You typically see people deteriorating and stop breathing or fall into a state of unconsciousness – this seems steady. But when you read of freak accidents like being decapitated internally (the spinal cord detaching from the head), how do you just die instantly? If the brain can survive 6 minutes without oxygen until pronounced brain dead…how does someone just die? Even if your heart stops beating there and then, how do you just drop dead?
Edit: thanks!
In: 89
It’s really hard to test it so we just don’t know for sure, but there seems to be some brain activity for a short while still and there are stories from the French Revolution that [might imply](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/decapitation-survive-speak-anne-boleyn-henry-viii-conscious-brain-a8886126.html) some consciousness for a brief period.
> You typically see people deteriorating and stop breathing or **fall into a state of unconsciousness**
this is the main thing here, very few Causes of death are actually instant but in many of them , especially injury, can be so catastrophic that you either go into shock and pass out(and then eventually die if not assisted) or the injury took out a vital organ that compromised circulation: the moment your brain is derpived of blood flow for ANY reason you immediately go unconsicous. after that your are on a timer till the brain dies off from oxygen starvation.
The person has been put into a state where it is unclear if they are living anymore (unresponsive to external stimulus) and main body functions have stopped (no breathing or heartbeat).
If your head is chopped off, there is some implication the person might still be alive/awake for a short while, but it’s not 100% known what they experienced.
“They died instantly” is often used to comfort grieving people even though it’s not 100% clear if they actually did die instantly.
True instant death would be something like having a 10 ton steel cube fall on you, rendering your entire body into liquid/paste.
I mean, if the accident is bad enough, you just…[stop being biology and start being physics](https://what-if.xkcd.com/141/). If your brain is physically crushed into a pulp, you’re dead, no questions asked.
No, you don’t die *instantly* from a decapitation – you probably maintain consciousness for a matter of seconds, and your brain cells are still alive for a short time – but you die pretty fast. Death isn’t a single “thing” in the first place, so when we’re speaking of a “time of death” we’re always speaking a little bit informally to begin with; the deaths you’re talking about are as instant as deaths ever are.
I have seen people who were simply smashed to pieces or ripped to shreds, literally, in an instant.
That’s how I would explain it. Enough of you, ypur body and central nervous system, gets destroyed at once and you are gone. Bam.
You mentioned decapitation, but what about a bullet diagonally in ypur skull and out the other side, doing to your brain exactly what it does to ballistic gel? What about a car flying through the air and landing on your head and chest. Can a brain go without oxygen for a few minutes? Yes! But do you not assume that a tremendous shock would ensue when the spinal cord was ripped out by the roots? You’d at least be out cold while you actually faded away.
I think what most people mean is that the person lost consciousness immediately and never regained it before brain activity ceased, meaning they were never aware that they were in the process of dying, nor did they feel any pain. For all intents and purposes, they might as well have died instantly and that’s how it would have appeared both to them and to any outside observers.
“instant death” is something that doesn’t really make sense to talk about. We are not a single living entity, we’re an amalgam of dozens of systems and uncountable living cells that all qualify as being “alive” independently, many of which aren’t even “us” in a genetic sense, but are symbiotic relationships with other microbiology and equally vital to systems working.
So, we pick something to identify as “death”, for medical purposes and ease of discussion: often, this is “brain death”/lack of detectable brain activity. Otherwise it may be “point of no return” at which enough systems are in unrecoverable failure that the only direction is down (eg, heart explodes, head gets severed, entire body gets crushed). In these cases, many systems may still function for quite a while, and even the majority of living cells may remain alive for a long time, but the “human entity” is unrecoverable and considered dead. The brain may still fire nerves, but if there’s no body to receive them, it doesn’t make much sense to call the person “alive”.
Tldr: “death” is a fuzzy boundary, not a clear line. Depending on what specific function you’re comparing against, systems may slowly fall apart, or may experience sudden catastrophic failure from trauma. But even in cases of sudden and extreme bodily destruction, some definitions of “life” persist for a time.
To address your examples, the “drop dead” is often “sudden loss of consciousness” or “sudden loss of bodily control”. These are indistinguishable from death to an observer, and if it’s a catastrophic accident, likely “the rest of death” (brain death, full system shut down, etc) is likely to occur before consciousness returns (because it never does), making it relatively meaningless to distinguish the two points of “decapitated” and “brain dead”.
My sister died a few months ago and I had been caring for her for over 4 years. I walked her to her bed she sat down and i lifted her feet and as she was just about to put her head on the pillow she breated wierd twice and then she died. That quick i couldn’t believe it i tried for 20 minutes with heart compressions till the ambulance came but it was to late!
We were talking 10 seconds before she put her head on the pillow and then dead seconds later. I still believe how quick a person can die. The ambulance guy said her heart had gave up.
Its not clear that there is instant death.
There are multiple reports of severed heads via the guillotine that seem to be alive for less than a minute or so after decapitation including blinking, looking around and changing facial expressions. Animal studies of decapitation show several seconds of continued electrical activity in the brain after severing the head.
What is death? From a medical perspective, we talk about _clinical death_ versus _biological death_.
_Clinicial death_ is when the heart stops beating. Without circulation of the blood, which brings oxygen and sugar (needed to create energy to function) to the brain and other tissues, and removes waste products, organs shut down. The brain is particularly sensitive to this, and will cease functioning normally almost immediately. Without blood circulation, you will become unconscious in about 10 seconds.
_Biological death_ is when the brain permanently ceases to function and cannot be revived. By definition, it is irreversible. Without circulation of blood, the time to _biological death_ is probably less than 6 minutes. The precise time is bit exactly known — many people say 4-6 minutes is the outside. Some circumstances (such as cold-water immersion) can lengthen this time substantially.
>how do you just die instantly?
So most of the time, people do not experience immediate _biological death_. Immediate _clinical death_ happens frequently – if the heart has a sudden arrhythmia that can no longer pump blood,, for example. But the brain is still alive for several minutes, and can theoretically be resuscitated if circulation can be restored.
Sudden _biological death_ happens when there is massive damage to the brain, such as from a high-energy blow (for example, a long fall, or being ejected from a motor vehicle while travelling at a high rate of speed). Other than that sort of thing, the brain can theoretically be resuscitated.
Practically, the resuscitation might be impossible – if the heart is destroyed by a gunshot,.for example. But the brain is still alive for 4-6 minutes in such cases.
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