eli5 why can’t we just revive a cadaver with electricity?
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Because electricity wont fix broken bones, brains and so on. Thats a pure fictional concept.
A cadaver is dead for a reason, and that reason is not changed by electricity.
The “electricity” thing only works if the heart has stopped, but all vital organs are still alive (this means the cells of the heart are also still alive, but the neurons that make the heart pump are either not active or out of sync). Once the cells are dead, they are dead. You cannot revive a dead brain. An electrical “shock” can help to “reset” the neural activity around the heart.
Even assuming the cause of death is not some catastrophic organ failure (like a bullet to the head/heart), stuff starts getting irreparably damaged within **minutes** of cessation of metabolic activity. The brain is one of the first things to go, with damage setting in at 5 minutes of oxygen deprivation. Basically after 15-ish minutes of being clinically dead, there’s no point in trying to revive you.
Because you need to deliver the electricity down the right pathways in the brain at the right times without damaging the brain to get the automatic functions going again.
every organ and system in your body is alive and requires a constant steady supply of oxygen to function. once respiration stops decay starts to set in rapidly and things begin to break down and atrophy. when a body has been dead for a day and not preserved in some way, most organs and structures have already broken down beyond repair.
think of it this way. go to junk lot and find a car with an engine with missing pieces, no tires, and all sorts of other unknown damages. put some gas in it. why won’t it start? same reasons, critical pieces are now broken or missing parts.
Dead people aren’t dead from a lack of electricity, so putting more electricity back in them won’t make them stop being dead.
Because electricity doesn’t magically reverse cell death. All of the cells in a dead organism literally disintegrate. The cell membranes rupture and spill out the cell contents and the DNA and proteins and lipids break down into fragments. How would electricity have anything to di with that? It’s irreversible.
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