• Question: what happened when you die? like I know that you get buried or cremated but I dolt mean in real life I mean in your mind because there is no life, and I really don't get it?

    Asked by krazykate2000 to Ben, Dave, Ed, Sam, Susana on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Benjamin Hall

      Benjamin Hall answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      We are ‘conscious’ because of electrical activity in our brain. When we die this stops and we are no longer conscious. It’s difficult to imagine because being alive = being conscious and we have never experienced anything different.

      The best way to conceptualise it would be to say “It’s just like before you were even born.” You wouldn’t exist as life, quite simply.

    • Photo: David Briggs

      David Briggs answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      When we die, the electrical activity in our brain shuts down – when that happens, all that we were, our thoughts and memories, cease to exist.

      It’s all rather depressing.

    • Photo: Sam Horrell

      Sam Horrell answered on 26 Jun 2013:

      As far as we know everything just shuts down. If there is anything more after death we just don’t know. I’m sure you’ve heard of near death experiences, people normally claim to have seen a bright light, their life flash before their eyes, have an out of body experience, even communication with “spirit beings”.

      Scientists don’t really know why exactly these happen, mostly because we have no way of running tests. However, most believe it all to be the result of chemicals in the brian, not proof of life after death. Some scientists believe that in a near death experience the visions people see is your brain trying to make sense of where your body is and what’s happening but gets mixed up because of the trauma the patient has suffered, the drugs they are on or the fact that the brain is just shutting down.

      So overall we don’t know, but the general scientific oppinion is that nothing really happens.

Comments

  • Photo: Susana

    Susana commented on :

    Another fantastic question.

    The stone cold scientific answer describes death of the mind (the conscious part of our brain, which is how your brain translates electrical impulses into thoughts and feelings), the end, we are no more. When we die the brain stops, so as far as we know we are no longer able to see, hear, remember, feel, etc.
    There is however a lot we do not understand yet about how the mind works, dreams, near death experiences.
    If we believe that what goes through our mind when we die is what people who had near death experiences describe, it does not sound like an unpleasant experience.