a clue - you cannot overfill a bottle without spilling something. Over three liters of saline solution had spilled into her lungs, making gas exchange impossible. Her heart was pumping against the weight of all that water.
Leaving shortly thereafter (my shift ended at three), I saw one of the trauma nurses at a bar in the evening. He related that our patient had finally become truly terminal with congestive heart failure.
Yesterday we drowned someone in the emergency room, three times.
“People go crazy in wars, wanting to kill the enemy. If Japan had owned an A-bomb, we might have used it. Arguing about the past is nonsense. Now we have to co-operate to abolish all nukes.”
You’re either for us or against us.
…So I started collecting my hair, nails and skin so I could pick the best mushrooms to become Infinity Mushrooms, to recognise and eat my body after I die.
“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely — with elegance and euphoria — take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful.”
The last two speakers of a dying language refuse to talk to each other.
