Altruistic suicide is the sacrifice of one's life in order to save or benefit others, for the good of the group, or to preserve the traditions and honor of a society.
Indian, Japanese, and other widows have participated in an end-of-life ritual suicide after the death of a husband, although Westernized populations have abandoned this practice.
In hunter-gatherer societies,[6] death "was determined for the elderly ... normally characterized by a liminal period and ceremonies in which the old person was transferred from the present world to the next."
Firefighters, law-enforcement individuals, undercover agents, sailors, and soldiers more often are at risk of opportunities for this form of unplanned self-sacrifice.
Examples of this include Vince Coleman, a telegraph operator who saved hundreds of lives by sending out a warning about an imminent explosion.
He made a suicide attempt in October 2019, when he shot himself in the chest with a pistol in the Yala province court, after he acquitted five men on murder and firearms charges due to lack of evidence and reading a short statement, in order to protest against interference in the justice system.
[19][verification needed] According to the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT),[20] "Chinese police have beaten, shot, isolated, and disappeared self-immolators who survived.
On November 2, 1965, Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the Pentagon[22] to protest United States involvement in the Vietnam War.
[23] Instead of increasing anti-war sentiment, much of the attention this act received in the West focused on speculating why Morrison brought his infant daughter along.
[24] On April 22, 2022, climate activist Wynn Alan Bruce set himself on fire in the plaza of the United States Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.