10 - Electrocution: Remember when you were a kid and you tested a nine-volt battery on your tongue? The jolt doesn't hurt necessarily, but it's enough to make you wonder how 2,400 volts would feel surging through your body. That's the average voltage used in modern-day executions. The electricity is first pumped through the victim for seven seconds, burning his nerves and violently contracting nearly every skeletal muscle. If this doesn't do the trick, the executioner sends 600 more volts into the body, this time for a total of seventeen seconds. Death is caused primarily by suffocation, and the electrical currents cooking the brain. By the way, this is still a legal form of punishment in six states.



9 - Drawn and Quartered: Executioners in the Dark Ages may have believed the world was flat, but they were well educated when it came to pain infliction. When a mere hanging was insufficient, the guilty party would be drawn and quartered. That is, slowly skinned alive and their limbs partly severed at the joints. They were then hanged from the gallows, with their limbs dangling by a few tendons as they slowly choked to death. Hangings in later centuries were more humane, as the victims were perched higher, and fell farther before the rope snapped and broke their necks.

8 - Ebola: Imagine having the flu. You've got a fever, a touch of diarrhea, and a sore throat, but instead of puking up last night's pot roast, your leaking blood from every orifice in your body. That's the Ebola virus. Not only does the victim suffer from nausea, headache, and chills, but after seven days, blood begins leaking from the eyes, ears, and asshole. Thankfully for the bedside nurses, the victim has usually been fully drained and dead by the eighth day.

7 - Stoning: No, not a single human has ever died from an overdose of marijuana, but thousands of people had died from a good stoning. Even today in countries like Iran and Nigeria, public stonings are still a family affair. Just as it was practiced hundreds of years ago, the victim is placed in the center of a circle and covered with a blanket. Sometimes buried up to their waist, or necks. The crowd then pelts the victim with jagged rocks until death.

6 - Iron Bed: Here, the victim is strapped to an iron bed and placed over a stoked fire until he roasts to death. Totally stoked.

5. The Cauldron: Recipe for a gut-wrenching dinner party. First place a small iron pot, mouth down, on top of a prisoner's naked stomach. Next, gently place three hungry rats inside the cauldron and begin pre-heating the container with a flame. Now watch as the rodents begin to gnaw their way into the guts of the victim as they flee the intense heat.

4. Concentration Camp: Among the gas chambers, hangings, and public shootings, there is one form of death that stands out among all others. Not because of the intense pain inflicted, but rather the sheer mental and physical torture that the victim had to endure. In Daschow, arguably the worst concentration camp, the prisoners were forced to live in "Standing Bunkers". The bunkers were 33 cells in which up to 6 men were forced to use as their sleeping quarters. With no room to sit or lay down, the men had to stand all night, sleeping on one another as they stood, only to be awakened 6 hours later for another 18 hour work day. If a man died, he was there all night, rotting, as the other occupants endured the smell of death.

3. Burned at the Stake: Unimaginable. I won't even venture a try

2. Crucifixion: There were three devices used in crucifixion, an old tree, an upright pole, and then the infamous wooden cross, which consisted of an upright pole permanently fixed in the ground with a removable crossbar, usually weighing between 75-100 lbs. The victim was then placed on his back, arms stretched out and nailed to the cross bar. Two seven to nine inch nails were driven between forearm and hand in a way that resulted in minimal bleeding, and tightly secured the body to the cross. A third iron nail was driven through the victim's feet, also in a prime area that would result in minimal bleeding, and position the body in a way that it would not fall. Death was a slow process. First, the weight of the body caused the shoulders, elbows and wrists to dislocate. This put an immense amount of weight on the victim's rib cage, causing a state of "perpetual inhalation." To exhale, the victim had to try and stand, causing severe pain in his spike-ridden feet. After a few hours, the legs become fatigued, and soon the heart begins to fail, the lungs collapse and fill with fluid. This sends the victim into a state of dehydration and hyperventilation, which eventually results in suffocation. Depending on the severity of the victim's crime, the executioners would either break his legs immediately, causing him to die in a matter of minutes, or place a small seat on the cross, allowing the victim to bear his own body weight, and die in about nine days. It's hard to say which was more just.

1. Alone: Definitely the worstSo scour Craiglist, the bars, the library and coffee shops. Your mate is out there somewhere. Don't let him or her get away.