This map becomes infinitely more blessed with the lack of the UK in the EU.

  • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Vehicular suicide and murder/suicide. Wyoming is also second in the nation for gun suicide and first for gun murder/suicide.

    Seriously, people hate living in Wyoming. There's also been a rapid, shocking year over year decrease in opioid deaths there in recent past, not because people are getting clean, but because people are shooting, hanging, or vehicle-ing themselves to death instead.

    Suicides make up about half of their yearly population shrinkage.

    :doomjak: it's fucking grim as shit in the western states.

    • happybadger [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It's also dangerous as hell to drive along the front range of the Rockies there. It's prone to super high winds and blizzards, so much so that they shut down the interstate at various points when vehicles can't navigate it. This is driving in Wyoming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouizU_s-muk

      Whenever I drive there it's like 50/50 that I feel safe in my small car. It's easy to zone out when there's nothing to look at and the environmental conditions/volume of large trucks makes the non-mountainous areas really sketchy.

        • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yeah, in the YouTube recommended below the linked video there was footage from a 119 car pileup in Wisconsin, with only 1 death from a guy who got out of his car. Wild shit.

      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh, for sure. There is more hazardous geography in a lot of the west, but from what I've seen, the death rate only minimally changes between counties with difficult terrain and those without.

      • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Shouldn't come as a big surprise, honestly. There's not a lot out there, the infrastructure hasn't been maintained since it was built during the New Deal era, and the few non-oil jobs have been steadily marching away from the rural areas and smaller cities for decades, so what little there is outside of major urban areas is just... Crippling poverty, rampant opiate addiction, and a population that's so small, spread out, and alienated that most have been living like it's lockdown for their entire lives.

        • Tiocfaidhcaisarla [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Goddamn. I assumed the natural beauty, and I guess my imagined cozy little towns would counter that, but instead it's actually a typically American dystopia of yeoman culture self-sufficiency. Just the libertarian argument of living of the grid come to life and it turns out that not having community out weighs that, sounds like.

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Yeah, unfortunately those cozy little towns are a figment of the imagination. Talking to friends who are from places like this, life in rural America seems to be like, "my neighbours are an oil derrick and a wind turbine. Sometimes I see a cow. I only see another person outside my family when we go to the store which is once a month because it's 60 miles out. My only connection to the outside world is satellite internet. It doesn't work when it's cloudy, it's as fast as DSL on a good day, ping is too high for online games, and I only have 50 gigs a month. A family member or friend dies every 3 months, but I haven't been to a funeral in years. Everyone I knew in high school moved, died, or is on meth."