Burying someone alive. Or trapping their feet in cement shoes and throwing them into the ocean.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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This question implies death is the worst that could happen to you.
Personally, I don't see it that way. There's a lot more hurtful things than death.
Death is one occurrence, with no pain in the death itself, and "only" secondary pain in those left behind.
There's a lot more hurtful and lasting pain you can inflict, physically and psychologically, and without a definite endpoint.
Fundamentally, the basis for thinking death is the "worst" is that so long as you're alive you can still experience good things, regardless of your past, and you retain the capacity to heal in different ways.
Death is the one thing you're not coming back from to find a new way to live.
Not putting your shopping carts back.
Kidnapping, I say, in a world where killing a death is simply not a concept, being kidnapped for any reason could lead to millennia of torment
It'll still be rape.
God, imagine the person who downvoted this
Yeah, almost put it in the question too, but felt that would be rude
Yeah that was probably a good call, even I hovered for a second before posting, but rape has always felt worse in my book, like killing someone is a horrible thing to do to someone, but they don't have to deal with it for life, the other one is a life long thing that could be argued is worse than death.
I might have some news for you about rape statistics - they're pretty high. That's telling a lot of people their experiences were worse than death, suggesting life isn't worth living after rape. That's a pretty brutal opinion to post on a public forum.
I didn't say life wasn't worth living after it, I just see a way where it could be seen worse than death, having to have that in your memory forever because some psychopath decided they can do what they want to you.
It's a life long issue these people have to unfortunately suffer, one that they never ever should have had to experienced.
A brutal opinion would be, I think we should publicly execute rapists the slow way, that's a brutal opinion to post on a public forum.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably younger than 25. I don't think you've lived very long if you think one traumatic incident, or even a series of them, can ruin a life.
Suggesting someone's life may not be worth living because of their trauma can be re-victimizing. Since rape and violence are often about power and control, statements like those give abusers more power than they deserve and do nothing to support the victims.
Looking at people brainstorm the worst things you can do to someone, they're all just different ways to take away someone's reason to live. And rape itself doesn't take away someone's will to live - but being considered a victim, saying they may be defined by someone else's actions, forever - that's the kind of thing that kills hope.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably younger than 25.
I don't see how this is relevant but you're wrong.
Suggesting someone's life may not be worth living because of their trauma can be re-victimizing.
I never said they're lives aren't worth living.
Also, I've based my opinion of this subject on my own personal situation that was done to me and I have to deal with that memory all the time.
So yeah.
This one gets more complicated the longer I think about it.
My first pass was to imagine humans just as we are aside from the ability to die. Many things about how humans are don't make sense without death though. Pain, for example likely evolved to cause organisms to avoid stimuli that could lead to their death. Fear largely derives from the anticipation of pain. Would true immortals have either? I imagine the psychology of such creatures would be vastly different from our own.
There's also the question of what form the immortality takes. If it's possible to destroy someone's physical body, but their soul can immediately manifest a new one, and pain doesn't exist, then doing so is just an inconvenience. If bodies are impervious to any damage or alteration, a large category of crimes vanishes.
It would probably come down to some sort of long-term imposition on the freedom of others, but it's really hard to guess what that would look like.
Assuming that immortality only applies to humans, environmental destruction would be a big one.
People care more about pollution and climate change when they know they'll be around to face the consequences.
Unauthorised pregnancy. If no one can die, every new birth is effectively stealing from the limited pool of resources. Too many births, everyone starves, no one can die to ease the burden on the limited resources. Endless suffering for all.
Abortion would probably be impossible too
I was gonna make a joke about ending the abortion debate, but then I went down a rabbit hole:
Abortions procedures would still be a thing, but the fetus wouldnt die. Its just an extremely premature birth. That means that intentional pregnancies could be "harvested" early, for the fetus to grow up outside the mothers body.
Lots to unpack.
They could shoot any unauthorized births a random direction out into space. Not like they care where they end up
Wait, what resources would be most valuable if death was off the table?
Edit: I'll take a stab at it and say cats.
Seriously (or at least as serious as a hypothetical invinciblity/immortality scenario can be :D): food water and housing. You can live without most other things, but being cold, wet, starving and dehydrated will really make the eternity drag on :)
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Unforgiveable implies that there can be no mistake about the negative side effects for even the dumbest among us before committing the act. Torture is about as intentionally cruel as it gets.
Some other suggestions here are frequently used under the umbrella of torture, for example, by the IDF.
While I don't have any statistics, other than just my impression after reading news or talking to people:
There seem to be people unaware that what they are doing is a form of mental torture. There are (at least what it seems) a lot of toxic relationships, and there are instances where neither the victim nor the perpetrator realize how their actions affect themselves or the other part.
I am far from excusing anyone who behaves in a mentally torturous way and agree that they should be punished, but torture might not be as intentional in all situations.
IMO, we should properly categorize the different kinds of torture and the different severity, and perform punishment based on those categorizations. It makes sense, at least to me, to have a stronger punishment for IDF, than for a toxic mother somewhere.
A couple of things I have read as a comment on this post that I would consider torture:
- Rape (this should be classified as torture today)
- Burying people alive
- Throwing someone in a volcano (in a world where dying is an impossibility)
Some that I am more uncertain on:
- Environmental destruction (one could argue that this is indirect torture, as the end result could lead to people being starved, or harmed in other torturous ways)
Stealing from musk.
Permanent mutilation
If death weren't a thing, I suppose that that pitching someone into lava or something like that would be pretty bad then.
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