Words go here?

I mean, in some very interesting Technically Correct ways, they didn't actually die? Now, they're very much no longer alive. But the forces involved are such that they didn't get any of the usual cellular processes of death, they simply went from biology to physics in less time than it takes a signal to travel down your optic nerve.

"Went from biology to physics" is the fellow-traveller of "upon stepping on the mine, he became not history so much as geography"

the thing about piracy is that i know i deserve everything for free forever

"this thing is rare and only affects 1% of the population" dude that's 80 million people can you shut up

"this thing is so rare, if you put everyone it affects on an island it would be the 20th most populated country in the world, more than the UK, more than South Korea, and more than Canada AND Australia AND Tunisia all put together. we can literally forget about it that's not many people"

First humans ever to leave the solar system suddenly drop out of communications and the ship can't be found with any equipment. After one month of no contact their home countries start reluctantly holding funerals for the space heroes only for them all to turn up, healthy, well fed and extremely disoriented, in the middle of Tokyo, talking about alien abduction. Turns out that aliens found the poor humans straying out of their solar system, presumably lost, and took them to Alien Wildlife Rehabilitation before dumping them back in the middle of their native habitat.

I’ll bet they have cool new tattoos that turn out to be tracking devices too. Just in case these spirited individuals try to make another break for it.

... do the tats make them stupid popular, like that time scientists gave birds tracker anklets and it accidentally made them ultra fuckable

Let’s say yes. Those alien scientists are learning so much, and none of it is accurate.

and the defense we keep hearing is "the hallucinations are getting better!"