Your time has come!
You’ve kicked the bucket,
cashed in your chips,
you're pushing up the daisies.
In other words, you’ve died.
Sorry about your loss.
Luckily for you, we here at WHAT IF
are here to guide you through the great beyond.
So, bad news.
Mr. Grim Reaper has shown up at your door.
"It’s a Mr. Death or something,
he’s come about the reaping?"
In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
conceptualized five stages
of dealing with death,
a roadmap we still use today.
The stages are
denial,
anger,
bargaining,
depression,
and acceptance.
But before the Grim Reaper drags you off,
let’s make absolutely sure you're dead.
In 1968, a Harvard panel outlined the criteria
for what constitutes an individual being dead.
These can be divided into two major groups.
The cardiopulmonary criteria
is when the heart has stopped beating,
and neurological criteria
is when the brain no longer functions,
AKA brain death.
If you’ve checked off both those boxes,
I’ve got some bad news for you…
Well, before you've checked off
both of those criteria,
it’s a gradual, physical process
that varies in each individual.
Let's say you're lucky enough
not to suffer a fatal accident,
but die of natural causes instead.
First, you'll start feel a coolness in your
hands, arms, legs and feet.
As your heart loses its ability
to pump blood effectively,
your skin will become blotchy
with a reddish-purple color.
This is called mottling.
You’ll be sleeping a lot more,
and will start to become uncommunicative
and unresponsive.
Day-to-details will slip.
You may not know the day or month,
or even where you are.
This can usually be attributed to
chemical imbalances,
reduced blood flow to the brain,
or a combination of the two.
You'll stop eating and drinking
as the time approaches,
with the theory being that the human body
naturally conserves energy
for the process of dying.
Around this time you may start to see
some unexplainable things.
Bright lights, deceased loved ones.
But what exactly are you seeing?
Researchers have documented cases
of people who survived being medically dead,
and they all had similar experiences.
They experienced things like
a feeling of peace,
visions of bright lights and benevolent figures,
and a relief from physical pain.
But are these just hallucinations?
Studies at Melbourne's St Vincent's Hospital
show these visions can help an individual
die more peacefully,
and that they are a means of self-comfort.
Is this our body trying to make the experience
a little more pleasant?
What about documented cases
of patients dying on an operating table
and claiming to have witnessed the afterlife?
These patients were able to provide details
of the activity in the room
during their “time away”
and said they floated above the table,
or just hung out in a corner taking in the show.
In a 2008 study,
42% of cardiac arrest survivors claimed
that they had some level of awareness
as they were being resuscitated.
These survivors said they felt
that time was speeding up or slowing down.
They also experienced an overall peacefulness
and the feeling that they were having
an out of body experience.
Some felt joy,
and even saw a bright light or golden flash.
That all sounds kinda nice,
except for the fact that an
unspecified number of patients
reported feeling fear
and a sense of drowning.
However, there is a theory
that you can prepare your body for death.
A University of Wisconsin study
theorizes that in a process called tukdam,
some monks die,
yet no physical decomposition begins
for more than a week.
This has led to studies
on the neuroscience of meditation.
These monks enter a state of meditation
before they die,
providing the brain with
extremely low-key maintenance duties
in order to maintain the meditative state.
How would the Western perspective of death
change if people had a pre-death ritual,
where they would use decades of
of meditative training
to get into "the zone" before dying?
It’s kind of crazy what your brain will do
when faced with death.
You know, it’s a lot to fathom,
but luckily our friends at CuriosityStream
can help you break it down.
We’ve been glued to the screen watching
Consciousness with Deepak Chopra
and Stuart Hameroff.
They go over all kinds of stuff from
near-death experiences
to quantum entanglement.
If you’re as curious as we are,
you’re going to love CuriosityStream.
They've got thousands of documentaries
and nonfiction titles
from some of the world’s best filmmakers,
including some exclusive originals.
Right now, they're giving What If viewers
access to the site for free for 30 days.
After that, it's just $2.99 a month,
or just $19.99 a year.
But you'd better get to it,
before Death shows up and ruins everything.
Let’s face it, we’re all going to die.
Judging by various accounts and studies,
the experience will be different
for each and every one of us.
As for what lies beyond the veil,
it’s still a mystery.
At this point,
dying sounds like it would be an “experience,"
to say the least.
But what if you missed the "Dead Man's Party?"
What if everyone else died except you?
What would life be like
if you were the last human on Earth?