Like if a dead person was sealed inside a plastic container and put in a building with no access to dirt or other organic matter, how would they decay? Are there maggots/parasites/fungi/bacteria that live on our bodies that start the decaying process? Is that the same thing that happens when a body part dies/becomes necrotic?
Do those organisms that cause decay live in every kind of soil?
In: Biology
Your body (and mine and everyone else’s) is teeming with microbes. Somewhere between 60% and 90% of all cells in and on your body are not yours – they are bacteria and their ilk. Many of these help keep you alive, but once you’re dead, some will turn on you in a heartbeat (or lack of heartbeat as it were). Decay and rot is unavoidable, although sealing a body away or doing something extreme like launching it into the vacuum of space will slow the process and leave a far more desiccated corpse that doesn’t rot away like a body buried in soil.
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