7 replies to this topic

[Bowsette]

http://www.news.com....v-1227083224021

 

Closer and closer to that zombie army...

[Wolf]

So you can die without losing consciousness, but I have a seizure and I can't remember the whole day.

 

I call shenanigans.

[The Robstar]

In history class we learned a few stories about the guillotine and how some decapitated heads would continue blinking, looking around and even one case where the person tried talk up to 10 seconds after their head's we're severed. People speculated that it was just the nerves, others thought that the heads we're still conscious. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if they we're still alive momentarily. 

[Calvary]

I'm calling bullski on this.

[Silver_rose]

It is accurate. The first experiments were done during the French revolution on this phenomenon.

Here is a website that cites the actual account that first caused the idea to conduct these experiments. 

http://www.guillotin...ages/30sek.html

 

I remember hearing somewhere that German Scientists did further experimentation during the second world war but I can't really cite the accuracy of that.

 

But with the basic science behind it, it is entirely possible to be conscious for a minute or two after dying.

In regards to decapitation, if the head is severed at the point after atlas and axis (the top two vertebrae of the spine) the brain stem remains and there's just a severance of the spinal cord. So the brain is still intact, it's the sensory and motor neurons of the body that are severed, and you wouldn't be able to feel your body(this would be traumatising at best :/). However, this doesn't mean that action potentials still don't exist in the brain. To add to that, it takes 4 to 6 minutes for the brain to stop functioning without oxygen and it takes about 1.5 to 2 minutes without oxygen to fall unconscious.

 

This concept is totally possible and it's been known since the 18th century.

[SpleenBeGone]

Good job adding to my nightmares, guys. 

[Calvary]

Wow...well that's pretty scary. :I

[Mister Sympa]

Stephen Fry: There was a story during the Terror of the French Revolution, that two members of the National Assembly were guillotined and their heads put in the same bag straight away, and one bit the other so hard they couldn't be separated. Just the heads.
Jimmy Carr: That's holding a grudge, isn't it? For all intents and purposes, you're dead, let it go! Yeah, you didn't get on, whatever!
Stephen Fry: They were French.
>QI 03x01