Has anyone noticed.......

I'm wrong, huh?

1) Get on the wiki.
2) Look at the episode list and all the segments.
3) Take note of how many deaths are attributed to speculations, urban legends and other falsehoods.
4) Get back with me.

Why is anyone taking this show so seriously? I think parts of it are hilarious, and it's obvious that it's all tongue-in-cheek as they pretend to be extremely serious about it. If you can't see that it's intended to be over-the-top, speculative and re-created to be fun in a black-humor sort of way, then I am sorry for you, because you must take everything in life way too seriously. I just saw this the other night for the first time and watched four episodes in a row just because its sense of humor jibes with mine. And it's fun to see what the next bad pun is going to be. The nympho with the carrot who dies of an air embolism? KILLDO! How can you possibly think this is 100% serious? I wouldn't be at all surprised if the deaths have some basis in fact, or even legend, but this is SPIKE, not the Learning Channel. Just remember, do not attempt any of the methods shown here, or YOU WILL DIE. (I was hooked on the campiness in that line! Utterly ridiculous but funny as hell.)

I have no idea what a "sodic radizonate test" is, and neither does Google. Perhaps you meant something else.

Now, they might have said "Oh, king snakes are a dime a dozen in this guy's remote desert area" and decided that, if a snake squeezed the trigger on that guy's shotgun, then it was most likely a king snake. But unless they have an honest witness who knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the shotgun's trigger was squeezed by a king snake, then it's still speculation. And remember: the segment specifically noted that this guy chose to live alone and way off the grid in a remote, isolated location, so unless someone else just happened to wander all the way out to that remote location within an hour or two after this guy died, or if he happened to be entertaining company that day (unlikely, given his supposed paranoia), then there couldn't have been any witnesses to his death.

And my father, my brother and I, being the Texans that we are, have been handling a fair variety of Mossbergs, Remingtons and other shotguns, and we have yet to handle a shotgun with a trigger that "kicks". The impact of the recoil (that "equal and opposite reaction" that Newton was talking about) transfers directly backward from the chamber(s), through the stock and into whatever happens to be behind the stock (which, if you're concerned about shot accuracy and/or safety, will be the meat of your shoulder), and the trigger, being located somewhere under the chamber(s)--and not behind it/them--is nowhere along that path. The trigger mechanism springs the trigger back into place--ready for another shot--as soon as you ease off of it, but that mechanism has absolutely nothing to do with the recoil. So even if you squeeze and "click" on an empty chamber, the trigger springs back into the "ready" position all the same.

If a shotgun's trigger did kick out with enough force to kill a snake, then shotguns would be breaking people's trigger fingers right and left. Considering that a shotgun which routinely injured its wielders would not sell very lucratively, that would probably be something which firearms manufacturers would weed out during the testing and development phase.

To put it in a keener perspective, Texas Rat Snakes routinely grow to be about four feet long...a little bit shorter than a king snake, as I recall. In my history, I've caught two fully grown Texas Rat Snakes in my henhouse. One snake I killed by grabbing its tail and thrashing its head against a tree as hard as I could; it took me three strokes to kill that one. The other snake I killed by hacking its head off with a longknife; it took three chops to kill that one because a snake's "neck" and body are too springy, so even with my trusty woodsplitting block under the snake's neck, there was too much yield in its flesh and bone for a blade to wound it effectively. Then there was the two-foot copperhead that I stomped on while I was running from the fireworks that I'd just set off last July 4th; I was lucky that the snake didn't bite me, because getting stomped on by a 240-pound man in heavy duty work boots didn't even make this copperhead twitch. I had to smash it to death with a foot-square patio tile, and it still took me two slams (one with the flat of the tile, one with the edge). So believe me, snakes are not delicate. Even if the shotgun's recoil mashed the snake's body between the shotgun's stock and a rock, my money says that the snake would still slither away and nurse its injury somewhere else.

I'm still inclined to think that 1kWtD was just exercising more of their creative license with this guy's death. It's more likely that this survivalist just caught the trigger in some brush (and, like a true paranoid idiot, he had the safety off) and that's how he died. But that scenario still grates against the idea that a paranoid survivalist who knows how to operate firearms would always carry the shotgun at the ready (read: by its stock and/or receiver) and never carry it by its barrel, so it's probably even more likely that a fellow like that, being tormented by his own madness and despair for so long, finally decided to end it all, tucked the muzzle under his chin and pushed the trigger in himself; if the shotgun wasn't sawed-off, he'd have to use a stick or his toes, but he could do it. But neither one of those would make for good television, nor would they suit this contrived "karma got 'em" nonsense that Original tries to shovel into every last segment. So, enter the entirely fictitious death by snake. That's where I'd place my bet, anyway.