Ahh, death - one of life’s greatest mysteries.
While we tend to think of death as a single moment of finality, the reality is much more
complicated than that.
Death is a process, and even when death happens suddenly, it can take anywhere from several
days to up to 2 full weeks for all parts of your body to completely shut down.
You won’t believe some of the crazy things your body does after you die!
You may be dead and gone, but parts of your body go on living after you die.
Your internal organs will remain alive and viable for hours after your death, which means
that they can be transplanted into someone else who desperately needs them if they are
removed within 30 minutes and transplanted within about 6 hours.
Your skin can live on for even longer - skin grafts can be done up to half a day after
you die.
Organ donation is certainly one way to ensure that part of you lives on even after you’re
gone…
Your skin can do some other wild things, too.
It can change colour as your blood pools in certain areas of your body while it lies there
waiting to be discovered.
If you died of Carbon Monoxide poisoning, your blood and even your internal organs would
turn a bright shade of cherry red, and so would your skin wherever the blood pools.
If, on the other hand, Hydrogen Sulfide was the culprit in your untimely death, your skin
would turn a lovely shade of green.
It’s not all bad news - after death, as your muscles lose tension, your skin will
smooth out and your wrinkles will disappear, so that’s something, we guess.
If your organs and your skin can live on after your death, what about your brain?
History is full of hideous stories of the severed heads of beheaded prisoners living
on, staring around at the assembled crowd of onlookers and even making gruesome faces.
Can your head really live on after it’s been separated from your body?
Actually, yes - for a few seconds at least.
Just as a severed limb can continue to twitch due to muscle reflexes after it’s separated
from your body, subconscious reflexes can carry on in the brain’s extrapyramidal system.
This is the area of the brain that is responsible for infants unconsciously showing facial expressions
of fear or disgust, and it can live on after your head is separated from your body, causing
your severed head to make some rather gruesome faces and making it appear like your head
is still alive - for a few seconds, anyways.
A sudden severing of the brain stem would lead to a massive drop in blood pressure,
blood loss and lack of oxygen, and your brain would quickly follow your body into death.
Is it just your reflexes that survive after death, or can your consciousness persist,
too?
People whose hearts have stopped and who have “seen the light”, so to speak, can later
describe exactly what happened to them after they’ve been resuscitated, and recent studies
on animals have shown a surge of brain activity immediately after death, leading scientists
to conclude that some form of consciousness remains intact after you die, at least during
the first stage of death.
That means that your brain can actually know that you’re dead for a few moments before
it dies, too.
This doesn’t last long, though.
Once your heart stops beating and your brain is no longer getting any oxygen, your brain
cells will start to die, and your brain will be dead within 3 to 7 minutes.
If your organs, skin and brain can live on after you’ve kicked the bucket, then does
that mean that there’s truth to the myth that your hair and nails keep growing after
death?
The truth is, your hair and nails do get longer after you die, but not for the reasons you
might think.
Your nails and hair don’t actually keep growing after you die, but as moisture leaves
your skin and it dries out and recedes, it can make your hair and nails appear longer.
The skin on your face and chin will recede and dry out, pulling it back tightly towards
your skull and making any stubble on your cheeks appear more prominent, which is why
many men appear to grow a beard after death.
What happens to your eyes after you die?
If you die with your eyes wide open, then the whites of your eyes will dry out and turn
grey or blue.
This process is called tache noir, which is French for “black line” because that’s
exactly what it looks like - a dark line of discoloration across the middle of your eyeball.
Here’s a fun fact - tache noir is often used as a trick question on the final tests
for medical examiner certification, since it’s common for inexperienced examiners
to mistake the discoloration for a hemorrhage or a sign of disease.
Even after you’re dead and gone, it may take some time for your body to get the message.
After your brain shuts down, it can take a few minutes for the nervous system to catch
up, and it’s not uncommon for a dead body to appear to move shortly after death.
This is thanks to residual reflexes and nerve spasms, which can cause your muscles to twitch
and jerk until rigor mortis sets in.
In rigor mortis, your muscles become shorter and tighter and your body stiffens and becomes
rigid thanks to a buildup of lactic acid and calcium.
Rigor mortis can start to set in within 3 to 4 hours of death, and by 12 hours after
death even your largest muscles will have become stiff and rigid.
Rigor mortis can last 3 days before your body starts to relax once again - and it can last
even longer if your remains are kept refrigerated.
If our organs can continue to live on, our nervous system can keep firing, and even our
consciousness can remain intact after death, then we can’t help but wonder - do our bodily
functions carry on after death?
As it turns out, they do…
Many dead people will appear to have wet themselves - is this because they were so terrified at
the moment of their death that they peed themselves?
Umm, no - it’s actually a completely normal bodily reaction to death.
As your muscles relax, your body can let go of the things it's been holding in - all of
the things...
Shortly after death your bladder will relax and empty.
Your colon will relax and empty itself, too, but this can take up to a few hours after
death.
Lovely...
It’s also extremely common for a dead body to pass gas!
A buildup of excess bacteria after death creates a lot of gas inside of your body, and as your
muscles relax into death, your body will release these gasses as burps and farts.
How rude!
It’s also not unusual for a dead body to moan, groan and squeak after death as the
air trapped inside of the body escapes, especially as the body is being moved or manipulated.
Speaking of bacteria - although you may be dead, the trillions of bacteria that make
their home in your gut are alive and well.
Thanks to these bacteria, the digestion process can carry on long after you die.
And once these hungry bacteria are done feeding on any leftover food in your digestive system
at the time of your death, they will eventually turn to a new source of food - you!
Your own gut bacteria will turn on you and will start to digest your body from the inside
out.
As they do, the amino acids in your body will break down and begin to emit some very foul-smelling
compounds called, appropriately, putrescine and cadaverine.
You can thank this process for that unmistakable, putrid smell of death.
Believe it or not, your digestive system isn’t the only system that can remain online after
death.
It’s not unheard of for a dead body to show certain...signs of life, if you know what
we mean.
As the flow of your blood slows down, blood begins to pool in certain areas throughout
your body.
Depending on the position of your body, it can pool in some rather unusual places.
If, for example, you died in a face-down position, blood could pool in your genital region and
make it appear as though you have an erection in death.
Rigor mortis can also make things a little...stiffer...down there.
If that’s not weird enough, it’s also common to find fluids near the erect member,
although this is actually seepage from your prostate, not true ejactulate.
For some strange reason, researchers have investigated whether dead people can have
orgasms, and their findings might surprise you.
It turns out that the so-called “beating heart dead” - dead people who are being
kept alive on a ventilator - actually can have orgasms.
By electrically stimulating the sacral nerve, researchers have found that they can cause
orgasms in 91% of “beating heart dead” females.
We’re not sure that will do you much good when you’re dead, but we guess it’s good
to know…
After your body is really and truly dead - your organs have shut down, your brain and nervous
system are offline, your muscles have relaxed, then stiffened, and then relaxed again - what
happens to your corpse next?
First, your body will rapidly get cold, dropping 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit per hour until it reaches
ambient room temperature.
Once your body has been buried, it could be mostly gone within just a matter of months.
At 50 degrees Fahrenheit it will take about 4 months for your body to fully decompose
- all that will be left of you is your skeleton, some cartilage and some bits of dried skin
inside the tattered remains of your best funeral suit.
What if you aren’t lucky enough to be properly preserved and buried?
If your dead body were left in a cool, damp environment, you could actually turn into
a blob of human soap!
Through a chemical process called adipocere, your body’s fat will be turned into a waxy,
soap-like substance, preserving you in a pale yellow or grey blob appropriately called “grave
wax”.
If decomposing - or worse, turning into soap - doesn’t sound like your thing, never fear
- there are plenty of other crazy things you can do with your body after death.
Sure, you could donate it to scientific research, or to a cadaver farm where forensic students
can practice finding and analysing your decomposing corpse, but you could also take things a step
further…
If you’re the more environmentally-conscious type, your remains could be scattered among
a tropical reef to sustain marine life in death, or you could choose to be buried in
a special pod that will grow into a tree.
There’s also cremation, which opens the door to all kinds of other crazy options - your
ashes could be made into a memento like a piece of jewelry, a glass sculpture or a granite-like
statue.
If that seems too ordinary for you, you can now have your remains turned into a record
containing your favorite songs, or even blended into paint or tattoo ink.
If you want to go out with a bang, your ashes could be made into fireworks or shotgun shells.
It turns out, death is not quite as simple - or as neat - as we might like to think.
From post-mortem erections to dead bodies passing gas, there are plenty of wild and
crazy things that your body does after you die.
Let’s just hope you won’t have to experience any of them first-hand any time soon!
If you thought this video was fascinating, be sure and check out “Funeral Home Secrets
They Don’t Want You To Know”, or perhaps you’ll like this other video instead.