In movies and TV, people strangle other people until they go unconscious and then they’re dead forever…But that’s not realistic is it?

Question

I think your brain needs to be without blood or oxygen for a few minutes in order to actually die. I could be wrong.

In: Biology

Answer 1

So, if you do a choke ‘correctly’ (in the martial arts sense), it won’t cause long term damage and the other person will recover right away. But the key word there is ‘correctly’. If you choke someone in the *wrong* way, you can break their esophagus (not good, but not fatal), rupture their carotid arteries (very very bad and eventually fatal) or simply break their neck (extremely bad, often almost immediately fatal). This doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but having someone die from being strangled to the point of unconsciousness by an untrained killer isn’t terribly implausible.