Like if you get shot in the head, your death is obviously instantaneous (in most cases) because your brain is literally gone. Does that mean that after getting shot directly in your heart, you would still be conscious for a little while until your brain stops due to the inability to get fresh blood/oxygen to it?
In: Biology
Yeh exactly it depends what you mean by death. We used to think of it as a single event, and now more so as a process, as we discovered ways to bring people back from what we used to think of as ‘dead’.
So if you get shot in the head, we say death is instantaneous. It seems obvious, but unless the bullet hits a specific part of the brain, the heart will beat for a little longer afterwards, your liver might not notice for a while etc, but we have no way currently to save someone who’s brain has stopped working due to bullet damage.
If your heart stops (let’s say from cardiac arrest instead of a bullet for this one) then the clock continues for the rest of the body (I say continue as they say we’re only ever a few minutes away from death, but each time we breathe this resets the clock). Each minute your heart is not pumping (either by itself or by CPR or something) increases your chances of dying by 10% I believe, so your body still has oxygen in it, this is quickly used up, and you’re not replenishing it, then your cells and organs start to die due to lack of oxygen. At some point (and this is an ever moving point) there will be a stage where our current medical capabilities will not be able to reverse the damage that has been done, and that point we call death.
But that’s what’s important, not the time, usually it’s a matter of minutes, but if you you have a cardiac arrest and fall into a frozen lake, breaking the ice and being surrounded by near freezing water for example, it could be a matter of hours, as the rate at which your cells die in that situation slows dramatically.
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