Okay, but what if I fall into a deep, deep coma? Will someone eventually pull the plug and send me off to the mortuary? Will I be trapped in both a casket and in the prison of my mind? We now have a whole battery of scientific tests to confirm that someone is not just in a coma, but really, truly brain-dead. When a bright light is shined into them, do they contract?
Your breathing tube might be moved in and out of your throat, to see if you gag. If you are removed from a ventilator, CO2 builds up in your system, essentially suffocating you. When blood CO2 levels reach 55 mm Hg, a living brain will usually tell the body to spontaneously breathe. Dead brains have zero electrical activity. A radioactive isotope is injected into your bloodstream. After a period of time, a radioactive counter is held over your head to see if blood is flowing to your brain.
If there is blood flow to the brain, the brain cannot be called dead. A person has to fail a lot of tests to be declared brain-dead. And more than one doctor has to confirm brain-death. Having seen thousands of dead bodies in my career, let me tell you — dead people are very dead in a very predictable way.
Not that my words sound all that comforting. Or scientific. Heart failure. Walter Williams of Mississippi was pronounced dead on February 26, As CNN reported, the correct paperwork was completed, his body was put into a body bag, and he was taken to a funeral home. When his body was taken to the embalming room, his legs began to move. Then, the coroner noticed him lightly breathing. Williams was alive. It was, as it turned out, a short-lived reprieve. Just over two weeks later, he passed away for real.
In the 19th century, master story teller Edgar Allen Poe exploited human fears in his stories, and the fear of being buried alive was no exception. He makes friends promise that they will not bury him prematurely, does not stray from his home, and builds a tomb with equipment allowing him to signal for help in case he should be buried alive only to wake from one of his episodes.
There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty.
Besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. Unfortunately, the character takes all of these precautions only to find that his greatest fear is realized. It is not clear if Poe inspired innovation or if he was merely tapping into the feelings of the time, but this fear led to one of the creepiest categories of invention—coffin alarms.
There were a series of inventions in the 19th century, which would aid someone, who was buried alive, to escape, breathe and signal for help. The tomb is equipped with a number of features including an air inlet F , a ladder H and a bell I so that the person, upon waking, could save himself. Being buried alive generally doesn't end well for people who aren't named Beatrix Kiddo or Harry Houdini , and even Houdini nearly dug his own grave in As author J.
Rockefeller describes , this was Houdini's first at-bat for the burial routine. He may have struck out due to a distinct lack of casket. After trapping his casketless body six feet under, he tried and failed to dig himself out of the literal hole he created. He lost consciousness and needed to be rescued. After surviving an actual dirt nap Houdini would later perform modified versions of the escape in which he encased himself in a casket "buried" under water or sand inside a tank.
In those cases he lasted at least an hour.
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