Houstonia’s The Must List tells you about something going on in Houston that you absolutely cannot miss.

Knowing about every animal, vegetable, and mineral: the very model of a modern major general, how to win a popular road trip game, or potentially life-saving information? Death by Natural Causes, an exhibit that opened at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in July and will run at least until the end of 2024, offers the definitive answer to this time-worn question that has stumped the world’s brightest philosophical minds for millennia: all of the above.

With an overarching Victorian theme and an eye on the macabre, Death by Natural Causes addresses many of the major misconceptions regarding what common (and not-so-common) causes of death actually entail. The exhibition also digs into how the scary numbers circled around as playground anecdotes or urban legends can mislead people into believing that their day-to-day is much more dangerous than the reality.

“On average, four people die annually due to roller coasters. But when you look at it, it’s really 40 people every 10 years. And then when you look at that, it sounds like you’re getting thrown off the roller coaster or beheaded or whatever, right?” says Nicole Temple, vice president of education at HMNS. “Sometimes it’s somebody who is working on the roller coaster and has a heart attack, but is a mechanic. That is attributed to working on [the roller coaster]… Statistics, you’ve got to be careful with them. You’ve got to pay attention.”

One of the many interactive elements incorporated into Death by Natural Causes involves giving visitors two different, but still very real, fatal accident options, and asks them to determine which kills more people annually. Being struck by lightning vs. getting shot by a dog, for example, or being hit by a meteorite vs. taking a selfie. Which of these scenarios is deadlier than the other?

(No, Houstonia won’t disclose the answers.)

Gamifying such questions challenges the flawed way we view the numbers surrounding death, as well as humanity’s overall poor gauge of danger. Temple often points to the famous quote by Swiss doctor and toxicologist Paracelsus as one of the major themes of Death by Natural Causes: “The dose makes the poison.” This adage applies to all of the several hundred items in the exhibit, like cyanide (which can be found in apple seeds, but it would require swallowing hundreds to poison a person), rattlesnake venom (a live snake is on display to help teach visitors how to identify them in the wild), arsenic (which the Victorians considered très fashionable), and even the essential vitamins and minerals we consume daily to keep healthy.

Understanding the true risk of these plants, animals, and elements shows us that the world around us can sometimes be a little less scary than we assume—and, yes, OK, sometimes a little scarier, too. Temple notes that many of the animals we consider major killers care more about hiding from humans than actually harming us.

“Nature is not out to get you. You should be out in nature. You should be enjoying nature, but you also need to be respectful of it,” she says. “If you are respectful of it, it will not bother you.”

Even when humans are injured or killed by animals (or vegetables or minerals), it’s never personal. It’s millennia of evolutionary shifts in defense, and animals in particular are judicious about the energy toll it takes to bite, claw, scratch, and sting, too. Most would prefer to be left alone.

At the end of every section in the exhibit, visitors come across a corpse (not real) and have the opportunity to identify the cause of death. The clues are all found throughout Death by Natural Causes, providing another valuable haptic lesson in what can happen to a body when necessary precautions go ignored—or just weren’t yet known to science, depending on the historical context.

“The things that you think you have to be afraid of are not those things. It’s the things that happen in your everyday life that you need to be worried about. No shark will eat you in your own home, but you are likely to fall off a piece of furniture, slip in a bathtub, have a heart attack,” Temple says.

Turns out, the real horror house was yours all along.