THRILL SEEKERS Why the Fatal Attraction?

Conclusion of Flirting With Death

In the United States, "a growing number of 'typical boys and girls are being killed or maimed playing  bizarre new dangerous games," reported Family Circle magazine.  "Car surfing"-climbing through the window of a speeding car onto the top and standing while the car speeds along-or standing on top of a moving elevator or on top of a speeding subway train have taken youthful lives. 

Even towering Mount Everest is involved as never before. Climbers without adequate training will pay as much as $65,000 to be led to the top and down again.  Since 1953, more than 700 climbers have reached the top. Many never made it down.  Some of the bodies are still up there.  "Climbers now compete to set records as the youngest, the oldest, the fastest  on Everest," wrote one journalist.  "Unlike any other sport," wrote another,  "mountaineering demands that  its players die."  Must one defy disaster to prove courage?  (More like show their inherent stupidity.) "Courage doesn't mean doing stupid things," warned one veteran climber. Among "stupid things," he lists " 'adventure tours' up Mount Everest by less-than-expert climbers." 

And do it goes.  The number and kinds of death-defying pursuits that are becoming common throughout the world are limited only by the imagination of those willing to create new ones.  A psychologist predicts that extreme sports, in which participants live for a while on the edge between life and death, "will become the major spectator and participant sports of the 21st century." 

Next time: THRILL SEEKERS Why the Fatal Attraction?/Why Do They Do It? 

From the Awake! magazine