Death doesn't need to stop you from doing all the
things you enjoy, as long as the things you enjoy are pretty basic.
Certain bodily functions continue for minutes, hours, days, and even
weeks after death. You will not believe the kind of things a dead body
will do with its now-copious amount of time.
By the way, this post is not for the weak of stomach.
10. Nail and hair growth (by technicality)
This
is a technical function, not an actual function. The body doesn't
produce more hair and nail tissue, but both of these things do 'grow,'
in the days after death. What actually happens is the skin loses
moisture (although cosmetics companies are probably hard at work making a
cream for that) and pulls back, exposing more hair and making nails
seem longer. Since you do measure the length of hair and nails from the
point where they meet the skin to the tip of the hair, the hair does
'grow'.
9. Brain activity (with drugs)
One of the side
effects of modern technology is a blurring of the time between life and
death. The brain can be almost completely gone, but the heart can keep
pumping. If the heart is stopped for a minute, there's no breathing, and
the person was dying anyway, most doctors just pronounce people dead
while their brain is technically still alive for the next few minutes.
The brain's cells spend those minutes scrambling for the oxygen and
nutrients they need to stay alive - to the point where they often damage
themselves irreparably even if the heart starts up again. Those minutes
before the damage is too extensive could be extended, with the right
drugs and under the right circumstances, to days. Ideally, this would
give doctors a chance to save you, but it's not guaranteed. I know what
most of you are thinking, "What fun! The biggest problem I had with
dying is that it could be quick and painless, with no chance that my
living brain is stuck inside a corpse for days on end." Well, now you
don't have to worry about that.
8. Skin cell growth
This
is another function of different parts of the body dying at different
rates. While loss of blood circulation can kill the brain in minutes,
other cells are not as in need of constant care. Skin cells, which are
used to living on the outskirts of the body and grabbing what they can
through osmosis, can stay alive for days. Its a good thing they don't
have brains, or I'd feel sorry for them, the poor doomed things.
7. Peeing
Peeing,
we think, is a voluntary function. And we're mostly right, except if
something's really funny. Not-peeing, though, is not a voluntary
function. We never have to think about it, because a certain part of the
brain is always in charge of it. This is the same part that's involved
in regulating a person's breathing and heartbeat, which is one of the
reasons people tend to pee involuntarily if they're drunk. The part of
the brain that keeps the urinary sphincter closed is inhibited. (More
alcohol will shut down the part that regulate breathing and heart
function, which is one of the reasons too much alcohol is dangerous.)
Although rigor mortis stiffens the muscles, it doesn't set in until
hours after death. Just after death, muscles relax, causing people to
urinate after death.
6. Pooing
We all know that in times
of stress the body eliminates waste, often in front of people or on
camera. The body relaxes certain muscles and things just . . . progress.
In the case of dead bodies, the whole thing is helped along by the gas
that's produced inside the body. This can happen hours after death.
Hours. Considering fetuses can also poop in the womb (it's true!), this
may be both the first and last thing we do in life. Puts things in
perspective, doesn't it?
5. Digestion
It turns out that
when you die, bot only are you expelling stuff, you're actively making
more. Or, at least, something is making more. We forget that we share
our bodies with tons of other creatures, many of them beneficial. The
bacteria inside your gut don't die just because you do. While plenty of
them are parasitic, some of them are great aids to digestion, and do
part of the work for us. They keep right on chugging, even when we're
good and dead. Others eat into the lining of our intestines, making more
of that gas that repulsed us all in section six, which pushes things
along.
4. Erections and expulsion
When the heart stops
forcing the blood around the body, it pools in whatever area is lowest.
Sometimes people die standing up and sometimes people die lying face
down. I think everyone here has enough spatial reasoning to understand
what kind of blood pooling that would encourage. Meanwhile, for all that
talk of relaxing muscles after death, it doesn't last forever. Certain
types of muscle cells are activated by calcium ions. After activation,
the cells expend energy putting the calcium ions back outside the cell.
After death, the membranes become more permeable to calcium and the
cells don't expend as much energy to push the ions out, so the muscles
contract. This does lead to rigor mortis and can lead to expulsion. It's
real. It happens. Now let's never think of it again.
3. Muscle movement
Although
the brain may die, other areas of the nervous system may still be
active. Nurses report seeing reflex action, which involves nerves
sending signals to the spinal cord and not the brain, leading to muscle
twitches and spasms after death. Some even say they've seen shallow
chest movements after death. (Although maybe the doctor fell down on the
job for that one.)
2. Vocalization
Our bodies are
basically sacks of gas and goo supported by bones (which are filled with
yet more goo). Rotting happens when bacteria go to work and the
proportion of the gas increases. Since we carry most bacteria inside our
body, the gas builds up inside. We've seen several ways it takes out.
One of those ways is through the windpipe. Since rigor mortis stiffens
all the muscles, including the ones that work the vocal cords, the
combination leads to some very eerie sounds coming from dead bodies.
People hear moans, groans, and squeaks coming from the dead, although
why they stay around to confirm that the bodies making them are truly
dead instead of peeing on the floor and running for their lives is
beyond me.
1. Giving birth
Oh. Holy. Hell. No Twilight
scene could be worse than this. Back in the day when people dropped like
flies, a number of women died while pregnant, and sometimes in times
that were too cold to give them a burial. This gave rise to a charming
little term called 'coffin birth.' The gases building up inside a body,
combined with the softening flesh, were said to cause the body to expel
the fetus. These events were rare, and caused a lot of rumors, but were
documented in times before proper embalming and quick burial. It sounds
like the kind of thing out of an Edgar Allen Poe book, but it did
happen. And it's yet another reason to be happy that we live in the
modern world.