Renowned scientists in a highly reputed laboratory recently conducted a detailed study to compare two very different yet oddly similar types of misfortunes known to the human kind- a gun-shot in the chest and heartbreak. Here are excerpts from their findings:

• It was found that at their worst, a gun-shot in the chest was just as painful as heartache. The intensity of pain described differed between subjects, but it wasn't enough to discern between the two mishaps.
  
  
• Gun-shotees, as opposed to heartbreakees, were thankful that their pain, while intense, didn't last for extended periods of time. They said they hit the bottom right after the mishap and then felt a rapidly dwindling pain at isolated times during the day in the following period. Heartbreakees however, couldn't say which period was less painful than others. In a few cases, the subjects said their pain increased progressively; a few said each day was just as painful as the previous one, ever after. Reportedly, not many subjects recovered totally. Ever.
  
  
• Among those that had been unfortunate enough to experience the same pain more than once, shotees said that after their first time, each of the next times weren't as painful. Heartbreakees on the other hand said each progressive heartbreak left them 'a thousand times more devastated than the previous one'.
  
  
• Commonalities between the two mishaps included inability to breathe at a lot of times during the day, heavy dependence on those around, sobbing, recurring memories of the incident, the lead up to it, and the happy times before that, inability to attach a rational explanation to it, and general disillusionment.
  
  
• When asked to describe their most stark thoughts at the peak of their plight, those who were shot at feared "Oh God! I am going to die". On the contrary, those with broken hearts said "Oh God. I wish I were dead." In a significant number of cases, the heartbreakees said they would have preferred if the breakers of their hearts had, in fact, shot them in the chest with a gun.

Based on these findings, scientists have dared to pass a verdict: A 'meh' for gun-shot and a 'No price is too high to avoid it' to heartache. The chief scientist justified this verdict saying, "It was a really difficult choice to make. However, the thing about heartbreak is that you don't die from it. You should, but you don't. It leaves just a bit of life in you to make you walk around all day like a zombie. The pain is just as much as a gun-shot. But everlasting. You could guard yourself against a gun-shot, expecting or watching it as it came, but heartache gets you much more surreptitiously.

And while gun-shots have clear-cut culprits, with heartache you don't know who to blame."