Ed Ranks Your Horrific Oregon Trail Deaths

Sure, go ahead and look around. You need something to do before drowning.

Based on the Apple II version of the  Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) game The Oregon Trail, there were ten ways to meet your horrible and inevitable death while attempting to settle Oregon. In doing some research, people seem to also claim that there were additional ways to die such as starvation, Indian attacks, yellow fever, and gunshot wounds while hunting. However, I'm unable to verify these legendary methods of dying. There were a lot of versions of the game though, so people might be mis-remembering or remembering some other version of the game. The Apple II version is the most iconic, so I'll stick with these 10.

10. Exhaustion - Really? You died of exhaustion? That's the thing that the public relations managers of celebrities tell the press that their clients have when they actually are checking into rehab for rampant narcotic abuse. Maybe you should just adjust the speed at which you're pacing those oxen, buddy.

9. Broken Arm - I'm not saying that nobody dies of broken arms, but this is pretty weak sauce here. I suppose an infection you got after breaking your arm could kill you.

8. Broken Leg - Like the arm above, but a little more understandable. If you have to travel across half the country but can't use your legs, I can see at least some justification for why you'd just lay down and die at Independence Rock instead of going on with this futile journey. What's so special about the Willamette Valley anyway?

7. Fever - You're going to have to be a bit more specific than just "fever." When people tell me they have a fever, I don't assume they're about to die. I assume it's Friday and they want to have a three day weekend.

6. Measles - Okay, now we're starting to see some actual defined medical conditions. But still... measles? Maybe it's just my bias speaking though the lens of someone living comfortably in the 21st Century, but this one doesn't seem all that fatal. Most people don't die of measles, right? I dunno, I guess things were different in 1848.

5. Typhoid - Now we're REALLY getting legit with some scary sounding stuff. Typhoid fever is caused by a Salmonella bacteria and we all know that's no good at all. It's generally spread by eating or drinking food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Gross. Nobody wants to get this, because it means that you ate shit.

4. Cholera - Cholera is horrible. Your entire body is in pain and you have watery diarrhea. As above, this is generally spread by consuming feces. There were lots of ways to die of horrible diseases in old times and many of them involved consuming feces and likewise unstoppable diarrhea. This will not be the last diarrhea-related death on this list, alas. It's treatable today and only kills about 1% of people who get the said treatment for it. Unfortunately, it still kills massive numbers of people - because many in poor countries don't get that treatment. 3 to 5 million people worldwide get it every year, killing between 58,000 and 130,000 of them.

3. Drowning - You should have saved enough money to pay for the toll bridge, you stupid ass. Why did you have to buy so much meat at Fort Bridger and go broke? You could have gone hunting instead and saved a few bucks for the toll. But no. Now you have to think of something witty to put on your tombstone so that everyone in the networked school computer lab can laugh at it. Don't put down "pepperoni," that's so cliché.

2. Snakebite - Goddamn snakes are just the worst, right? There you are, just walking along by Chimney Rock and a prairie rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) bites you. No problem, right? You'll just take a quick hop over to the Morrill County Community Hospital in nearby Bridgeport and get an antivenin treatment. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but first off didn't I just say above that this year is 1848?  The Morrill County Community Hospital wasn't established until 1970. And secondly, the first antivenin for snakes wasn't developed until 1895 by French scientist Albert Calmette. The hemotoxins just injected into you will begin tissue necrosis throughout your body. I would include a picture of what this looks like as part of this ranking, but you'd have nightmares. But you might not have to worry about that for too long, as the venom is also neurotoxic... so you might not even feel your horrible death after all the nerves in your body shut down.

1.  Dysentery - This one is just so iconic. Why does everybody remember this one for The Oregon Trail more than the others? I'll tell you why. Because unlike the typhoid and cholera above, which also include violently shitting yourself to death, dysentery ALSO famously involves the shitting out of blood. Lots of blood. Still, this is one of these old time diseases we can laugh about now because it doesn't effect anyone anymore, right? Sorry, no! The bacterial form of dysentery causes the deaths of 74,000 people a year (30,000 of which are children under five) and the amoeba-based form of dysentery still causes 50,000 deaths a year.