Often in movies and such when a person is struck in the heart they drop like a sack of potatoes. In real life if someone were to shoot you in the heart how long would you be able to function normally?
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Interrupting blood flow to the brain will lead to loss of consciousness in about 4-10 seconds. Some of this will depend on whether the person is standing, sitting or laying flat, and also characteristics of the individual. The longest I have seen someone retain consciousness without a heartbeat is eighteen seconds while lying flat (am a physician).
This specific phenomenon was studies in the 1940s on prisoner “volunteers” in Minnesota.
[Experimental Arrest of Cerebral Blood Flow in Human Subjects – the Red Wing studies revisited](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3848716/)
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