r/scifi • u/CT_Phipps-Author • 2d ago
General [Funny] Describe how you'd die in a sci-fi universe
I'm not made to survive even nice scifi futures. Forget Cyberpunk 2077 or Warhammer 40K, I'm not sure I'd survive in Star Trek's 24th century. I'd be trapping myself in the holodeck with a replicator and never coming out. Eventually, it'd malfunction and kill me.
I suspect that lack of survival skills is just as common among other fandom. So, I decided to make this thread as a response to all those, "What scifi universe would you like to live in?" with the funnier or more lore accurate answers the better.
Examples:
- Killed by the Fremen for refusing to say Paul Atreides was the messiah, probably doing a Monty Python's Life of Brian and calling him a naughty boy in the process.
- Crushed by Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, ironically when protesting for mutant rights.
- Ending up force choked when I demand to speak with a Stormtrooper's supervisor for his harrassing me over my droids.
- Definitely not making it to the Galactica in time to evacuate when the nukes fall due to my inability to pack quickly or leave behind pets.
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u/IceCat767 2d ago
Killed by genocidal ai robot, like everyone else
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u/Lesu__Tokyo__Kokyo 2d ago
Transporter accident. Atoms dispersed.
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 2d ago
*remembers The Motion Picture where Kirk accidentally kills two people*
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u/fnordius 5h ago
Look, don't hang that on Kirk, it was Starfleet Command beaming two people over when the transporters were malfunctioning. He was just in the room.
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 5h ago
To be fair, he grabbed the controls from Rand.
Also, he WAS Starfleet Command at that point. But seriously, whoever was running that needed to be cashiered.
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u/DrBlankslate 3h ago
Kirk didn't kill them. The transporter was malfunctioning.
Two of the most difficult deaths I've ever seen in a Trek show, to be honest. The screaming... *shudder*
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u/Eastern-Corgi-6738 1d ago
Not even an accident, that's how they work.
First trip, dematerialized. Dead. Done.
Whatever comes out the other end, tha ain't you.
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u/Lesu__Tokyo__Kokyo 1d ago
Except if you are held in the transporter buffer (Scotty)
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u/FatesUrinal 2d ago
Peeing in a non designated area in the Dungeon Crawler Carl universe.
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u/KlownKar 2d ago
I'd have broken my neck falling into a dungeon entrance whilst looking around wondering where all the buildings had gone.
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u/Pseudonymico 2d ago
I'd have been smushed right from the start, I don't go outside enough at the best of times.
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u/urson_black Firefly 2d ago
Foolishly thinking I could have sex with a Klingon woman. (See also: death by Snu- snu).
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u/parkway_parkway 2d ago
I'm so hungry for knowledge that if I lived in WH40k I'd just sell my soul to Tzeentch day 1.
They'd have to try and hold me back from immediately diving in head first.
The same thing would happen with the Dukes Archives in Dark Souls, I'd just immediately go there and drown in arcane knowledge.
Libraries are my tar pits.
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u/amyts Space Opera 2d ago
The death stars are OSHA violations from top to bottom.
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u/Tricky_Pepper 1d ago
I’m assuming you’ve seen this: https://youtu.be/O2SzLb-89ko?is=5VjuLvuWZqeqb-iR
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u/Whimsy_and_Spite 2d ago
Going to a fancy restaurant and ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, then dying painfully from internal acid burns because the xenomorph sashimi wasn't prepared properly.
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u/Lesu__Tokyo__Kokyo 2d ago
My consciousness is removed and planted into a Hallmark Christmas episode that some old lady watches over and over.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 2d ago
Accident tossing a lightsaber to myself.
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u/Lesu__Tokyo__Kokyo 2d ago
Oh the old “thought it was a vibrator”?
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u/Catspaw129 2d ago
About that "thought it was a..."
In the 1st or 2nd episode of Pink Five; Stacy thought a lightsaber was some kind of hair-dryer thingie.
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u/Catspaw129 2d ago
So, you're not the Flying Karamoz Brothers? Juggling a flaming torch, a running chainsaw, and a bowling ball?
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u/Kian-Tremayne 1d ago
If I was a Belter in The Expanse, I’d accidentally space myself by forgetting to make sure my vac suit was properly sealed.
Alternatively, running out of oxygen while waiting for my wife because she decided to stop off at Ceres for a latte and a look around the garden centre without telling me. Punctuality is NOT why I married her.
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u/greatmagneticfield 2d ago
Transporter accident, end up like Tuvix
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u/coonskinmario 2d ago
Even without an accident the transporter technically kills you
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 2d ago
I just watched Daedalus and they make fun of that at the dinner table but I'm like, "You didn't REFUTE that."
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 2d ago
Killed to build a road, since I didn’t find an alien to hitchhike with in time.
Alternatively, dying of old age after an unnaturally long life, immune to cancer and disease, with my much loved Ooloi children around my bedside. (I wouldn’t be a rebel. Much too cynical about humanity deserving it after destroying ourselves, and not speciesist enough to care about humans going extinct in favor of human-Oankali hybrids).
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u/Ackapus 1d ago
I'd be the guy that survives every war, disaster, biomenace, creature attack, negative space wedgie, and transhuman/robot uprising out of sheer coincidence and luck.
I'd narrowly miss seeing any of the action. Always distracted at the last minute at the moment the heroes run by, maybe frozen harmlessly in time by some side effect, miraculously taking the one subway/train/spaceliner that doesn't get wrecked. I'd watch newscasts of all this high adventure happening in my own neighborhood, lamenting that nothing interesting ever happens to me, and all I get to see is the traffic jam left in the wake of the giant mechs duking it out with the kaiju across the interstate.
After years of this, I'd catch site of something exciting happening that I would have front row seats to. In anticipation, I would choke on a peanut.
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u/Cherveny2 2d ago
Too much population on a random imperial hive city planet, so arrested on a random charge for acting against the emperor's will, and turned into a servitor. (does this count as dead? as a LITTLE bit of brain cognition is technically present still)
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u/herkalurk 2d ago edited 1d ago
Can it be after I'm with Natasha Henstridge character from Species? She uses me to make offspring then kills me so I can't expose she's not a human.
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u/Catspaw129 2d ago
I'd enter into a contract to have my brain uploaded to a computer at the moment I die. The contract would include gobs of money to pay the service provider to ensure my consciousness is properly maintained and provided for in an environment that provides me with a virtual life.
And then....
The service provider renegs on the contract and doesn't even pay their electric bill.
The computer shuts down and my consciousness goes "poof".
And I don't even realize that's happened.
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 2d ago
They made an Amazon TV show with this horrifying premise and they kept trying to do it as a comedy. When...yeah, that's exactly what would happen.
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u/pichael289 2d ago
Is that the one with the guy with the rich fiance who was paying for his eternity but didn't love her or something like that?
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u/CT_Phipps-Author 2d ago
Yeah, the funniest joke in the entire series (and the only one I feel that truly encapsulates the horror) when he talks about breaking up with her and his friend says, "And you think she'll keep paying for this?"
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u/kiltedfrog 2d ago
He accelerated to 99% the speed of light when he rewired the wrap drive wrong and hit a small rock, becoming physics.
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u/oceangothic 2d ago
somehow manage to piss off one of the few genuinely malevolent Minds in the Culture with an offhand remark about how it's not a truly egalitarian society, end up a pawn in an insanely convoluted Contact plot and die drowning in a sewer megastructure
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u/Happy-Lemming 2d ago
Mulched to death, after being convicted of herbicide by a jury of vegetarians.
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u/pichael289 2d ago
If I was in star Trek I think I would be fine as long as I could get assigned to a Vulcan ship, all the crazy shit that happens to human vessels just doesn't happen to the other races.
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u/KibboKid 2d ago
On the basis of my KSP experience, hard sci-fi would get me, and I would die lithobreaking and screaming "I forgot the chutes............,"
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u/orlock 2d ago
Collateral damage in some war The Culture just couldn't avoid without feeling sad.
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u/fnordius 5h ago
Me, I was on an Orbital when some idiot talked me into visiting one of the incomplete plates. At least, that's what Hub told me when I came to. Seems I got crushed in a lava flow, and there was little to recover.
Of course, I don't remember any of this. The neural lace was destroyed, so I'm just the memories up until my last backup.
My next death was during the Idiran War. That one I remember, as my suit managed to evac me before my neural lace was fully fried. And you know what? It was painful, traumatic, nothing I could gland was able to make it any easier.
Now if we're done with the interview, just delete this instance of me.
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u/Pseudonymico 2d ago
The Culture visited Earth in the 70s and decided we weren't worth Contacting for a few more centuries.
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u/orlock 1d ago
I'm assuming the future. But, even today, I'd prefer not to be under a crashing GCU. I'm sure they'd be very sad and everything but their wars run to billions of deaths and I'd rather not be one of them.
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u/Pseudonymico 1d ago
Oh sure. Wouldn't want to run into the Affront or any of the other horrible dystopias in the series either for that matter.
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u/orlock 1d ago
No. Not at all. At least the Affront would find it amusing. I really would like to give Azad a miss, though.
I always find it funny that Banks created a utopia and then felt the need to put his thumb on the scales by making the utopia's opponents comic-book, moustache-twirling evil-doers.
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u/Square-Knee9844 1d ago
“So we breathe our last breath
Beamed into space or choked to death
A phaser blast, a Klingon assault
Drained of blood and drained of salt
Bat’leth, poison spores
While the captain gets laid by alien whores
Our essence, understand
Distilled down and crushed in a hand”
-Warp 11, Rage Against the Federation
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u/Catspaw129 2d ago
I don't know how I'd die; but I'd like my tombstone to read:
Here lies Catspaw
His last words were
"Hold my beer and watch this!"
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u/Kian-Tremayne 1d ago
I don’t want to die in a ‘watch this’ incident.
I want to die in a ‘the survivors were ones who managed to duck and cover in time’ incident.
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u/WorldhopperJ 12h ago
I'd be asleep in my bunk when Boimler has the con in what should be an "uneventful" overnight shift. A depressurization alarm wakes me up and I get tangled in my covers, which I end up wearing like a toga on my way to the exit. Unfortunately, they get snagged on a Jeffries tube hatch that I try to squeeze through when I'm too slow to make it out the door with everyone else. The hatches at both ends close, trapping me in the tube, where they will later find my fat @$$ frozen like a tv dinner in nothing but my boxers.
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u/Pigflap_Batterbox 11h ago
Reach warp 10, turn into a lizard, fuck my captain and then die.
I mean seriously, nothing could be worse than that. Apart from… not dying.
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u/SlightAmbassador5692 6h ago
90% of the universes would be dying from trying to befriend a rouge and evil AI (think Colossus or AM)
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u/Incvbvs666 4h ago
I'll die at the end of the world, in the quiet eternal darkness when my power dies out and life-support shuts my life for good.
I'll be the memory of the universe, the last trillions upon trillions of years (my consciousness will be much slower due to lower energy, millions of years will go by like minutes) reminiscing about everything that happened.
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u/hypothetical_zombie 2d ago
Some random virus or bacteria or fungus picked up on a cargo inspection.
Either that or obliviously stumble into the middle of a shoot-out and take damage.
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u/ArcOfADream 2d ago
Id've died pretty ignominiously in The Expanse when the second meteor-missile that hit "40 km north of Philadelphia" landed pretty much right on top of my head.
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u/Wonderlostdownrhole 2d ago
I would curiously look into a hole and have an alien pop out and eat my face off. Something of that nature.
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u/Relevant_Diver8895 1d ago
Muerte por agotamiento extremo por hacer un trío con dos hembras Klingon
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u/informavore 1d ago
You know how Darth Vader tells Boba Fett no disintegrations? Yeah, that was me.
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u/Cakeday_at_Christmas 1d ago
Accidentally filling my quarters on the Enterprise-D with chocolate eclairs from the replicator crushing myself in the process.
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u/MovieMike007 1d ago
Accidentally being beamed into Worf's shower, followed by me being beaten to death by a naked Klingon.
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u/GrannyTurtle 1d ago
I would probably get blown out of space in the Manticore v Haven war in the Honor Harrington universe. I hope I at least got to be friends with a treecat. (They are easy to bribe…)
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u/finlay_mcwalter 1d ago edited 1d ago
option 1: Kidnapped by alien slavers
option 2: Kidnapped by alien slavers. Rescued by "space police". But the slavers didn't keep good paperwork recording my origin, so the "space police" can't return me home. Die in alien resettlement camp.
option 3: Kidnapped by alien slavers. Rescued by "space police". I've planned ahead, and got a Voyager tattoo. But the tattoo is useless, so they return me to the wrong planet. Die in hostile environment.
option 4: Kidnapped by alien slavers. Rescued by "space police". I've planned ahead and got a Voyager tattoo. The "police" figure out the defects in the map, and set course for Earth. On the way, they get hungry, and eat me. They discover humans are delicious. Now they know where to find billions more. Human race is farmed for alien fast food.
option 5: Kidnapped by alien slavers. Rescued by "space police". I've planned ahead and got a Voyager tattoo. The "police" figure out the defects in the map, and set course for Earth. On the way, they get hungry, and eat me. They discover humans are delicious. Now they know where to find billions more. Human race is farmed for alien fast food. But humans are riddled with microplastics and forever chemicals. Galactic civilization binges on toxic humans, contracts preventable bowel cancer, dies. Only humans, evolved to endure the toxins of their own creation, survive. Humans conquer galaxy.
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u/TheInsaneMilkman 1d ago
I’d wind up in the engine room and would try to use their “coffee maker” thus blowing up the entire ship.
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u/RiverSirion 1d ago
I'd have just gotten my life in order, landed a good position at the Tyrell Corporation, signed a mortgage, gotten married - planning for the future! Only to discover I'm really a Replicant and have maybe weeks to live at most. Yeah, yeah, the brightest flame and all that, Mr. Tyrell, I quit.
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u/Embarrassed_Ad1722 1d ago
Probably would get sucked out into space at night because I farted too bad and decided to get up and open the window to get the smell out.
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u/nordic-nomad 1d ago
If various video games have taught me anything, I’m prone to waking out an airlock without a helmet on.
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u/Bacon-Pancake8 14h ago
Spaced in a mutiny or coup that I only find out about when I'm forced into an airlock at gunpoint.
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u/PenguinSpectre 1d ago
Going to work at my quiet little job in hydroponics on a random Tuesday. Stupid stupid blue goo possessed super soldiers. Stupid stupid co-workers who ignore all safety protocols when encountering a giant carnivorous plant or psionic virus. Seriously!
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u/mattzog 2d ago
HDS - Holosuite Dehydration Syndrome