When a human dies.

I believe without doubt that our soul, the essence of who we are, our consciousness, is not permanently attached to our body, and when we die, it leaves the body.

The reason I have no doubt about this is because when I was young, I had an out of body experience. It scared the crap out of me, so I never let that happen again. But it firmly convinced me that I am not my body. It is merely the container I reside.

However, today I discovered some interesting facts about what happens to my body once I leave it.

Basically, the body has a self destruct button that creates really strange chemicals to break down the body and make it edible to bugs and good nutrients for the soil. 


If you want the intelligent Scientific America view, click here.  It's a short and cute video.

For my dubious interpretation, read on...

Once the body takes it's last breath, oxygen stops feeding the cells. This triggers the destruct sequence. For a few minutes after death, the cells continue to live but now they create carbon dioxide, which is acidic and ruptures sacks inside the cells, releasing enzymes which digest the cells from inside out. This attracts bacteria & fungi that helps liquefy the body.

Now things start seriously breaking down as over 400 weird gases & chemicals forms in the nutrient soup. Some of the chemicals created are Freon, Benzene, Sulfur, & Carbon Tetracloride.  At this point what's left is great maggot and beetle food.

Once they finish, all that's left is bone, and in the right environment, it dissolves as well. But not always, which is why I spent one hot summer digging up baby Apatosauras bones.  (That's a brontosaurus) in a dry creek bed in Montana.

And there have been occasions when even skin has been found on dinosaurs. So clearly, the self destruct process doesn't work all the time, but it's much better than the stuff we make. After my PC dies, it just sits there mocking me forever. Laughing because I will self-destruct long before it does.


At this point Liza wanders off in search of curry flavored popcorn, mumbling no will read this anyway, since no one wants to know what happens when they die.