In my main save, which I've been playing since Get Together was released (so just over four years now), I've had very few true natural deaths. I play with ageing off so I typically decide when it's time for an elder to die off, but otherwise I'll get creative if I'm killing off younger Sims.
Only in a handful of cases have I witnessed Sims die without my direct control over it. Even then, it's usually NPCs and not my own.
- One time, I had a repairman come over to my Sim's apartment to fix something. He was dazed and got electrocuted, then died on the spot. This almost happened two more times afterward.
- Another time, I had my Sim hanging out with Lia Hauata at her house. He was staying the night and ended up going to bed eventually. Lia, although visibly extremely exhausted, kept getting into her pool and napping on a floaty. Every time she would wake from her nap, she would swim for a bit and then get back on the floaty and fall back to sleep. One point when she did this, she was so exhausted that she couldn't swim anymore and then drowned. I restarted the game, since I had a storyline picked out for the two of them together and didn't want this possibly redirected one.
- Then just recently, my Sim was visiting her local park earning votes. It was the middle of summer during a major heat wave and there was a large crowd gathered for a speech she was giving. A Sim collapsed from heat exhaustion and while the crowd redirected their attention to her death, another one collapsed. I reset the Sims and left the lot so no one else could die from distraction, thus overheating.
I've almost had Sims die from freezing, and long ago when the game first came out the only deaths I'd ever get would be emotional ones. Those annoy me so I installed a mod to disable them.
