Vsauce, I’m Van Helsing ... Dr. Jake Van Helsing. I hear that there is somebody ill
inside.
Oh, this is beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous and do you smell that? You can smell the sickness
in the air. No really you can. Doctors, other than myself, did a study that shows that our
pheromones change when we are sick. For example if someone has diabetes their breath can become
stale or sour.
Is the patient in here?
Oh my my, this is curious.
Well...I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that your study is fantastic.
Kudos to your interior decorator. The bad news is that this man is spectacularly no
longer alive. He is quite dead.
You know, something interesting happens when you die. Parts of you are still alive, for
example most of our cells are unaware and continue their metabolic functions.
But when you do die your heart stops beating which keeps oxygen from going to your organs.
Without oxygen your brain can’t regulate the body’s functions and it can no longer
support consciousness. At this point, the cells start dying. But the 4 pounds of bacteria
you have in your gut are still very much alive, and since they have no immune system to stop
them, start to consume you from the inside out.
But isn’t that what we are all after ... the pursuit of life. The ability to live forever,
to not be forgotten. So let’s imagine living forever. Close your eyes and really imagine
it.
Time is vast. It is easy to envision a hundred years, a thousand years. But imagine 5 billion
years from now when our Sun becomes a Red Giant and begins to expand. The oceans on
Earth boil away and eventually the Sun devours our planet. And there you are 5 billion years
later which would still be a speck of dust in the infinite life ahead of you.
Open your eyes and I want you to imagine something else. Imagine no longer being alive. You can’t
can you? We can’t comprehend nothingness, just thinking about nothing is something.
But we know at some point we are going to die yet we can’t imagine not being alive.
It’s called the Mortality Paradox. And this is what drives humanity to pursue living forever.
Some of us try to achieve it in very different ways, like your friend here who did not die
of natural causes. In fact, the cause was quite ... unnatural. As a Van Helsing, one
of my fields of study is Vampirism, and judging by the two holes on his neck, he’s on his
way to becoming a vampire ... he could turn at any moment ... you might want to look away.
Oh! I missed! Back demon, back! Back!
Just the idea of extending one’s existence drives man towards seeking out or pursuing
an idea like vampirism, but its not as if this concept is foreign or as crazy as some
other pursuits.
If we go back 4,000 years to 2,100BC we have one of the first great works of literature,
the Epic of Gilgamesh, where Gilgamesh goes on a journey to find the secret of eternal
life. Fast forward to 220BC with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, who tried so hard
to fend off death that if you mentioned the word around him you would be executed. He
was so afraid of dying that he went so far as to have a giant barricade built, what we
now know as the Great Wall of China. He also famously sent an expedition of over 1000 people
on a mission to find the elixir of immortality - that precious liquid that would keep him
alive.
In a cruel case of irony, Qin Shi Huang ended up dying by ingesting mercury pills that his
physicians had thought would do just the opposite. Now, to live forever it’s generally required
that you already be alive ... but what if there was a way to bring you back once you
had passed on? I have a colleague who’s been working on something quite ... shocking
that we could try.Let me grab that corpse and I’ll meet you at my friend’s laboratory
- look for the sign that says Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
Gah! Electricity really is a modern marvel, isn’t it? Back in ancient Greece it was
believed that our muscles contracted because of fluid flowing through our nerves and that
was the thinking for 1500 years. Then it was considered that animal spirits were the cause.
And then came electricity!
In the 1780s Luigi Galvani discovered that if he attached electrodes to muscles and sent
a current of electricity through it, the muscles would start to move. He tried it most famously
with frog legs and his nephew made the next logical step and used it on the body of a
recently deceased criminal. During the public demonstration the jaw began to quiver, the
right hand clenched open and closed, legs and thighs began to move and an eye even popped
open. Most spectators thought they were witnessing a re-animation.
Now, if Frankenstein’s and I’s theory is correct, with the right amount of continuous
electricity, distributed across the body proportionally, we should be able to re-ignite that spark
of life - our modern prometheus.
Yes! Yes! It’s working! It’s working! Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
So ... it turns out I was wrong. Galvani thought that what he was witnessing was “animal
electricity”, a fluid similar to normal electricity that flowed through an animal’s
muscles and nerves. When in reality it was just the muscles reacting to the electrical
current coming into contact with two different metals in a damp environment. But there are
other options for resurrection.
Cryonics is the preservation of human bodies in extremely cold temperatures, below -238F.
Currently you could get yourself crypreserved immediately after death for the low price
of $200,000 - or if that is a little rich for your blood - just the head for $80,000
in hopes that one day science will be able to revive you.
It is the incredibly cold version of a mummy. And speaking of which, the reason ancient
Egyptians put so much effort into the proper preservation of their dead was in hopes that
if the corpse was suddenly brought back to life, they’d still be themselves. Side note:
One of the substances used to treat the body is called bitumen which in Persian is mum
hence the reason we call them mummies.
Unfortunately, electrification, cryopreservation, and mummification have yet to revive any person.
However, the ancient Egyptians did have a back-up plan for living forever which is actually
pretty simple: You don’t have to be alive to be immortal.
Stop right there. Yes, don’t move. In Homer’s Iliad, Achilles is given the choice between
a long life or eternal glory. He chose eternal glory because he knew that long after his
death, he would still be remembered - he would live on the lips of every person. Let’s
try something, I want you to tell me right off the top of your head the names of your
great-grandparents. Do you know?
It has been estimated that the majority of us will be remembered for 75 years at most.
The ancient Egyptians called this the second death, when their names would be forgotten.
Admittedly I am not a very good artist but what drawings, paintings and photographs do
is capture you, you in that specific moment and they keep you there forever. Time can
age the canvas but it can’t age you.
We could go to the museum down the road and look at paintings and murals from a thousand
years ago. The physical bodies of the people represented long gone but their image, their
history, that feeling of who they were still remains.
We all live forever, genetically. We could trace our genes back millions of years, and
we continue to push our genetics forward. As Einstein said “Our death is not an end
if we can live on in our children, for they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves
on the tree of life”. We spend so much time concerned with who is doing what or how they
feel that we forget to focus on us. When people look at a photo or painting of you, what will
they say? What legacy will you leave behind? How will I be remembered? In the words of
Jorge Luis Borges, “Except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant
of death.”
And ... as always ... thanks for watching.
I'd like to thank Showtime and Penny Dreadful for allowing me to film on their incredible
sets. The show really is amazing, I've been a huge fan of it. And I'd especially like
to thank these amazing peoples, there we are, thank you for making this awesome video with
me. Thanks. Yaaaaaay.