Some of the Ways New York City Will Kill You (Other Than Blizzards)

New York City is preparing for a blizzard, but there are so many other ways to die here. 

There is getting hit by a city bus, because everyone knows those drivers don’t obey the lights, won’t avoid pedestrians, and will run you down and drive off with your smashed head and mangled shoulders trapped in the grill, your loose entrails running along the undercarriage, your crumpled legs trailing behind, bouncing along the potholes like the old fashioned cans tied to the bumper of a newlywed’s car, leaving a rich smear of blood on the street. 

And taxis, of course, will lurch forward unexpectedly, blowing their horns at you as they belligerently mow you down, aiming to break both your legs and shouting at you and shaking their upraised fists while they steer towards you. 

There are also the saber-wielding food deliverers, on bicycles, cutting the air and swishing a brandished blade as they weave through the crowded sidewalks of midtown, racing to deliver a turkey wrap and a sugar-free Vitamin Water for which they will receive a $2 tip.

 

Midtown crosswalk

Anyone can perish from old age in New York, but the premature aging induced by trying to find a decent dry cleaner that won’t send your shirts back with mystery smudges is a hidden threat.

Look no further than the cauldron of magma, just below the pavement, hinting at its deadly presence by blowing steam up through the pavement; it will fry you to a crispy rind in a seconds.

The mannikins that liquefy the instant your back is turned and slither along  the ground like a great puddle of melted plastic, reforming into a killing machine just in time to issue a great karate chop to your torso? They slice you with their not-so-lifelike hands, because their fused fingers and flat palms are somehow the sharpest blades, and it doesn’t so much as hurt as it separates your body parts from each other as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter and you lay there wondering, “Was I really done in by a retail clothes dummy?”

Then, there are the wind gusts, strong enough to lift a person wearing a wool overcoat, laden with shopping bags 30 to 80 feet in the air, and dropping the person into a wooden water tank on top of a building, overcoat and shopping bags and all. In your next life you might practice removing a heavy wool overcoat under water. 

Any Icon parking garage is actually a prison of infinite concrete sadness, spiraling forever into the depths of a trans-dimensional void, not unlike Hell itself, but paved, and only $30 for a whole day (plus tip)!

The potholes have been known to actually hold land mines, set by Staten Island Separatists.

If you make eye-contact with an NYPD, it will lock onto you as its latest target, clamping its man-killing grasp around you, like a raptor’s grasp, really, because it, too, has to flex its muscles to open its grip; keeping its hands closed in a tight, angry fist is an effortless act for an NYPD.  And then it spins you into a neat tuck under its arm, commencing the  into the death-lock chokehold all NYPDs are famous for.  Don’t worry; you’ll be dead in an instant.

The shuffling subway zombies are easy to outrun, but the human grease smear they leave on the poles contains a flesh-eating-inspiring virus, penetrating any cuts or sores, and there is no known cure. Even a hangnail is a way in. Soon you will be craving brains, which might not be so bad, since you can find almost anything to eat in New York City, and you can have it delivered.

Every uniform-wearing doorman in Manhattan has a secret pocket for concealing a well-oiled and fully loaded machine gun, and as card-carrying members of the mafia, doormen are obligated to use that weapon if ordered to do so by an authority they recognize.

Beware drunken revelers since there are several well-documented cases of drunken mobs mistaking a stranger for an effigy, soaking the stranger in 4Loko, and setting them ablaze.

New York City’s puddles can actually kill you three ways. First, they are sometimes filled with acid, which will eat through your shoes and burn up your legs in seconds. Second, they are occasionally portals to a soul-stealing parallel universe where a doomed version of yourself will take your place in this reality if you see your reflection in the wrong puddle. Last, some say folks have died from the vomiting induced by just how nasty the puddles are.

There is also the Times Square unauthorized-costume Elmo, who dines on human souls.

And there is the classily suited assassin, who buys you a cosmo at a posh bar but slips in some poison and you die on the barstool in paroxysms of agony.

But, of course, the real way that New York City will kill you is by giving you blisters.