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
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.
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