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
Death is a little more of a gray area than you might imagine. Even in a situation such as getting your head chopped off, the rest of your body is still alive until you either bleed out or your heart stops beating from lack of oxygen. Even after your heart stops beating, the rest of your your organs are still “alive”, as in carrying out their functions, until they’re totally starved of nutrients and oxygen. Each has a different amount of time that they survive for. But as for “death” in the sense you’re thinking of, there are two basic types:
Brain Death:
– Your brain isn’t functioning and can’t maintain the automatic functions (brainstem reflexes) to regulate the rest of your organs. This is a result of things such as strangulation, where you get a lack of blood flow to the brain, traumatic brain injury, where your brain physically gets knocked around and bruised, seizures, where your brain gets cooked, or gunshots, where your brain gets turned into scrambled eggs. This isn’t “instant”, but it’s pretty quick, people just tend to think of it as a slower process over days. We keep you alive for a few days to see if any recovery begins to occur or while family show up to say goodbye, then the plug gets pulled and you die as soon as your heart doesn’t have enough oxygen to supply the organs, because you won’t breathe on your own.
Cardiac Death:
– This is as close as you can get to “instant” death. Your heart suddenly stops beating and as a result you don’t get blood to your organs, including your brain. We can often (~30-40% of the time) get your heart beating again depending on the cause, but depending on how long your heart was stopped for you may progress to brain death (see above) or multi-organ failure because your organs were starved of nutrients for so long.
In a medical context, death is declared once your heart stops beating. We don’t monitor each organ and check it off the list to say you’re truly dead.
If you really want to get into the weeds and philosophize about what constitutes true *Death*, that’s beyond the scope of a 5 year old, but let’s just say that there has been research performed in the past that points towards evidence that both your brain and body are still alive and somewhat functional for a few minutes after events such as decapitation, and that you may even still have conscious awareness afterwards.
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