The World's 12 Scariest Jobs

Our armed forces volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way and all for Uncle Sam’s cheap pay. In a report by Brown University, over 6,000 American soldiers and over 2,300 U.S. private contractors have died since 9/11. Roughly 50,000 troops have been injured, with about 1,600 classified as severely injured.

Everyone thinks the cowboy riding the bucking animal is the scary part of the job. Tell that to the rodeo clown. The rodeo clown is like the Secret Service. He protects the cowboy from one massive and angry bull should the cowboy fall.

Who’d be stupid enough to fly a plane into a hurricane? NASA, that’s who. In 2010, NASA began a two-month research project known as GRIP (Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes), designed to put scientific instruments near hurricanes to better understand them. Unmanned drones fly above the surface, but NASA uses planes too. With pilots. With crazy, crazy pilots.

Think of all the bad guys cops catch. Where do they end up? In prison. Now think of the men and women whose job it is to prevent those prisoners from escaping. That’s right: corrections officers. Dealing with gangs, shivs, riots and getting bitten or spit (along with other bodily fluids) on. Corrections officers have one of the highest rates of on-the-job injuries. You thought your boss was a jerk? Corrections officers deal with society’s worst.

The DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) is responsible for enforcing the controlled-substances laws of the United States, including those with ties to terrorism. Some of them go undercover in places tourists would rather not visit. In order to infiltrate, they have to become what they hunt: badass and dangerous.

It’s "The Hurt Locker" in real life. Finding bombs. Defusing them. Or blowing them up in a safe way. Unlike the movies, wire color doesn’t matter; it’s all just rubber coating. And the ticking timer is rare. Most devices are “command detonated” or victim operated, meaning they are set off by the victim of the explosion. 

In what other job do they describe the dangers as becoming “pink mist?” Shudder.

Definitely not for the faint-hearted or those prone to seasickness. If you’ve ever seen "Deadliest Catch," there’s no denying the brutality of Mother Nature: cold, rain, rogue waves and slippery decks. Fishermen can get caught in the coils beneath their feet or they may get swept overboard. They work long hours with little sleep. Oh, and then there’s also the remote location. In an emergency, it may be hours or even days before help arrives. All of that means the job consistently ranks among the deadliest.

We’re all familiar with the Chilean miners who in 2010 were rescued after spending 69 days underground. One by one, they climbed into a coffin-shaped steel capsule that took 15 minutes to shuttle them up. It’s a great story, but it easily could have been a tragedy, as often is the case in mining. 

How would you like to spend your days deep underground, surrounded by darkness? Risks include poor ventilation, exposure to heat and dust, harmful gases, heat stroke, lung problems and tunnel collapse, as well as corporate masters who at least in the past balked at safety concerns. 

Not for those afraid of the dark or scared of closed, tight spaces.

If you’ve been to New York, you might say being a pedestrian is more dangerous than being a cab driver. A report, however, states that taxi drivers are 60 times more likely to be murdered than workers in any other field. Think about it. They work alone with the public at night in high crime areas and they carry cash.

Maybe cab drivers are crazy for a reason.

As recently as January 2011, an experienced elephant keeper was fatally injured by an elephant at the Knoxville Zoo. It’s pure physics: we're talking about an eight-ton animal against a human keeper. There were 13 human deaths from 1990 to 2008 due to captive-elephant incidents.

That may not seem like a lot, but when compared to the relatively few elephant keeper jobs, it’s very, very high.