WHAT IT’S LIKE TO DIE

What is it like to die? Biologically, here’s what happens, according to the American Chemical Society: Even after clinical death, your brain probably keeps working for a while. According to recent studies, the brain appears to undergo a final surge – in a way that would normally be associated with consciousness. That surge might be responsible for near death experiences, though scientists are still entirely unsure why the surge happens, or what it signifies. Then comes biological death. There’s little way of knowing what happens after all that is over, because people tend not to come back. But some have. In an Ask Me Anything session earlier this year, people described their experiences of having briefly passed away. One said it was “Pure, perfect, uninterrupted sleep, no dreams.” Another wrote, “I was standing in front of a giant wall of light. It stretched up, down, left and right as far as I could see. Kind of like putting your eyes 6 inches from a fluorescent lightbulb. The next memory I have is waking up in the hospital.”
* So death is like a final shot of espresso, and the afterlife is just a big tanning bed?
* Nobody was visited by a vision of Scarlett Johansson? Crap.
* Wow, there are so many clarifications in this I think I know less now than when it started.
* By the way – all this assumes you’re not being chewed in half by a shark, or ramming your car into a bridge abutment … these are the nice, peaceful drift-off-into-sleep deaths.
* The brain has a final surge? I don’t trust that term ever since the surge in Iraq.
* There was nothing final about that one either.
* The final surge is there to give you just enough energy to whisper “F it!”
* If death is like a fluorescent lightbulb then the lighting in heaven must be pretty harsh.
* As long as I don’t see flames and hear a deep Latin voice, I’m good with it.