Humans often cope with death by disguising it as life.
Perhaps the most glaring example of this is the open-casket funeral, when humans go through
the effort of dressing up a dead person and laying them in a giant jewelry box with plush
lining, almost creating the impression that they're sleeping.
"It's just an open coffin.
I can't believe they just leave it out here like this.”
“George, it's a wake.”
"Awake?
Brenda, it's a miracle!
I thought you were dead.”
However, as time passes, that sleeping beauty will undergo some drastic changes.
Here's how your body might change after a year of eternal beauty sleep.
Death waits for no one, and it certainly won't wait for a corpse to get gussied up before
your body starts to break down.
The first organ to go is your brain.
After spending its whole life trying to keep the rest of you alive, in death your brain
does the same thing in much more dramatic fashion.
As detailed in the book What We Leave Behind, your brain cells will start breaking themselves
down in a process called autolysis.
This begins after just four minutes of oxygen deprivation.
According to Scientific American, during autolysis, carbon dioxide ruptures your cells, which
in turn release nutrients that fuel bacteria and fungi.
It's these organisms that help liquify the brain.
Of course, the timing of all this depends on temperature.
Cold temperatures delay the onset of autolysis, which is the reason why people who have drowned
in freezing water can sometimes be resuscitated.
What We Leave Behind observes that in this scenario, your brain goes into a hibernal
state instead of outright dying.
So, theoretically, if your brain had thought of doing this in warmer temperatures, it could
have stayed alive longer, giving you a chance to survive, too.
However, once a human brain finally turns out the lights, things will start getting
pretty funky.
As Business Insider describes it, the fluid in your brain cells will leak into a puddle
all over your final resting place.
So, keep that in mind before you spend thousands of dollars on a top-of-the-line casket.
"The lid is titanium steel, its lined with mink fur, and it comes with free wi-fi.
It's what Pop-pop would have wanted."
Moving on from the brain, let's get inside what's happening to the rest of your body.
The bacteria that typically aid in digesting food start feasting on the only thing it has
left to eat...you!
Hours into the process, they will eventually chow down on your gallbladder, unleashing
a yellow-green bile through your body, altering its hue.
As hours turn into days, your body will start swelling and releasing some horrible substances.
According to Scientific American, your corpse will emit a "bewildering array of more than
400 chemicals and gases."
And, as you might have guessed, anyone within sniffing distance should use any means available
to avoid inhaling these fumes.
About three or four months into the process, your blood cells start hemorrhaging iron,
turning your body brownish black.
Soon your cells lose their structure, causing your tissues to become "a watery mush."
After a little more than a year, your clothes will decompose because of exposure to the
various chemicals your corpse produced.
And like that, you've gone from being a sleeping beauty wearing your most beautiful ensemble
to a naked mush of decomposing, toxic goo.
No matter how peaceful your death is, you'll never have the chance to rest in one piece,
and this is thanks to the disgusting magic of decomposition.
But under certain circumstances — particularly, if your coffin is kept above ground in a mausoleum
— the rest of your pieces could be flung everywhere as your corpse explodes in a horrific
blaze of glory.
Josh Slocum, executive director of Funeral Consumers Alliance, explained to Vice that...
"The casket becomes a literal pressure cooker.
It reduces the body to a disgusting chunky brown slurry."
And when that pressure reaches the coffin's tipping point, you have corpse juice spilling
out all over the place.
Slocum noted that there have been cases where this pressure is actually powerful enough
to blow that little square off the front of a crypt.
Slocum likened it to leaving a tupperware container full of meat in your fridge for
too long.
After all, at the end of your life, you're basically just a giant meal for hungry microbes.
Of course, if you don't want to slowly rot away like a rancid sandwich, there's always
another option...
"I do have this coupon for a cremation."
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