Death is a taboo topic for the vast majority of normal people. The end of the road scares us so much that we have created countless religions and beliefs designed to comfort, calm, encourage …
Unable to accept the final verdict, people cannot completely eliminate death from their thoughts. The wisest way, of course, is to adopt Epicurus's brilliant dictum. Stoic quite reasonably remarked: "While I am here, death is not, and when it comes, I will be gone." But stoicism is the lot of the few. For everyone else, we decided to write a concise, medicine-based guide to what happens to our bodies after death.
Self-absorption
Almost immediately after the moment of death, the body starts several irreversible processes. It all starts with autolysis, roughly speaking, self-digestion. The heart no longer saturates the blood with oxygen - cells suffer from the same deficiency. All by-products of chemical reactions do not get the usual way of disposal, accumulating in the body. The liver and brain are the first to be consumed. The first because this is where most of the enzymes are located, the second because it contains a large amount of water.
Color of the skin
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Then comes the turn of other organs. The vessels are already destroyed, so that the blood, under the influence of gravity, goes down. A person's skin becomes deathly pale. This is how popular culture represents the dead: remember the pale vampires and zombies attacking defenseless beauties from dark corners. If the directors tried to make the picture more believable, they would have to show that the rear of the corpse-aggressor is dark from the accumulated blood.
Room temperature
Nothing is functioning and the body temperature begins to drop gradually. The cells do not receive the usual dose of energy, the protein filaments become immobile. Joints and muscles acquire a new property - they become stiff. Then rigor mortis sets in. The eyelids, jaws and neck muscles give up at the very beginning, then everything else comes.
Who lives in the house
The dead body no longer contains a person, but there is a completely new, corpse ecosystem. Actually, most of the bacteria that it consists of lived in the body before. But now they begin to behave differently, in accordance with the changed conditions. We can say that life in our body continues - only our consciousness has no relation to this anymore.
Molecular death
The decomposition of the human body is an unpleasant sight for most normal (and still living) individuals. Soft tissues break down into salts, liquids and gases. Everything is almost like in physics. This process is called molecular death. At this stage, the decomposition bacteria continue their work.
Unpleasant details
The gas pressure in the body rises. Blisters appear on the skin as the gas tries to escape. Whole flaps of skin begin to slide off the body. Usually, all the accumulated decomposition products find their natural way out - the anus and other openings. Sometimes the pressure of the gas rises so that it simply rips open the stomach of the former person.
Back to the roots
But this is not the end of the process either. A dead body lying on bare ground literally returns to nature. Its fluids drain into the soil, while insects carry bacteria around. Forensic scientists have a special term: "islet of decay." He describes a patch of soil lavishly, um, fertilized with a dead body.