How You Would Have Died In The Wild West

Despite its reputation, the Wild West was nowhere near as wild as it's cracked up to be. Statistically speaking, it was more peaceful than some major cities today. The image of the West we get from movies like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and video games like Red Dead Redemption is a sensationalized version of the American frontier. For a more accurate version of the time period, you're better off reading Willa Cather's Prarie Trilogy.

But the West wasn't without its risks. Outlaws still looted trains and lawmen still cornered cowboys on the run. While danger wasn't as widespread as we're led to believe, it sure was intense. Quick-draw duels, rattlesnake bites, disease, and the elements all conspired to make the West a tough place to survive. Even sex in the Old West could be precarious.

To read about other ways you could have died in the wild west. go here:

#wildwest #death #weirdhistory

[panatypical]

My Dad loved all of that Western stuff.
We watched every wild west type TV show we could fit in without time conflicts. Dad was a kid who grew up in Hell's Kitchen in the 1920s and 30s, and saw the hell of death in that Iwo Jima thing. It was a normal part of his environment. He had an LP record of cowboy songs that he would play sometimes on the weekends. His favorite song was "Blood On The Saddle." R I.P., Dad, hope to see you where there's no more pain....

[sfeliciano]

The Oregon Trail made me believe everyone died from dysentery 😂

[ar-sithf.austin]

Lol, that's exactly when we started playing Oregon Trail was third grade. I think on Apple II Green screens. Then we got one in color! About 1988 😂

[CriticalMassAwakening]

My Grandmother and Greats traveled the Oregon Trail in 1914. My grandmother was 7. They lost 4 of her younger siblings. They started with 13 kids.
Back then you had to have a lot of children so your bloodline would survive.
When my grandmother passed at 86 years old in Eagle Point, Oregon they wrote an article about her contributing 99 descendants into Oregon in her lifetime. She experienced the Oregon Trail IRL.

[andrewward]

This video doesn’t even mention workplace deaths. The 2 most common jobs in the old west were miners and cowboys and both jobs were dangerous. Mines collapsing or exploding killed miners all the time and lung ailments were also common among miners. Cowboys worked outside and were at the mercy of the elements. They also risked injury or death dodging stampedes, dealing with uncooperative cows or bulls, or if their horse took a step in a gopher hole.

[ingridfong-daley]

For whatever reason, the subtitles keep labelling "Hickock" as "Hitchcock" and the thought of ol' Alfred hanging out in the Wild West making scary movies is giving me giggles.

[NASCARFAN]

The Red Dead Redemption Series does a phenomenal job of portraying The Wild West

[dennislogan]

Deadwood's portrayal of Calamity Jane was 10 out of 10.

[lilvampk]

I kept waiting for death by childbirth

[tkccsf]

I'm not quite interested with Wild West stories but you got me pretty hooked with this one, Tom.

[btetschner]

7:05 The writer Willa Cather eventually moved to the settlement of Red Cloud, Nebraska.

Her book My Antonia (1918) is the considered to the top novel about Nebraska.
I share a birthday with her (December 7th).

[lukemn]

I swear this was covered in "Blazing Saddles".

[Irish_Georgia_Girl]

I don't see Skippy Clanton as a coward, I see him as the only smart one of that bunch!

[btetschner]

0:40 The three-way showdown in the film The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966) is incredible, legendary filmmaking!

I share a birthday with Eli Wallach, he plays Tuco Ramirez (AKA The Ugly) in the film.

[katiekofemug]

Measles, mumps, rubella, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, polio, tuberculosis, "consumption", etc - the list of childhood diseases the young didn't survive, frequently taking siblings and elders with them, means most of us would never have seen adolescence; just names and brief dates on a stone is all we'd be. Those that did survive were usually afflicted with impaired eyesight to blindness, impaired hearing to deafness, degenerative heart and muscles issues that gave out within 10 years, or you could succumbed to influenza, pneumonia or other common infections long before antibiotics were invented. Strep and Staph was around to thin the population as well. The spread of these diseases seemed to be more common in the cities because the statistics were / are available whereas in the Territories, such statistics weren't kept until towns grew large enough to have a doctor and a court house, never mind a state house to send records. Ghost towns were not always the result of boom to bust, they were all too frequently the result of disease and contaminated wells.

[daniwells]

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is my favorite movie and I never see it mentioned anywhere. Nice to see it have a lil moment 😊

[markrobinson]

This narrator is equivalent of the Paul Harvey of You Tube...

[NewMessage]

Me? Oh, I'd die doing my damndest to make Yosemite Sam an actual historical figure.

[negativeindustrial]

There is nothing “fuzzy” about who shot first. Han was the only person who shot anyone at that table that day.

[ac]

Seth McFarlane did a movie named a million ways to die in the west