How Far Away is Death?

How far away is death? From close calls to tragic accidents, these incidents are equally shocking as insightful.

Tune in every Thursday to see the newest edition, or scroll down to browse previous topics.

Death was apparently right around the corner

October 1, 2026

My first full shift at a hotel seemed like it was going to end without any hiccups. (Looking back, that was pretty miraculous. We were short-staffed, so I was completely alone with effectively no formal training.) It was a slow day, so I was just standing around at the front desk for the most part.

Then, about 5 minutes before my shift was over, a guest with a pale look on his face walked up to the desk and whispered, “Someone is injured at the pool. She needs help.”

The pool was closed for maintenance, so I was a bit puzzled. I couldn’t see anything on the cameras, so I began to walk there to see for myself.

I was stopped by my coworker, who just so happened to be early that day. With the same unsettled expression as the guest, she said, “I already called 911. You can go home for the day.”

I felt a little uncomfortable leaving in the middle of such an apparently serious situation, but she was adamant that she could take care of this. I eventually did leave, passing my an ambulance and a fire truck with blaring lights.

The next day, I asked my boss what happened. He explained to me:

“Our maintenance man lived at the hotel. I told him that his girlfriend was no longer welcome here because she had been causing trouble. He invited her here behind my back. From his room, she took some kind of hallucinogenic and fell from the balcony onto the concrete.”

“Is she okay?”

He shook his head and said, “I fired the maintenance man.”

This week’s edition was written by Jacob.

Death by MRI

September 24, 2026

Keith McAllister was wearing a 20-pound metallic weight-training chain around his neck when he walked into Nassau Open MRI facility in New York. McAllister’s wife was undergoing an MRI for her knee and had trouble getting off the table. A technician summoned McAllister to help his wife and brought him into the room while the machine was still active. In a turn of events, the heavy chain caused a forceful magnetic reaction, drawing McAllister into the MRI machine. He died after suffering multiple heart attacks.

Could AI take out humanity?

September 17, 2026

The upskill pace of AI is dizzying even for the companies working on AI. For instance, last year AI could solve a task in four minutes and this year a 40-minute one.

Now, we’re realizing that AI can outpace our management of it. So, the question of the month has been, Can AI put an end to humanity or compromise it in a definitive way?

Engine blade hits airplane window

September 10, 2026

Not only did the engine blade hit the window of the Ryanair aircraft taking off in Thessaloniki, Greece, the window shattered and a male passenger’s head was sucked out of the window. Passengers, including his wife, pulled at his legs and body to rescue him. He survived the horrific ordeal with friction burns, damages to his head and neck, and shock.

What happened to cause the engine blade to hit the window of the Ryanair plane? The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported that it found parts of a bird on a fragmented engine. The flight had reached 16,000 feet over Thessaloniki—about 10 minute following takeoff—when the engine began reverberating. The shaking within the airplane grew stronger and a clearly audible boom was heard throughout the aircraft. The passenger oxygen masks dropped as the altitude warning sounded.

Missing people among flood in Nepal

September 3, 2026

Here’s what we know for now from the 8:37 am glacier collapse and flash flood on Wednesday, August 26, 2026.

• Emergency crews continue searching for thousands of missing people on the Nepal-China border in the aftermath of a glacial collapse.
• Estimation of unaccounted for in Nepal is currently 4,274, including more than 500 foreign nationals.
• Estimation of unaccounted for in Tibet is 16 deaths, 546 missing.
• The current death toll in Nepal is 903.
• More than 10,400 people have been rescued by relief teams.
• River erosion has inflicted transport routes.
• Rescue teams are working on tunnels at several affected hydropower sites where many workers had been trapped.

Siblings and an explosive device

August 27, 2026

Federal charges have been placed against siblings—a brother and a sister—and indicted with placing an explosive device, an IED, at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. The sister has been placed in custody and the brother fled to China.

Here is further information.

Lake Michigan claims beloved teacher, brother

August 20, 2026

A very popular Adams High School life skills teacher, Hannah Zweig, 21, and her brother, Yosef, traveled to Lake Michigan on a family trip from their South Bend, Indiana, to swim. The pair drowned during the water recreation.

Zweig had stated upon choosing life skills for her teaching career that her developmentally disabled brother was a key factor in her choice.

Principal Jim Seitz at Adams High School described recognizing the beloved teacher’s “clear compassionate vision for her career” when she initially reached out to him for the position: “I actually received an email from her about two years ago, explaining that she was finishing up her degree and she would be interested in a life skills teaching position at Adams High School. And you could see from the tone of her email the compassion that she had for young people, especially young people with special needs.*

“As a life skills teacher, you have a responsibility to literally work with your students from the moment that they get off of the bus in the morning to the moment that they get back on the bus in the afternoon. Hannah communicates with her parents of her students greater, quite frankly, than any teachers that we have.”*

Her exceptional work did not go unnoticed. The South Bend Community School Corporation awarded Hannah Rookie Teacher of the Year this past school year.

But her impact reached far beyond standard classroom hours. Seitz noted that Hannah was always looking for ways to lift up those around her, whether organizing school-wide initiatives or highlighting the work of her colleagues.

WNDU News 16 tells us that “her exceptional work did not go unnoticed. The South Bend Community School Corporation awarded Hannah Rookie Teacher of the Year this past school year.”*

Content source/credit: *WNDU News 16, “Beloved Adams High School teacher, sibling die in Lake Michigan drowning,” by Joshua Short, published August 5, 2026.

Subduing a threat

August 13, 2026

A passenger became a threat on a flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Chicago. First, the Frontier Airlines passenger tried to open an exit door. Next, he attempted to force the cockpit door. Then, he started choking an off-duty flight attendant until fellow passengers and on-duty attendants stopped him and ultimately tied him down with a seat belt. One of the key heroes was a Chicago martial arts instructor.

Due to the danger, the flight was diverted to Miami International Airport, where the offending passenger was charged with maritime and territorial jurisdiction assault and abuse of flight attendants.

Driving-related deaths

August 06, 2026

In the U.S. in 2024, motor vehicle related deaths numbered 39,254. That equates to almost a dozen deaths per 100,000 people based on research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). Explore the information from IIHS and you will learn the motor vehicle crash deaths state by state.

What can you do to drive safer?

Is ice cream a root cause?

July 30, 2026

Did you know there’s a very strong statistical correlation (a coefficient over 0.9) between ice cream and shark attacks? It’s true! As ice cream sales increase, the number of shark bites increases, and vice-versa.

So, does enjoying ice cream make you more likely to get bitten by a shark? No, not quite.

This is a prime example about how correlation does necessarily prove causality. These measurements are probabilistically related, but not directly.

The third factor at play is likely summer heat. As it gets warmer, more people are cooling off by snacking on ice cream or swimming in the ocean.

Data analysis can be confusing, but it’s an important skill when it comes to safety, quality, and operations. We offer an onsite measurement trending course to help investigators better understand data.

Delta flight thwarted

July 24, 2026

Delta Connection Flight 3723, operated by SkyWest Airlines, was forced to make an emergency diversion to Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) on Thursday, July 16, 2026, after encountering severe turbulence that resulted in an injury. : The flight originated from North Eleuthera Airport in the Bahamas and was originally bound for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.