Recent research indicates that turbulence is rising and that climate change is a cause, specifically elevated carbon dioxide emissions that affect air currents.
Heart Attack / Epileptic Seizure induced from massive fear/stress/anxiety.
Heart Attack is more likely, but a violent enough Epileptic Seizure can snap tendons, ligaments or your neck.
Edit: You could also possibly choke to death on your own vomit.
All those could kill you while secured properly.
Edit 2: All sorts of other stress induced cardiovascular stuff like a bursting aneurysm or irregular heartbeats for a long enough time untreated could also lead to death.
I have been in a few car accidents in my life (none my fault).
Got whiplash, bruising… but the main thing is the intense shock, literal medical shock. Like you are not actually there, but at the same time everything is hyper real… its hard to describe.
As the adrenaline wears off you realize your heart is pumping like mad.
Its… its Donny from the Big Lebowski. Sometimes something that many people would just be shaken from, need a week off to recover… unfortunately, lots of people can’t handle that stress, and their heart will give out.
… Are you sure about that?
I have had to hold down people violently seizing before to prevent them from seriously injuring themselves, and it took quite a lot of effort.
And there are studies that show:
Epileptic Seizures can fracture bones and rupture tendons:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/epi.14738
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093233/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4061405/
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/criem/2022/9186275/
So, I mean, while these more severe injuries are more rare… they can happen.
Now in this scenario we are assuming a person belted into an airline seat, so that would restrict movement somewhat and make falling over unlikely… but also the aircraft is experiencing extreme turbulence.
Evidently weakened bones are a common side effect of long term use of many anti-epileptic drugs as well… seems like there are tons of reports of epileptics fracturing bones and rupturing tendons from either a seizure itself or collapsing.
… Am I missing something here?
Ok, so epileptic seizures can cause severe musculoskeletal injuries, including tendon tears and fractures, but these cases are extremely rare. Such injuries typically occur under specific conditions, involving additional risk factors like long-term medication use or underlying bone density issues. Most injuries associated with seizures are secondary, resulting from falls or other trauma during the seizure.
I think it’s important we don’t present information that implies this is a likely occurrence.
However i concede these cases are mentioned in the medical literature, so technically you’re not wrong, therefore i retract my initial comment.