If you get rabies and don’t get help in time, you will almost certainly die. While there are a few tantalizing reports of people surviving a case of rabies without medical attention, there are all too many cases of people dying after getting bitten by a rabid animal. The virus sneaks from the bite wound into a nearby nerve and then makes its way through the nervous system. Along the way, it can make people mad and send them into comas before killing them. Officially, over 50,000 people die of rabies each year, but that number is likely a gross underestimate. A lot of rabies cases occur in places where the causes of deaths go unrecorded. In