5 Surprisingly Common Deaths You Never Considered

5 Cleaning Your Barbecue Can Rupture Your Intestines

You keep your barbecue clean, right?

Good. That's good. It won't save you -- in fact, it might kill you -- but at least your meat ain't gross.

See, the wires on those stiff barbecue cleaning brushes frequently come loose and fall out. When they do, they might fall through the cracks and go away. Or they could stick to the next food item that you put on that grill, and then make their way into your body like Trojan warriors in a delicious meat horse. And once they're inside you, they cause immense damage to your digestive system. It doesn't take a genius to figure that extremely sharp metal bit in the guts isn't a good thing.

Complicating matters is that those wires are so fine that they're difficult to detect with x-rays, so doctors are often powerless to explain why you suddenly feel like you ate something with "cowboy" in the name at a Carl's Jr. instead of a healthy grilled chicken breast.

Between 2002 and 2014, those little wires sent nearly 1,700 people to the ER, but doctors were often able to remove them right there and then. The less fortunate required laparoscopic (or snakey-arm) surgery to remove the objects, and still-less-fortunate victims had to be hacked open the old-school way. One man nearly died after waiting two weeks to seek medical assistance. When doctors finally got at his insides, they found a penetrated intestine and a blood clot in a lung. So there you go: Never clean your barbecue. If something is dangerous, then the direct opposite of that thing must be safe. Like how bungee jumping is stupidly dangerous, but jetpacks are the statistically the safest method of travel. We assume.

4 Bouncy Houses Will Murder Your Children

What's more wholesome than a good old-fashioned bouncy house? Your kids are free to expel all of that excess energy, and they can't even hurt themselves because the walls are made of air. Totally fun, totally safe.

Unless it's windy.

An estimated 65,000 kids and teens were sent to the hospital by bounce houses between 1990 and 2010. In a decent gust, the damn things up and fly away -- yes, even with a whole bunch of kids inside them. Five children were injured at a church carnival in South Carolina when the bounce house they were inside lifted off and flew into some power lines (don't worry, the kids all fell out of it before it hit the power lines, which is why we're framing this as an unfortunate incident rather than a national tragedy).

In Colorado, one bounce house injured two children when it lifted off and traveled 300 feet. And in New York, a bounce house injured three children, two of them seriously, when it took flight and ejected its occupants onto hard pavement. Apparently unsatisfied with the extent of its child carnage, the bounce house then collided with a school.

To ensure child welfare and, more importantly, avoid lawsuits, inflatables CEO Tom Amberg preaches the "three W's of bounce house safety ... weather, workers, and warranty." In short, watch for winds above 20 miles per hour, don't let your drunken dad set it up, and look for a good warranty. Now, the latter won't save your kids, but at least you'll get free bounce house repairs and bloodstain removal.

3 E-Cigarettes Can Literally Blow Up In Your Face

E-cigarettes give addicts the nicotine hit they need without all the additional bullshit found in normal cigarettes. "Healthier" probably isn't the right word, but maybe "less unhealthy" is accurate. Or it would be, if e-cigarettes didn't explode in your goddamn face. Which, by the way, happens terrifyingly often. If you're vaping right now, you might want to put that thing down for a minute.

In their quest to develop a smokeless product, scientists have accidentally created a perfect face-rocket. Like laptops and other devices, e-cigarettes are powered by a lithium battery full of a flammable electrolyte solution -- which, as you may remember from the recent Samsung Galaxy debacle, has explosive side effects in certain unpredictable conditions. However, if your smartphone is a sort of landmine placed against your thigh, an e-cigarette is a missile aimed right at your mouth.

In Idaho, a man lost a quarter of his teeth and suffered second-degree facial burns, not to mention a wrecked bathroom, when his vaping session turned nuclear.

All over the world, e-cigs are ripping holes in tongues, causing severe burns, and even knocking out eyes. Or maybe you'll luck out and they'll simply explode in your pocket.

This whole situation opens up a good marketing opportunity for regular cigarettes to combat the loss in market share. We're not exactly Sterling Cooper, but we're thinking something like "Cigarettes: They Don't Explode."

2 Visiting A Chiropractor Can Cause Strokes ... Or Worse

Chiropractors occupy a bleak medical nether-realm between established medical science and wacky crystal healing quackery. For one thing, it's often confused with "physiotherapy," which is a much more scientifically rigorous profession that requires a legitimate degree to practice. Chiropractors play a little faster and looser -- there is some science behind what they do, so it's not on the same level as consulting a witch doctor, but there's few enough regulation as to allow dipshits and scam artists in. Some chiropractors are legitimate and just want to twist your back into shape. Others say they can cure all sorts of non-bone-related ailments -- from hypertension to autism -- through the secrets of joint magic. Seeing the latter very well might kill you.

In 2016, Playboy model and social media star Katie May died from a stroke. Since strokes are unusual for 34-year-old models, they looked into the circumstances of her death. Sure enough, it turned out that May had visited a chiropractor mere hours earlier to treat her neck pain. To be fair, the treatment did technically fix the complaint.

Chiropractic neck manipulation, if not done carefully, can injure or even sever the arteries in your neck, which loop through and around the bones of your spine, because evolution never predicted that we'd be paying people to deliberately fuck around with our upper spinal column.

When damaged, these blood vessels can form clots, which cut off the blood supply to your brain, causing huge problems. Neurologists now say this is more common than previously believed. One study reported 35 such incidences over the course of a year. Another followed 13 incidents, including one death by massive stroke and three patients with permanent damage. Over 500 chiropractic strokes have been recorded, but the real number may be higher, as cases frequently go unreported, because who suspects the chiropractor? He's got a lab coat and gloves!

1 Petting Zoos Are Death Traps Swimming With Disease

You might assume the only danger inherent in petting zoos is from an animal attack. Maybe little Billy gets too hands-on with a goat and catches an adorable headbutt to the groin. But no, the biggest risk is the basic fact that petting zoos are just lousy with disease.

And possible chemical warfare ...

Pretty much everything inside a petting zoo has been either licked or pooped on by an animal no more than 30 seconds ago. And then along come the children -- who, being children, touch everything they see and put their damn hands in the mouths, Billy, what did we just talk about?!

Between 2000 and 2012 alone, there have been at least 32 publicized outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella, and cryptosporidium food poisoning directly linked to petting zoos. That's an average of nearly three outbreaks a year.

No! Who could have suspected that a tiny pen filled with animal excrement might be a breeding ground for disease!?

Jordan Breeding has a blog, a Twitter, and doesn't think goats are worth dying for.

For more ways you should always be fearing for your own mortality, check out The 5 Most Humiliating Ways the Wilderness Can Kill You and 19 Everyday Things You Didn't Know Will Kill You Dead.

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