Did you know? Death & Injury

With a quick search and face value looking, you can die standing up. It happens when the body immediately cools after a physical activity and causes the muscles to stiffen up.

Well, there is an open space at the bottom middle of the ribcage, the knife and be angle up as you stab to get to the hear; if not the heart, then cutting the arteries and what not to cause major injury and death.

A few things I learned:

A person kind die by a broken heart, literally. It's called Broken Heart Syndrome; it causes the effects of a heart attack, but is not a heart attack. So it is easily treatable; but because of the short term heart muscle, one can still die though rarely.

Your tongue has a lot of connective tissues and blood vessels running through it, so if you were to bite/cut it off, you could die of blood loss, choke to death by your own blood, or etc,.

The body eats itself prior upon death because the cells and what not are not getting the essentials they need and their toxicity/acidity increases, eating away at the body.

An addition to the above; a lot of gases builds up in the body, causing it to bloat. It is best not tamper with the body at this point because the gases are condensed and could blow out violently; it's reasons why you are told to stay away from dead, beached whales.

Temperature can hide how long a person has been dead for. Cold temperatures causes the body to stiffen up and warm temperatures can make it seem like it is fresh.

You can kill some one by just injecting air into their blood stream; this is because it causes air embolism and a large enough embolism, depending in which part of the body it is in, can be fatal. If you inject ~2-3 mL of air into the artery, it can go to the brain to cause cerebral embolism and it triggers a stroke. Inject 0.5-1 mL of air into the pulmonary vein can cause a cardiac arrest.

Good work on the article! It's informative.

1) It depends on how the person died. Rigor mortis begins 1-2-hours in tropics and 3-6 hours in temperate zones after death, so if the person died and was stuck standing against a support, their body will remain standing until the support is removed after which they will fall down as stiff as a log.

Also, things like high temperature, less body fat, less age and increased physical exertion before death can speed up rigor mortis.

2) If the weapon pierces through the spaces between the ribs then it can pierce the heart! Though the likelihood of a lung injury is much higher as the heart is mostly covered by the left lung.

I'd also like to add in a bit of information:
Depending on the colour of your bruise, you can determine the time of injury.

1. Initially: Red
2. Within a few hours to 3 days: Blue
3. 4th day: Bluish black to brown
4. 5-6 day: Green
5. 7-12 days: Yellow
6. 2 weeks: Normal skin colour

Now you guys know how old that wound that you never knew was there is!

I looked back and fact checked some of these with Wikipedia, so head there is you want to know something specific.

Blood Loss
1 pint of blood = 473.18 ml = 2 cups = 16 ounces = ~500 ml

The average quantities of blood are:
*about 9 pints (4.3 l/18cups) of blood in an average-sized woman (5'5, 165 pounds)
*about 12.2 pints (5.7 l/24.4cups) in an average-sized man (6', 200 pounds)

% is of the total blood volume in the individual's body.
14% blood loss: ok, maybe woozy.
15-30% blood loss: Anxious and uneasy. Fast heart and breathing rate.
~20%<: Hemorrhagic shock.
~35%-40% = Death

Stages of Decomp:

• When someone dies their lips and face will start to change color within about ten minutes. They will usually appear more blue and impossibly still. The same is true for animals.

• Body temperature drops

• Rigor mortis begins 2-6 hours after death and can last around two days, usually peaking at 12 hours.

• The "dead smell" depends on how good your nose is, weather, and if you know what you're smelling for. It'll fill the room within about 12 hours though.

• Livor mortis. Blood will pool wherever gravity takes it and make the skin there appear red/purple (lividity discoloration).
  After about 8 hours the patterns made by the lividity discoloration are permanent due to blood vessel breakdown. The discoloration does not occur in the areas of the body that are in contact with the ground or another object, in which capillaries are compressed.

• Putrification. The internal organs breakdown first. The body will develop a green color starting from the area surrounding the internal organs. The body's will then start to turn black and liquify.
  Wikipedia has a good break down on the timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putrefaction7

Insects in Decomp:
They enter first through open wounds or any cavity of the body (mouth/nose/etc)

Asphyxiation:
While being choked you're mouth will fill with spit as your bodies attempt to clear your airway. This also happens when you choke on food.
Or ya know, when your friend is dating that guy who thinks he's a vampire and he thinks it'd be cool to choke you inside a haunted house.

Fainting
Because I get the vapors like a sickly 18th century nobleman, I have some experience. It's usually not just suddenly becoming unconscious. Usually you can tell when it's about to happen, especially if you've passed out before. First I goes in order from: anxious, nauseous, wozzy/lightheaded, tunnel vision, pins and needles in the hands and feet, unconscious.

OP's question:

Isn't it actually kind of difficult to stab someone in the heart? Like, in the front, you have the sternum, and in the back you have the spine in the way...I guess if your blade goes in crooked it'll work out anyway, but if you're trying to be precise and it's not sharp enough, I could see it getting stuck in the bone like grrkknk and it'd be really awkward...

Difficulty depends on physical strength and emotional state. The initial stabbing itself is not as difficult as removing the weapon (which causes the majority of the damage). It also depends on what the weapon is. For example If the assailant is using a screw driver, that will probably slip between the gaps of the ribs in either direction. Also, a hot knife is harder the stab with than a cold one.
Yea, It'd probably be awkward

I'm not in the medical or whatever but there's just some stuff I know :

You can certainly die if you cut your tongue, but blood on your mouth tends to clot faster, (though if you have hemophilia you're outta luck) so if iyou block it with some sort of gauze and its treated quickly you won't be dying, But blood loss is inevitable (and like everyone said, you can choke on your blood, especially if you're unconscious and laying on your back). And cutting clean your tongue with your own teeth is also possible, but it depends on how sharp your teeth was and how much pressure you apply.

You don't immediately die if you cut cardiac arrest. Brain damage will occur around 3 to 9
(please note that I don't really remember the exact time) minutes, so you still can do CPR until then. But around 6 to 9 minutes, possible brain death will occur, so most doctor usually stopped trying after that because you don't want to get a brain dead patient to burden the family of the patient, and also, brain dead is basically legal death, and different from vegetative state patient.

I don't remember much and can't really wrote since I gotta work, but I'll add some more things later maybe?

Don't mind me. Just tracking along this thread for reasons.

I'll add something from myself when I'll remember some fun facts. xD

Definitely easier to explain this than your Google search history~

Ok, just remembered something I have experience in.

It really bothers me, when the solution to a nosebleed in media is putting your head back. No. It might stop the nosebleed but it also causes the risk of blood clots getting into your throat. Head bent forward and something cold on your nose is the way to go.

A good way to stop a bad one is shoving something (tissue/toilet paper) under your top lip to pinch the vein that runs to your nose. You can also pinch the bridge of your nose at the end of the cartilage.

I think the main problem with tilting your head back is more so the concern of aspirating blood? Swallowing clots is defiantly gross and will upset your stomach tho.

Cremating (burning) a body:

• 1800 F (928.2 C) is what needs to be maintained for about 3 hours to fully birn a body down to bone fragments.
• A campfire only burns at about 900 F (482.2 C). You can't really just "burn away the body" without like a kiln. It will get rid of a lot of evidence tho.
• Forest fires burn at around 1,472 F (800 C), so this would be close? I can't think of a naturally occurring situation that would result in cremation. Volcano!
• The smoke from a burning body is thick, oily, and black. Burning hair smells way worse than decay in my opinion, but I'm kind of desensitized. Decay/death smells sickly sweet. Burning hair smells like burnt-sulfur-popcorn that's trying to choke you.
• Bodies tend to move (raise their arms/sit up) when exposed to extreme heat due to the mussels and tendons retracting (like how bacon shrinks in a pan). There's an account of Rasputin's body doing this when they lit him on fire after shooting him in a river.

Burns:

• Frostbite is considered a cold burn I guess? The blood freezes in your veins, causing tiny ice crystals to form and rip tissue. Don't touch dry ice. It's not worth it, trust me.
• A First-degree burn would be like a sunburn. Only the first layer of skin is damaged. Sunburns are specifically radiation burns. The tissue is self-destructing due to the DNA being damaged. When damaged tissues don't self-destruct they become cancer.
• Second degree burns are painful to touch and blister. The first layer of tissue (epidermis) and part of the second layer of tissue (dermis) are damaged. They can leave scars.
• Third degree burns don't hurt because they've damaged the nerves and two full layers of skin. Usually appear black/brown.
• Fourth degree burns destroy down through the bone and can be life threatening.

• Infections are very common in burn injuries and are a major concern. Many patients with large body burns are kept in medically induced comas to help manage pain.

• Pain itself can kill by putting you into shock.

It is really okay to fall asleep when injured. The trope "DONT FALL ASLEEP. STAY WITH ME!" trope like on the movies is heavily dramatized, but honestly it doesn't really matter much. You need to rouse them awake from time to time tho, especially if it is suspected that they have concussion as some problem might arise if their facial muscle (or the like) getting slack and they ended up suffocated. So just be careful, but let them sleep since it'll cope with their pain.

Some random poison fact. You can be somewhat immune to ricin if you injected yourself with a small small dose of it overtime, or of your body have a defect and unable to metabolize sugar fructose. And this poison is a legit weapon that was used in terrorism and was used as a punishment for children (in small dose) a long time ago before the 20th century in around Europe and the like (parents are brutal). Also, there no antidote for ricin. So be careful. More info about ricin and other poison is on the cdc site below.

https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/ricin/facts.asp2

HOAX :

at some point, I watched a movie about an attempted murder by using seafood and vitamin c. They will not really harm you immediately or any at all. It depends on if your seafood have a higher amount of arsenic in it or not, and even so, it is a long running kind of methods, and it'll more likely be carcinogenic than sudden death. Thire is also a long running mail rumour that you'll die immediately after eating it, but no, that's a hoax. There's a research back in the 80's about it, but I believe there's no mention of it killing you at once like the mail usually shared.

I don't remember the others lol

Decomp in body disposal

(As a disclaimer I’ve worked with animal bodies for bone art.)

• Maggots can make a corpse look like it’s breathing. They create a lot of heat inside of the body, so much so that they can accidentally cook themselves. To avoid this they migrate from the center outward and back again in a pulsating pattern. This only really happens in larger corpses, you wouldn’t really be able to see this happen in a bird or rat.

• Messing with the decomposition speed will fuck with forensic ability to determine time of death. If you want a body to decompose quickly you have a few options. If you want to slow decomp your only real option is freezing, but even that isn’t great. Decomposition is inevitable even with embalming.

• You can fill the rectal cavity with yogurt. The gut bacteria will get to work.

• You can leave it in a warm dark wet area. Sugar will help attract insects if you dont have a compost area that already has them.

• You can also use a plastic tub with an aquarium heater, just be careful to read the heater instructions so it doesn’t melt the tub. This will not decomp the bones.

• You can not use dermestid beetles (flesh eating beetles) on a living/fresh body. Beetles are only used as a last step in cleaning bones before degreasing and whitening. They eat the last bits of flesh in those hard to reach places (inside the skull, between teeth, ect).

• You can disintegrate bones with bleach. They will flake and fall apart after contract. Once this process is started it is irreversible even if washed off.

• Most animals are opportunistic eaters. If a body is left outside without a cover/cage scavengers will find it quickly. This includes animals you wouldn’t normally think of like deer, raccoons, butterflies and bees. They tend to scatter the remains in the process (not the bugs, that’d be terrifying).

• if you need a way to subvert crime dogs from sniffing out a body burry the body (horizontally) 5 feet (or more) down, then at 2 feet down burry road kill on top of it. If you want to burry vertically you’ll need a deeper hole and some strong arms.

• Vertical burial carries the risk of the grave collapsing as the body decomposes. The only benefit to this position is the smaller area of initial evidence.

If we're talking about falling off big heights, if the fall wasn't deadly, the impact causes your sphincters to loosen. Yes, it means you can pee yourself when you hit the ground.

Phew, pretty dark topic here, but interesting. The chanel -Ask a mortitian - on Youtube is very informative in that regard.

As I grew up on a farm I learned some stuff... A dead cow (spinal cord cut, so no conection to the brain) can "run" while on the ground for quite some time ( ca. 5 to 10min) due to muscle-contraction. And actually quite strong, so you definitly can be injoured if you are too close. Pigs do this too, when killed. Chicken even can run away headles (this I have been told).

So for not dead things... Pigs can heal very fast. A fox can survive on a brocken backleg but he needs his front legs.

And something more funny for the end: cows can't fart, they get rid of the gas by burping. If you see a cow fart something is very wrong. Horses do fart though, as they have their gras-digestive bacteria in the appendix. The cow has them in her first stomach.

This reminded me about Mike the headless chicken. His head got cut off in a way that left most of his brain intact and a blood clot stopped him from bleeding to death. His owner made a show out of him and fed him through the syringe. He lived 18 months after loosing his head, so I'd believe the stories about beheaded chickens that are able to run away.

Oof. I wonder what Mike the chicken thought about the whole thing.

Snakes and reptiles are similar. They can live for a few minutes after decapitation since they don't need much oxygen. This is why snakes can still bite when they're heads are cut off. Ideally you're supposed to smash their head with a rock, which sounds worse, but is more humane.

Oh! It's just supposed to speed up decomp by giving the initial stages a boost. Gut bacteria are their own organisms and giving them something extra to eat supposedly helps boost the colony. I haven't used this trick personally but I've heard other people talk about it.
I wanted to be a mortician as a kid, but unfortunately I'm allergic to formaldehyde, so now I'm just a bone/death/decomp weirdo lol.

Uff, allergies suck
I heard though, natural burial is starting to become a thing. I don't know, how big this is jet. Especially usa seems to be very anti-decomposing.

Yea it's not a very popular thing yet, at least not where I am in the US. I'm not sure where the anti-decomp culture stems from.