14 Ways Santa Could Die in the North Pole
If you can get through the part about climate disaster, you’ll be rewarded with the part about ritual murder.
Mauled to Death
Grizzly bears get a bad rap, but polar bears are actually the most aggressive species. More than any other animal on the planet, polar bears are known to explicitly hunt humans. And Santa doesn’t exactly wear camo.
Climate Change
This one is a slower burn than being pureed by a bear’s teeth and claws. But Santa ain’t immune from climate disaster. The melting of Arctic ice not only raises global sea levels, but releases methane and carbon that’s been stored inside, supercharging the entire process. Even if Santa’s workshop never becomes beachfront property, he could still find his life fatally disrupted by global supply chain stoppages, or complications from the mass migration of climate disaster refugees.
Becoming Patient Zero
That melting ice also contains biological curses that had long ago been put in stasis. If pathogenic microbes begin waking up from the permafrost, Santa could be the first human in eons to inhale primordial smallpox. Christmas Eve would become the biggest superspreader event since the Chicxulub impactor.
Becoming Patient One
That said, it’s statistically unlikely that a virus could jump directly from the ground to a human without dying in the sun and air. So here’s how it’s more likely to go down: rising temperatures make previously uninhabitable lands more hospitable to mammals, who then nibble on the new grass and drink the thawed arctic water that contains a newly-awakened virus. Santa goes hunting in Russia and sinks his teeth into an infected moose steak or rabbit drumstick. His eyes turn milk-white, and he begins a slow march toward the Kremlin, hungering for the flesh of a tyrant. Putin is infected, and Russia is ruled by a putrefying zombie. In fairness, geopolitically, little changes.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Malfunctioning heating devices, especially inside of an insufficiently ventilated space, have been known to produce fatal doses of carbon monoxide.
Senicide
Many cultures around the world historically practiced senicide, the ritualistic killing of elders. Some have used their local mountains or deserts to do the deed, and cultures who have traditionally lived above the Arctic Circle have in turn used their unique landscape. Let’s not forget: Saint Nick is over 1,700 years old, and the modern version of Santa conjured up by Coca-Cola turns 93 this year. The last known case of senicide among the Inuit was in 1939, but we simply don’t know what the elves have been up to.
Patricide
A common theme of reported senicide is a ritualistic ceremony led by the eldest son. Santa may put his clothes on inside out, and be carried on a caribou skin seat to a sacred site just outside of his village. MyMerryChristmas.com confirms that Santa has several adult children; his firstborn son might be expected to euthanize his father with a hunting knife.
Getting Sealed in His Home
In 1860, Cincinnati newspaperman Charles Francis Hall traveled to the Canadian Arctic, where he described witnessing an old woman sealed inside of her igloo with snow bricks to take her final breaths alone. We can assume the elves have a vault of candy cane and chocolate bricks at the ready.
Weathering a Storm
1920s anthropologist Knud Rasmussen noted that the elderly “whom death will not take, help death to take them.” His contemporaries heard tales of those who travel between hunting grounds leaving their elders to die in a blizzard or on an ice float.
Petty Squabbles
Tensions can run high when you’re stuck in a remote research lab for long, dark months in close quarters. In 1970, one scientist was accused of murdering another in a fight over some raisin wine. It’s not hard to imagine elves, highly sophisticated reindeer or Mrs. Claus bristling over hot chocolate rations, and the situation escalating beyond control.
Flash Freezing His Dingy Off
Santa is famously bundled up, and is probably used to working through blizzards. But what happens when he has to take a leak? When temps are below -30 degrees and the wind is over 50 MPH, a flash freeze can whip through the tundra at any moment. Pray that Santa doesn’t have any exposed appendages when it does.
There’s No Bridges Like Snow Bridges
A snow bridge, despite its name, is more like a mirage of a bridge. They form when snowdrifts build up to the extent that they tenuously connect two glaciers with lightly-packed, non-loadbearing snow. At any moment, Santa’s next step could send him through this crunchy veneer and hurl him half a mile into a crevasse.
Waking Up Too Fast
Most people found dead in the Arctic aren’t frozen mid-step on a treacherous march into the wind, but rather lounging on top of their sleeping bags. The human body tends to run warm when asleep, and getting out of your sleeping bag into the hostile Arctic morning before your core temperature has a chance to stabilize is a great way to quickly freeze to death. If Santa hops out of bed with a pep in his step, he could be dead on the toilet three minutes later.
Pancaked by a Racist Brit
In 2007, Top Gear documented a race to magnetic North between a modified Toyota and a dogsled. Santa is lucky he didn’t get teeboned by Jeremy Clarkson.