Better To Die Than Be Killed / Real Life

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• Cato the Younger (not the one who constantly said "Carthago Delenda Est"; that was Cato the Elder), who was well-known for his moral rectitude, died of suicide after being defeated by Caesar. He and another prominent Optimate, Metellus Scipio, had broken away from Pompey after he was defeated at Pharsalus and fled to Africa. Cato didn't command this army; he left it to Scipio. When he learned of Caesar's victory, he died of suicide not only because he didn't want to live in a world with Caesar in power but he also refused to give Caesar the power to pardon him.
• The largest recorded mass suicide occurred 25 February 1335 at Pílenai, Lithuania. The Lithuanian defenders of Pílenai under duke Margiris were being besieged by the Teutonic Order forces. Lithuanians, being the last Pagans in Europe and facing a zealously Christian elite force, after seeing there was no hope and no escape, rather committed a mass suicide than surrendered, burning the fort of Pílenai and all their belongings down. Some 5,000 Lithuanians killed themselves that day rather than faced forced conversion. Lithuanians later converted to Catholicism on their own initiative.
• Famously said to be the fate of Guy Fawkes, who was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered for his involvement in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. After the noose was placed around his neck to begin the first phase of the planned execution, Fawkes allegedly jumped from the gallows, causing his neck to snap at the end of the rope; this killed him instantly, sparing him the prolonged, torturous death that had been planned for him.
• World War II:
  • On April 30, 1945, with the Red Army on the brink of totally seizing Berlin and ending Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler felt that the German people had failed him and, hoping that they would be utterly destroyed, shot himself in the head with a pistol and left them to their fate. His new bride, Eva Braun, also poisoned herself at his side. The next day, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda poisoned their six children, took cyanide pills and then shot themselves. Hours later, Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann tried to flee the bunker, but was unable to get through the Soviet advance and took cyanide. Afterward, many others in the bunker killed themselves, including Generals Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf. Tens of thousands of German civilians followed suit, especially in the Eastern "colonies", where, having committed atrocities against the locals, they feared retaliation from the advancing Soviets. Numerous generals, admirals, and Nazi Party officials also died of suicide rather than being captured, tried, and executed. Josef Terboven, the brutal governor of Nazi-occupied Norway, blew himself up with dynamite. Former Governor-General of Poland Hans Frank slashed his wrists and throat but failed to kill himself. After being arrested by British troops and identified, former SS chief Heinrich Himmler bit into a cyanide pill. German Labour Front leader Robert Ley hanged himself before he could be tried at the Nuremberg Trial, and former Reich Marshall and Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring did the same the night before he could be hanged after being condemned there, as an act of defiance against his captors. Suicide on such a mass scale was utterly uncommon in The West, with its Judeo-UsefulNotes/Christian and Rationalist Enlightenment values, but was encouraged by the fanatical, occultist, neo-paganist cult of Nazism. Ironically, many Nazis killed themselves with capsules of potassium cyanide, the same poison used to kill millions of their victims in the death camps. ^note The reason for this is largely the same — euthanasia by potassium cyanide was considered as the most humane and dignified death available. The Nazis used it in the camps because they did not want to be monsters, and then used it on themselves hoping to die with a minimum of suffering.
  • After the July 20, 1944 coup attempt against Hitler failed, some of the conspirators died of suicide rather than face execution by the Nazis. Ludwig Beck, for example, convinced his captors to give him a pistol and shot himself, while Henning von Tresckow blew himself up with a grenade held under his chin.
    • In an example from the same plot, Erwin Rommel, a legendary German general known as "The Desert Fox," was offered this trope by Hitler himself.^note While Rommel wasn't active in the plot, he did know about it and kept it a secret Specifically, Rommel's conviction and subsequent death sentence were inevitable given that the Fuhrer controlled the courts. However, Hitler, in a bit of pragmatism, realized that the German people loved Rommel; having him labeled a traitor and publicly executed would be terrible for the populace's morale. As such, he dispatched two of his generals to Rommel's home on the eve of his trial and offered the general the chance to take cyanide that very night. Rommel, after securing promises that his family would be protected and given a full pension, took the deal. His "official" cause of death was listed as a heart attack, and Hitler gave him a full military burial, complete with honor guard and a national day of mourning.
  • Imperial Japanese propaganda was used to convince Japanese soldiers and the natives of the islands they occupied that the Americans were savages who would rape and torture them if they ever captured them. This often led to mass suicides among Japanese soldiers and native civilians whenever the Americans landed on an island. Perhaps the most notable instance of this occurred on the island of Saipan in July 1944. Some 10,000 Japanese civilians took their own lives rather than be captured by the Americans, many doing so by jumping off cliffs now nicknamed "Banzai Cliff" and "Suicide Cliff." Japanese soldiers were often only taken prisoner if they were so badly injured they physically couldn't commit suicide, whether by their own hand or by enemy fire.
• Decebalus of Dacia, to avoid being captured and humiliated by the Romans.
• Likewise, Hannibal Barca. His last words were particularly pointed at the Romans.
  "Let us relieve the Romans from the anxiety they have so long experienced since they think it tries their patience too much to wait for an old man's death."
• During the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, people on his hit list often got notified that they probably wanted to commit suicide or he'd make them wish they had. Given how sadistically Nero had some people executed, it should be no surprise that many who received such notes took their advice. Among those that did were his former tutor the philosopher Seneca and Petronius, author of the Satyricon.
  • Nero died of suicide when he was declared as an enemy of the state after the burning of Rome. Sure, it was completely normal back then, but nonetheless, it's a great example of poetic justice.
• The Roman religion did not see suicide as a sin, and in fact held up suicide as a noble form of death second only to death in battle. Free men and women who had been convicted or who were likely to be convicted of capital crimes were allowed to kill themselves before they could be executed; under Roman law before Nero, this meant their heirs would then be allowed to inherit their property rather than having it confiscated by the state. Nero's main innovation was that if the accused died of suicide, Nero would take his property but let the accused's family live. If he refused to commit suicide, Nero would order the execution of the entire family, including children. Even worse, because the law prohibited execution of a female virgin, any daughters in the family (even infants) would be raped by the executioner before being strangled and thrown off the Tarpeian Rock. Nero also executed men solely to get their estates, manufacturing charges that no jury would disagree with lest they become his next victims.
• Cassius and Brutus, the leaders of the conspiracy against Julius Caesar, died of suicide after losing the Battle of Philippi (there were actually two clashes-Cassius ordered his freedman to kill him after the first, Brutus killed himself after the second).
• Western outlaw, Harry Tracy, when cornered by the authorities, chose to blow his brains out rather than be re-captured.
• Subverted by J.K. Paasikivi, President of Finland: Kuoleman pelosta ei kannata tehdä itsemurhaa (it is no use committing suicide because of fear of death.)
• Seppuku could be used by samurai to avoid falling into enemy hands. Jigai was a less messy version that women could use to the same ends. One of the most famous cases of Seppuku that are in spirit of this trope was the demise of the warlord Oda Nobunaga: Betrayed by his general Akechi Mitsuhide in Honnoji, only having few men to defend him and victory seemed hopeless, Nobunaga then chose to seal himself within the main temple while it's being burnt down on his orders, and then committed seppuku rather than allowing Mitsuhide to strike the fatal blow. Another case was Saigo Takamori during the Battle of Shiroyama. During the battle, he was injured and asked one of his comrades to take him somewhere private to commit suicide while the other 40 survivors charged toward the Imperial line and were subsequently mowed down by Imperial gunfire.
• Serial killer/torturer/rapist Leonard Lake got arrested for illegal possession of a firearm. When it was clear that the police wouldn't let him go without some investigation, which would undoubtedly lead the police to discover his crimes, he left a note to his wife and ingested a cyanide capsule that killed him in order to avoid having to face legal proceedings and a certain death sentence.
• Mathematician and father of the modern computer Alan Turing was convicted of homosexuality and offered the choice between a series of chemical injections that would amount to chemical castration, or a long stay in prison, where he was unlikely to get the best of treatment. He chose the injections, but about a year later, he was found dead of cyanide poisoning, presumably from an apple impregnated with cyanide. It is disputed whether he deliberately poisoned himself with the apple, or accidentally inhaled it while working with potassium cyanide.
• Mathematician Felix Hausdorff died of suicide with his wife and wife's sister in order to avoid going to a concentration camp.
  "By the time you receive these lines, we three will have solved the problem in another way - in the way which you have continually attempted to dissuade us."
• In 73 AD, after the failure of the Jewish Rebellion against the Roman Empire, virtually the entire population that had taken refuge in the fortress of Masada, soldiers and civilians alike, died of mass suicide rather than face slavery or crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. Two women and their five children were the only ones not to take their own lives. The survivors were, in response, treated with honor by the Romans. This event was quite unusual and the first recorded instance of mass suicide among Jews, as normally their religion forbade suicide.
• Twelve centuries later the Jews of York who had taken shelter in the castle during a pogrom followed their ancestors' example and died of mass suicide.
• Also happened in Numantia, Spain (then, Hispania), in 143 BC. After the long siege from the Romans and its chief Scipius Emilianus, lots of Numantians chose to die rather than surrender.
• The Roman general Varus and many other Roman officers did this in the final moments of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, both out of shame (three Roman legions were completely annihilated), and out of fear for what the Germanic tribesmen would do to them (many of the captured Roman soldiers were tortured, then had their head nailed to a tree while they were still alive; other Romans were burned alive in wicker cages as sacrifices to the German gods).
• This was the motivation behind the Peoples Temple mass suicide at Jonestown in 1978, though in this case only a small fraction of those dead would have faced criminal charges. It's also unclear how many people were actually willing participants in the suicide and how many were tricked/forced into it.
• World War I:
  • Gavrilo Princip, the man who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and set off World War I, attempted to do this before his arrest, but the cyanide was too old and his gun was wrenched out of his hands.
  • The same went for another of his co-conspirators, Nedeljko Čabrinović. The man behind the first assassination attempt, a grenade tossed at Franz Ferdinand's car, swallowed a cyanide pill from the same batch as Princip, and jumped in the nearby river to ensure he died. Unfortunately, his cyanide also failed to kill him, and the water was only five inches deep. He was then dragged out and beaten almost to death by an angry mob.
• Dr. Bruce Ivins, the prime suspect in the 2002 anthrax poisonings in the U.S., died of suicide in 2008, shortly ahead of being indicted for murder in the attacks.
• Marvin Heemeyer built a tank and then proceeded to wreck numerous buildings and vehicles in his town causing over $7 million in damages, before getting his tank stuck in a basement - at which point he shot himself in the head. It's suspected he had intended for his rampage to be a final act, as once sealed from within the tank had no way for the occupant to get out of it - or for others to enter - without demolishing parts of it.
• An entire French military unit (possibly company-sized) was imprisoned during the Haitian Revolution for suspected treason. They died of mass suicide by strangulation rather than face torture or, more likely, starvation.
• King Mithridates VI of Pontus attempted this when about to be killed by the Romans. Unfortunately, the attempt was done using a poison he had built up an immunity to. Accounts vary on whether he got a lackey to run him through with a sword or the Romans got at him first.
• The Norwegian warrior king Olaf Tryggvason, after losing a Last Stand at sea against all contemporary Scandinavian powers, ultimately losing only when engaged by other Norwegians. The king then threw himself into the sea without bothering to take off his mail, which most likely pulled him to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. However, he did sometimes do this for sport prior to the battle, and therefore some believed he managed to save himself after all. The event is most famously told in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla.
• In a non-suicide example, during the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, King Leonidas and the Spartans chose to fight and die when the pass behind Thermopylae was revealed to the Persians by Ephialtes.
• Xiang Yu, a Chinese general who ended up losing out to his ally-turned-rival Liu Bang, attempted to escape into friendly territory when Bang put a price on his head. However, his would-be assassins caught up and, after losing all the men who were still loyal to him, Yu slit his own throat. According to some accounts, he saw an old friend among the group hunting him and offered his head (and the reward) to the man.
• Strictly speaking, in jurisdictions where the death sentence is in force, criminals who commit murder may die of suicide afterward to prevent arrest and sentencing. Likewise, if a criminal committing a crime punishable by death is about to be arrested and has no means of escape, they may take their own lives to also prevent arrest and a trip to death row. However, many criminal suicides fall under a lesser heading of "better to die than go to jail."
• R. Budd Dwyer, treasurer of Pennsylvania, Ate His Gun during a televised news conference rather than face sentencing the next day for charges stemming from a bribe scandal. There was a reason for this, however: if he died before the trial, his family would still get the pension, as he wasn't technically a criminal until he was charged. In addition, his life insurance policy was unusual in that it did not contain the usual clause against suicide, so they got that, too.
• One of the two accounts of ancient British rebel leader Boudica, Queen of the Iceni tribe, says she took this option when her host was routed by the Romans. The other says that she escaped capture and then died of an illness.
• The Austrian author Egon Friedell jumped out of his window while the SA was arguing with his maid downstairs. Considering that he was a highly educated, outspoken Jew in Nazi Germany this probably saved him from a Fate Worse than Death.
• During the September 11th attacks of 2001:
  • When the first plane hit the North Tower, it cut through all three staircases in the building, leaving anyone above the point of impact without an escape route, and though one staircase in the South Tower remained partially intact and passable, fire and smoke scared many away from trying it. A number of the trapped people decided to throw themselves out of the towers to their deaths below. This was discussed in the documentary 9/11:
    Firefighter Joe Casaliggi: How bad is it up there that the better option is to jump?
    • Notably, the Medical Examiner's office recorded all jumper deaths as homicides, rather than the normal suicide.
  • The passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 attacked the hijackers to regain control of the cockpit. They stopped the terrorists from reaching their (probable) destination of Washington D.C., instead causing it to crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It is believed by some, including the families of those aboard, that the group who went to storm the cockpit, led by passenger Todd Beamer, managed to either incapacitate or kill at least one of the hijackers, broke down the door to the cockpit and fought with the remaining hijackers over the controls in the final moments before the plane hit the ground.
• 90 years before 9/11, there was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. In this case, there was nothing structurally wrong with the building that prevented them escaping, but the entrance to one of the two stairways had been locked as an anti-theft measure and could not be opened because none of the keyholders were there at the time, and the other was already on fire by the time workers on the ninth floor became aware of the danger. Some workers escaped by climbing up to the roof before the staircase was blocked completely and crossing over to adjacent buildings, and others escaped on the freight elevators^note thanks in large part to the elevator operators who kept going back up to save more workers until their elevators literally started to distort from the heat, but soon, the elevators were inoperable and the staircase was fully engulfed in flames such that it was completely unusable, even to go up to the roof. The fire department ladders were too short to reach the affected floors, and the single fire escape (which was a treacherous escape route by itself as it ended at the second floor, but could have been used to bring people down to the ladders) was poorly built and possibly already broken and had collapsed before the fire department even arrived. With no way out and the fire growing more intense by the minute, dozens of workers chose to jump to their deaths from the ninth floor windows rather than face a horrific, painful death by burning^note the fire department tried to put up nets to catch them, but the nets were flimsy and the falling victims tore right through them — witnesses would later note that they saw victims fighting for the chance to jump, because the alternative was so much worse. Ultimately, 62 of the 146 killed in the tragedy were determined to have died by jumping.
• There is some speculation that Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar died of suicide before the police could shoot him. Since he was shot multiple times and from far range, there is no way to prove or disprove this. However, Escobar's brothers Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano believe he shot himself. "He committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years they went after him, he would say to me every day that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would shoot himself through the ears."
• Eric Harris of the Columbine High shooting, when realizing that none of his and Dylan Klebold's bombs had gone off, that they couldn't bring themselves to kill some people they were close to, and that a police sniper had already found them and was ready to shoot, shot himself to make sure that he'd never be brought in for questioning. Klebold doesn't quite match this trope, as he had been fantasizing about and wanting to commit suicide for months and the shooting was primarily a vehicle to make him do it finally, as he regretted killing other people (this can be seen in the way he ascends the cafeteria stairs one last time in the security footage).
• Mark O. Barton killed his wife, children, and eight people at his workplace, triggering a manhunt for him. Police eventually tracked him to a gas station. Surrounded with no place to escape, Barton ducked behind his van and shot himself dead to avoid going to jail.
• At least one suicide has been linked to the supposed 2012 apocalypse.
• Ex-LAPD officer and spree killer Christopher Dorner shot himself in the head to spare himself the agony of burning alive when his former comrades set his hideout on fire (whether accidentally or on purpose is unclear).
• Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII famously killed themselves rather than be taken alive by Octavian. If they had been, he would have taken them back to Rome to parade before the people before dying humiliating deaths.
• Under US law, when a prisoner is sentenced to death, he or she must die in the time, place, and manner described in the execution order. This is why death row inmates, particularly those on or coming up to their last day are very closely monitored, because a desperate prisoner with nothing to lose and a life expectancy literally measured in hours may decide to simply kill themselves and keep the state from getting the satisfaction.
• Larry Phillips Jr, one of the perpetrators of the North Hollywood shootout, killed himself to avoid capture by police after being cornered and wounded.
• Seung-hui Cho, the 2007 Virginia Tech mass murderer killed himself after his killing of 32 people. He did so when police closed in on the building in which most of the shooting had taken place.
• There was a MASSIVE discussion on whether Chilean President Salvador Allende Gossens took his life or was murdered during the bloody Chilean coup that would kickstart Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. It was finally determined through autopsies that he had shot himself in order to not fall into the hands of the military; considering the "forced disappearances", repression and torture that took place against the opposition to Pinochet, he had quite the point. Similarly, some of his aidés also killed themselves before the military could take hold of them.
• Reportedly, a few people attempted suicide on the night of October 30, 1938 (the night of the Mercury Theatre's The War of the Worlds broadcast), rather than be killed by the Martians' death machines. However, these reports remain unsubstantiated, and the consensus among historians is that the "mass panic" supposedly caused by the broadcast never happened.
• A modern medicine take on this trope is present for those that support "Right to die" laws, which permit those with terminal ailments to commit physician-assisted suicide rather than succumb to the ailment that afflicts them. Suffice to say, it's a rather contentious topic.
• During the Thermidorian Reaction phase of the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre and other leading Jacobins were denounced as tyrants and declared outlaws. After being cornered in a hotel the next day, they had this idea, but it didn’t go smoothly. Philippe-François-Joseph Le Bas shot himself in the head and died, something none of the others managed to accomplish. Robespierre also shot himself, but only succeeding in shattering his jaws. His brother Augustin jumped out a window and broke both of his legs. François Hanriot also went out a window and the crippled Georges Couthon fell down a flight of stairs, but whether these were intentional suicide attempts is unknown. All of the survivors were guillotined the next day.
  • Also, earlier into the Reign of Terror, one of the accused stabbed himself to death in court after learning he would be guillotined. They guillotined him anyway.
• Both Governors of Hanoi who defended the citadel against the French occupation chose this. They fought a hopeless Curb-Stomp Battle that they were meant to lose anyway ^note orders had gone down from the Emperor to simply let the French take the North and keep the capital, Huế, safe.
  • Nguyễn Tri Phương was gravely injured, captured by the French, given medical attention, then starved himself to death (at 73 years old) in his refusal to cooperate. “Clinging to a miserable existence cannot compare to dying for a great cause with a clear conscience.”
  • Hoàng Diệu fared slightly better and had seemed to be close to victory when, due to sabotage, the Hanoi armory blew up. Morale broke, the French came back for a second wind, and the Vietnamese leadership deserted him. He calmly directed the troops until the last minute, ordered a retreat, bit his finger to write a suicide letter to the Emperor, then hung himself with his own headscarf in front of the Temple of Martial Arts, a place of veneration for military heroes of old.
  The citadel is irretrievably lost. I am ashamed to face the people of the North. My death is of no importance, I pledge to follow Nguyễn Tri Phương to the grave. Your Majesty is miles away, we weep tears of blood for you.
• In a feat that has not yet been replicated, most of the generals in the Trưng sisters' rebellion against the Chinese were women. When the rebellion failed, the majority of them either drowned or killed themselves with their own sword rather than being captured. The Vietnamese has it that the sisters-queens drowned themselves, but the Chinese version holds that they were beheaded and their heads brought to China as proof.
  • Similarly, Triệu Thị Trinh (or Lady Triệu), who organized a later rebellion, also killed herself. Three generals, brothers from a Lý family, buried her, then also followed her in death.
• In premodern China, emperors frequently disposed of subordinates who had displeased them by ordering them to commit suicide. The fascinating thing for modern historians is that—at least according to available records—most recipients of such orders appear to have complied. Consensus is that these orders were accepted because they allowed disgraced officials and generals to save face by honorably committing suicide rather than having to face the dishonor of formal trial and execution. (That being said, it also appears that at least in some eras, earnestly loyal officials could not even think of disobeying an Imperial order, and that in all eras, the penalty for disobeying a suicide order was a shockingly unpleasant experience that ended up in you dying anyway.)
• Pedro Armendáriz killed himself during production on From Russia with Love after being diagnosed with terminal cancer he had picked up while filming The Conqueror.
• During the latter half of the 19th century, it became increasingly common for warships on the losing side of battles to be scuttled by their own crews rather than surrender when they were beaten. This had several reasons, among them that during the transition from wood to steel hulls and larger and larger guns, warships became a significant investment of national pride and financial might. Also it was a lot easier to retrieve intelligence such as coding equipment from a captured ship than from one on the bottom of the ocean. Navies were also perversely disincentivized to seek surrender because, with increasing technological complexity, it became much more logistically difficult to refit a captured ship for one's own use: the last time it happened, at the Battle of Tsushima, the victorious Japanese were only able to use the captured Russian ships as training vessels or coastal defense ships, and scrapped them all by the 1920s. Specific examples:
  • The World War II German battleship Bismarck's last communication with the Kriegsmarine was an oath to "fight to the last shell" as the Royal Navy closed in with his rudder rendered inoperable by a lucky hit from an aerial torpedo. Analysis of the subsequent battle and the wreckage by oceanographer Robert Ballard confirmed the engineering crew flooded the ship to scuttle him, as had been reported by some survivors.

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