HOW BILLIONAIRES DIE

THE MORE MONEY YOU HAVE,THE LONGER YOU LIVE—UNTIL...

- JOE CLOC

THE LIFESTYLES OF the ultrarich can be deadly. Private planes are 32 times more likely to crash than commercial airliners, and crash they do, killing 23 people on U.S.-registered jets alone last year. In an especially chilling incident, from 1999, a luxury jet flew across the U.S. off-course and unmanned for 1,500 miles before slamming into a field in South Dakota.

Everyone inside was already dead or unconscious: The cabin had depressurized, and the two pilots and handful of sports professionals onboard had likely died of hypoxia. Helicopters are no more safe a form of elite travel; more than 500 crash each year on average. Last year, seven yachts unexpectedly burst into flames.

The adventuring members of the privileged class often seem to court disaster: Take the case of the Titan submersible, which imploded on its way down to visit the Titanic. Between 2010 and 2024, at least 124 climbers died attempting to summit Everest, a trip that costs an average of $59,000.

Of course, a position in the top income brackets can itself be perilous. Consider the fates of Russian oligarchs who regularly fall out windows, over the sides of boats, down staircases, and off balconies. In the past six years, at least ten crypto millionaires and billionaires have died under suspicious circumstances found shot, stabbed, dismembered in a suitcase, and, in one case, drowned on a beach in San Juan shortly after posting online that the CIA and Mossad were running a sex-trafficking ring in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

Heavy is the crown that controls the means of production and the flow of commerce: After a South Korean shipping magnate was blamed for an accident in which a vessel sank with hundreds of high-school students onboard, he was discovered dead in an apricot orchard, lying beside a magnifying glass, two bottles of soju, and a bottle of "peasant wine."