Death is both fascinating and scary.
It is the last mystery of life and largely remains unknowable until your time comes.
Despite massive advancements in science and technology, the age-old question of what happens after you die is still without answers.
You might actually KNOW that you are dead for quite a long time after you die, according to a chilling new study.
Researchers have discovered you may be able to hear your own death being announced.
The findings come amid the emergence of the belief you know what’s happening around your cadaver.
Medical experts have long debated what happens when a person dies, with anecdotal evidence of bright lights or sensations, and films such as Flatliners exploring the unknown.
People who have been medically dead and then resuscitated are the only insight into what happens.
These people have taken to Reddit to answer the impossible “what’s it like to die?” question as best they can. And the answers vary a lot, reports the Mirror.
1. Like reading a book
Five years ago monitormonkey underwent major surgery during which he bled out, causing him die for several minutes, The Mirror reported.
“I woke up in what looked like space but there weren’t any stars or light. I wasn’t floating so to speak, I was just there.
“I wasn’t hot or cold, hungry or tired – just a peaceful neutral kind of thing. I knew there was light and love somewhere nearby but I had no urge or need to go to it right away.
“I remember thinking over my life, but it wasn’t like a montage. More like I was idly flipping through a book and snippets stood out here and there.
“Whatever it was, it changed my thoughts on a few things. I am still afraid to die, but I’m not worried about what happens after that.”
2. A visit from someone dear
Schneidah7 was thrown from his motorbike while cruising at 50mph and was medically dead when he was taken to hospital. As he lay in the road before the ambulance came, he recalled someone he knew encouraging him.
“I just remember being on the pavement and things slowly going black and quiet.
“The only reason I didn’t fall asleep was because of a bizarre moment where I heard someone yelling, ‘Ranger up you candy f***! Come on man, get up. Get up. GET UP!’
“Then someone was slapping my helmet (which was basically smushed really hard onto my head).
“When I opened my eyes I saw my brother squatting on the pavement next me to. This was odd because my brother died from an overdose several years ago.
“The only other thing I remember is him glancing at his watch and saying something like ‘They’ll be here soon’ and then walking away.
“I wish I could give more detail but I honestly don’t remember much of the incident and still have trouble with my memory as a result of the accident.”
3. A garden
While many users described their ‘death’ as being like a void, IDiedForABit had a very different experience after an allergic reaction caused his or her heart to stop.
“I remember a feeling of being sucked backwards, extremely slowly, like being pulled through water and this blackness fading in and out.
“At one point it faded back in and I was staring out at a garden.
“It wasn’t filled with flowers, just dust and patchy grass. There was a playground with a merry-go-round in the middle and two children running around it. A boy and a girl.
“It’s difficult to describe but I got the feeling I could choose if I wanted to stay or leave, but every time I tried to go back I was held in place.
“I went through all the reasons I wanted to go back, and when I told the presence I didn’t want to abandon my mother whatever held me finally let go.
“I snapped back into my body. My heart had stopped for six minutes.”
4. Hitting snooze
As a teenager, TheDeadManWalks had been going through months of chemotherapy when his nose started bleeding uncontrollably.
Due to a sepsis and Clostridium difficile infection, his condition worsened, and he slipped in and out of death, which he describes beautifully.
“The worst part of it all, looking back, is how peaceful it can seem.
“It’s like wanting to hit the snooze button on your alarm at 7am.
“And maybe you do hit it once or twice but then you remember that you have work or school and that sleep can wait because you’ve still got s*** to do.”
5. Or is it a laugh?
altburger69’s brush with death didn’t stop them from cracking jokes.
“Had a heart attack last year and my heart stopped three times in the emergency room.
“Apparently, each time they shocked me back I ‘woke up’ (how it felt) and told the staff a different knock-knock joke each time.
“No lights or whatever, just felt like sleep.”
6. There is nothing after
In the aftermath of a motorbike accident, Rullknuf’s breathing and pulse stopped and he went “cramp and stiff”. After two minutes, his friend managed to resuscitate him.
“For me it was just a blackout. No dreams, no visions, just nothing.
“Apparently I asked over 10 times what happened and said I shall be happy to be alive today.”
A new study, the Mirror reports , suggests a person’s consciousness keeps working after their heart stops beating and their body movements fail.
Cardiac arrest survivors were aware of what was going on around them while they were ‘dead’ – including seeing doctors trying to save them or hearing conversations – before being ‘brought back to life’, the study revealed.
It means that a person may even hear their time of death being announced by medics as they are essentially ‘trapped’ inside their body with brain function.
Dr Sam Parnia is studying consciousness after death and examining cardiac arrest cases in Europe and the US.
He said anecdotal evidence has found that people in the first phase of death may still experience some form of consciousness.
The expert told LiveScience that people who have survived cardiac arrest later accurately described what was happening around them after their hearts stopped beating.
He said: “They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working, they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them.”
Dr Parnia, of the NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York, said the accounts were verified by doctors and nurses, who were left stunned after learning that the patients remembered the details after being resuscitated.
His study is examining what happens to the brain after a person goes into cardiac arrest – and whether consciousness continues after death and for how long – to improve the quality of resuscitation and prevent brain injuries while restarting the heart.
Unlike the plot in Flatliners, however, when a person is resuscitated they don’t return with a “magical enhancement” of their memories, said Dr Parnia.
On a side note, theres a new blood test that can predict whether you’ll be dead in the next ten years!
They say you can’t predict the future.
But scientists say they have developed a blood test which could answer one of the most pressing questions we face – when will we die?
In studying how we age, the scientists believe with their simple test they can predict if someone will die within the decade reports The Mirror.
The test relies on biomarkers in the blood linked to various factors that appear to affect your risk of death.
Biomarkers
To develop the test, the researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, analysed 44,168 participants aged 18 to 109 – 5,512 of who died during follow-up.
An analysis of the participants’ blood revealed 14 biomarkers that were associated with an increased risk of death.
These biomarkers were linked to various factors, including immunity, circulating fat, inflammation and glucose control.
This suggests that in the future, a sample of your blood could be analysed for the presence of these biomarkers, to indicate when you’ll die.
In the study, published in Nature Communications , the researchers, led by Joris Deelen, explained: “We subsequently show that the prediction accuracy of 5- and 10-year mortality based on a model containing the identified biomarkers and sex is better than that of a model containing conventional risk factors for mortality.”
Clinical test
The researchers highlight that further research is needed before a clinical test is available, and this is backed up by experts not involved in the study.
Dr Amanda Heslegrave, a researcher at the UK Dementia Research Institute, said: “Whilst this study shows that this type of profiling can be useful, they do point out importantly that it would need further work to develop a score at the individual level that would be useful in real life situations.
“We’d need to see validation to ensure repeatability in different labs, production of reference samples to test this on an ongoing basis, work to make the individual score possible, validation in other cohorts and validation of all components of the panel.
“So, it’s an exciting step, but it’s not ready yet.”
It is the last mystery of life and largely remains unknowable until your time comes.
