Sex can kill you slowly, from AIDS. Or it can take you out quickly, David Carradine-style. Cinematically, even, if your lover is Christian Bale in "American Psycho."

It can also kill you bizarrely and semi-hilariously.

During sex, the most common cause of sudden death is the "coital coronary" — a heart attack. Geezers especially zonk out that way — more than 11,000 a year. Which isn't a bad way to go, really. In fact, of all sudden deaths from all causes — from car crashes to falling off a ladder to dying of boredom — about one in 200 happen during regular old, run-of-the-mill sex.

It's dying … with a smile on your face. The only question is whether they'll be able to close the coffin lid.

But, there are other ways of bucket-kicking during sex, not just the ticker breaking.

We collected a few of the most bizarre, insane and unusual. These deaths help remind us that life is a farce that doesn't end just because you're taking your last breath.

A SOLID BUSINESS PLAN

Bondage done correctly is very safe and very healthy. When it's not though, it can easily end you. A famous cause happened when a dominatrix strapped her client, Michael Lord, to a bondage rack in Massachusetts in preparation for some kinky play. Unfortunately, he had a heart attack and croaked … a real mood killer. Not wanting to let word out that her bondage sessions were hazardous to people's health and hurt her business, Mistress Lauren M. chopped his corpse up and dumped it in a trash bin behind a Chinese restaurant. It kind of worked; no one ever found out except the whole internet.

HELIUM, SHE-LIUM

Perhaps looking to have the most high-pitched orgasms of all time, college students Jason Ackerman and Sara Rydman crawled inside a giant helium balloon and squeaked their way toward climax before dying of helium poisoning. The balloon had been an ad for an apartment complex; afterwards, it became ad for thinking through your sexcapades.

EATEN (OUT?) BY A LION

A couple was diddling out in the bush in Zimbabwe when a lion pounced. The woman, Sharai Mawera, became (big) cat food. The man, for his part, immediately dipped out. He left wearing nothing but a condom, proving that condoms make sex safe only up to a point. The man was spotted at a nearby road naked and waving for help; drivers thought he was mentally ill and stepped on the gas. And they say chivalry is dead!

MOTORBOATING IS A COMMON WAY TO DROWN

A Washington woman said it was an accident that she suffocated her boyfriend to death using her boobs. Cops said it was manslaughter. Other women have tried a similar homicide technique and failed; a boyfriend in Germany claimed his girlfriend tried to snuff him with her nubblies. When he later asked her why, she said, "I wanted your death to be as pleasurable as possible."

POPES WHO POOPED OUT

For a bunch of celibates, popes sure bite it during sex a lot. Pope John XII was one of dozens of popes who've had mistresses; unfortunately for John XII, his mistress's husband caught them one day and hammered the pope into the afterlife. Pope John XIII went similarly, except his mistress's husband rammed a poker up his royal rear. Pope Paul II supposedly expired while getting poop-chuted by a page boy; and Pope John Paul I passed on while reading porno. The Catholic church teaches Papal Infallibility — that popes are always right about everything; meaning these deaths were ordained by God himself — that old sicko.

THE HORSE WAS FINE

As we've always been told in our sex ed classes: when a man and a horse love each other very much, the man asks the horse to put his (the horse's) penis inside his (the man's) rectum. Rectum? Killed him! Kenneth Pinyan died of a perforated colon. Their love story will live on as one of the most-read stories in the history of the Seattle Times.

NO ONE DIES LIKE THE FRENCH

The president of France, Felix Faure, died while his mistress was giving him some head of state. She realized something had gone wrong when Faure became "unusually stiff."

SURPRISING THAT A MAN NAMED TUGANOV DIDN'T DIE FROM TOO MUCH MASTURBATION

A Russian man named Sergey Tuganov died after betting a couple of lady pals that he couldn't satisfy them for 12 hours straight. The 28-year-old died after downing a whole bottle of Viagra, and not, as you might have thought, from too many high fives from his friends afterward.

IN CONCLUSION

"Death is, after all, the great equalizer," writes Cynthia Ceilan in her book "Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed," a fascinating catalog of strange demises, from which many of these examples were taken. "We are all, in that final moment, equally capable of meeting death with great dignity, with one last fabulous flourish of panache, or with a great big mess pant-load of fear for somebody else to clean up later."

In many cases, the pant-load of fear is literally a load.

Does this means that there is a chance that, the more you have sex, the more likely you are to die? Sure. The benefits — especially exercise — might outweigh the risks. But an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association says that, for every extra hour of sexual activity per week, there's actually a slightly increased risk of heart attacks.

Rubbing your tingly parts on another person is less dangerous than taming a lion or going to war, but given all the deaths and broken dicks … this is why we don't do sex. We could. Chicks and dudes always want to do sex with us. Swear.

Although maybe we'll listen to H.L. Mencken, who said "Life without sex might be safer, but it would be unbearably dull."