https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2fmsXzXYA4

Since I don't post my own videos I don't have a youtube account so instead of commenting on this video on youtube, I want to see if I can ask this here. In this video, the player got the rats to kill him in the basement where you get the ladder and the reactor. How do you make this happen? I've never been killed by those rats and I've waited a long time.

The rats will only kill you if you fall down into the rats den with no way of escaping it (meaning you took the ladder, dropped it on the Aluminum Mallard and then went all the way back into the rats den without the ladder.)

I see. I had never realized you could leave the ladder at the ship and then go back to the basement. I just did that and successfully got this death to happen. It doesn't happen right away. You have to wait in the basement a little while after doing what blueskirt said. It's like a couple of the deaths in "King's Quest 5:" specifically the spider or the carnivorous plants killing you in the dark forest if you don't have the honeycomb or the bottle or you wasted your emeralds. Also if you get caught by the blue guy a 2nd time or before befriending Cassima. Deaths where you do something that makes the game unwinnable, but the game lets you continue playing for a little while, and then it kills you. If you ask me, in situations like this, the game should be merciful and kill you right away rather than making you wait.

Well, at least they were merciful enough to kill you. Plenty of games back then would just let you continue playing for hours on an unwinnable game without telling you you may have done something wrong before.

That's true