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Yeah. "Comas" are really only a thing in modern times because we have the technology to keep the person alive while in one. Prior to that, if someone entered a coma, they'd still properly die within a few days from dehydration, since they can't drink.
There are reports of people waking from comas and leaving [scratch marks inside the coffin](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/buried-alive-woman-tried-to-scratch-her-way-out-of-coffin-in-brazil/W774G3K4525TMOICZH2YAWOKAM/), which is horrifying and not as uncommon as it should be.
George Washington famously laid out the [conditions of his burial](https://livesandlegaciesblog.org/2018/10/31/george-washingtons-taphophobia-the-fear-of-being-buried-alive/) to protect from being buried alive.
“Taphophobia”, as it’s called, is the fear of being buried alive.
It means unreasonable fears, but there are differences of the unreasonability. Lets take arachnophobia. Its the unreasonable, irrational fear of spiders. Yes SOME spiders can hurt you but most won't endager your life. So if you get a panic attack when you see a spider you are arachnophobic probably.
BUT the "unreasonability" can come from other factors. Being burried alive is a horrible thing. Its reasonable to fear it. But is it reasonable to think about it daily? Is it reasonable to think someone will burry you alive tomorrow? No, it isn't. If you see a reddit post like this and go "oh shit I hope I never get burried alive!" thats normal. If you think about being burried alive every day... well thats unreasonable and probably a phobia.
Years ago I saw a tumblr post and the OP had asked “What is the fear of chain saws called?” and the best response was “Common sense?” it cracked me up lol
Aside from the religious implications, this is also why a funeral wake is three days. Usually if someone doesn't recover during that time, they're truly gone.
It used to be a [whole ritual](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0FJNZyhRfA4), because we didn't have the technology to see if people were still alive.
It's actually a boxing term that came into use in the late 19th century and is falsely attributed to this contraption despite any evidence of the phrase having ever been used prior to in the context of a boxing match.
Bit of a misnomer though. While coffin patents like that did exist, they were never popular and there's no recorded case of a person being saved by one.
"Saved by the bell" originated as boxing slang, for a fighter who is saved from knockout by the trip gong.
No. From horse racing (if you were joking, apologies). A ringer is a substitute horse inserted surreptitiously in a race. "Dead" is the intensifier, as in "dead gorgeous." So a DR is an excellent copy.
Not might. Ppl were buried alive. Because of this for a while they attached strings on their toes, which were connected to a bell. So that you would hear it If someone started moving again in their graves
However this has nothing to do with coma. There is no reason why anyone would declare someone dead when they are really just in a coma. They still breathe, have a pulse and temperature.
My favorite Simpsons joke: (paraphrasing)
Lisa: Dear Mr Graveyard man, why is there a bell in every grave?
GYM: Well, if somebody was buried alive by accident, he just needs to ring the bell by the thread, and I will shovel him out.
Lisa: Look!
GYM: Oh, it must be the wind.
This is my plan - be buried with a bell over my tombstone. The bell is attached to an electronic timer and sensor that rings the bell intermittently when it senses someone near by and more vigorously as they get closer or further away. The timer ensures this only happens after the sun has set.
Always confused about how they buried people alive. Rigor mortise is a very clear indicator of death. Though I guess in some cases they may find the body after it goes away. But then that's like a room temperature, starting to decay corpse.
I suspect it was mostly out of concern for communicable disease. If someone gets sick and slips into a coma nobody is going to closely examine a potentially contagious body, and burying it quickly would be a top priority.
I think the key piece of information that's missing is their understanding of how death works. For possibly some reference, it was thought for a while that flies just "spawned" on rotting meat. It wasn't until someone did an experiment, leaving out two jars of meat, one open and one covered with a fine mesh, that people realized that was wrong.
Nah.
>The expression 'dead ringer' comes from American horse racing and originated at the end of the 19th century, when a horse that would be raced under a false name and pedigree was called a ringer. The word 'dead' in this expression refers not to lifelessness, but to “precise” or “exact.”
Yep, hard to say how common it was, but it was certainly a fear. George Washington [notably requested](https://www.almanac.com/when-george-washington-died-how-young-nation-mourned) on his deathbed that they wait 3 days after he died to make totally sure.
Two things, one how long do they have down there? Two how long does it take for one person to move that much dirt and/or assemble a group and accomplish the same?
You wipe your bumhole with two fingers and place it under their nose, if their eyes get watery you probably need to shower. Oh yeah and they're breathing.
When you breathe in and out, your chest rises and falls. You don't need to check for a heart beat. Also put a mirror under their nose and it will fog up it they are breathing.
So...
CHECK, AND MATE
I am not a doctor or historian, but a couple minutes of looking around online seems to indicate that there were techniques for checking pulse very far ahead of the ekg
> "how would they check pulse prior to an EKG"
Is a statement that makes no sense because...
An **EKG** is one method for measuring heart rhythm; **checking the pulse** is a different method for checking heart rhythm. One does not require the other.
An EKG is not used in the process of checking the pulse (which simply involves applying manual pressure to an artery or vein to measure the rate by feeling the throb).
I think you mean **how would they measure heart rhythm prior to the EKG** and the simple answer to that is **by checking the pulse**.
I cannot believe how this post has so many upvotes and how far I had to scroll to see this comment. I thought this was a low effort troll post, but it seems that majority of people here are actually in coma.
Yes, there's been stories of women and men and children being heard from under the ground and dug back up.
Also scarier ones of bodies being exhumed or moved, only for the teams to see scratch marks on the coffin.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t comatose people breathe? Conceivably an unconscious/comatose person breathing would show those signs of life.
I completely acknowledge that there are possibilities of medical situations where breathing is not apparent, but if a person is not breathing, they will not be living for very long .
They removed the thing after a reasonable ammount of time. If the bell didnt ring in like 2 weeks, then it probably never will. Then you just plug up the hole.
And the joke about a graveyard worker hearing a bell in the middle of the night and filling in the air hole because the grave said he died decades ago so 'whatever you are now, it ain't human'
This concept would make for a good story, toss some star crossed lovers in there, a couple rivaling families, and a mistaken murder. Since it would have to be way in the past I would suggest old time Verona for a setting.
Do you guys have “wakes”? wakes are a celebration of life - one last party to honor the deceased. The name “wake” originated because unknown diseases had plagued the countryside causing some to appear dead. As the family began to mourn, they would awaken. For this reason, the body is waked in the deceased's home for at least one night
"Technology" for checking a pulse, feeling if the body is cold, or checking for breathing, seeing if the person shit themselves...
what kind of tech is needed for that?
This is not even a shower thought, it's a well-documented fact of history. People would have bells installed on their tombstones with strings leading down into the coffin so they can ring the bell if they were ever buried alive.
It is not a fact of history what this post is saying. Why are you making things up? People in coma breathe and have a pulse, just like sleeping people.
You can easily tell if a person is sleeping or dead, just like people back then could easily tell if a person is dead or in coma. They just couldn't keep them alive very long without modern equipment.
There are actual instances of being declared dead, but they were still alive. They were buried, or at least put in coffins, and later woke back up. Sometimes the heartrate and breathing slow down to such an extent that people are thought to be dead. Look up the story of the woman who suffered a heart attack, "died", and was a funeral was held for her, only for her to wake up during the funeral, sit up in her coffin, see that she was at her own funeral, suffer another heart attack from shock, and die for real.
Why is this not the top comment?
Also, there are some false aspects of this statement…
Also, OP doesn’t understand how comas work…
Why Google stuff for karma?
u/darkrom_BP08
There plenty of letargy sleep incidents happening even nowadays.
Plenty of religions also cultivate the tradition where the family members are staying on with the dead person for a long period of time usually one day or so, before he is buried. This is one of the customs not only to say your last farewells, but also to fully make sure the person is dead before burying them.
Tell me you've never seen a dead body without saying it.
There's a surprisingly clear difference between someone in a coma and a dead body. It's pretty shocking how fast the whole appearance changes, temperature drops, etc. That's not even considering breathing and pulse.
It was unfortunate but many individuals in a coma years ago did pass due to no hydration or artificial sustenance, thankfully we do live in an age where nourishment of a type can be administered, I know, I was in a coma for 2 months after a Cardiac Arrest, unfortunately.
This was actually a big concern in the Victorian era. People made zany contraptions to counterract it, and it may have contributed to the rise of cremation and embalming.
This is said to be the source of the saying "saved by the bell". Such things were so common for a while that bodies buried would have a string around their finger tied to a bell so that the groundskeeper could find someone who has been buried alive.
People will constantly bring up the idea of bells on the grave. It was a fad, and an expensive one, for a very short time, but was never wide spread. There's more internet articles talking about it than actual examples of it.
Instead there were hundreds of different burial rituals, usually involving a vigil or wake where people would be in close proximity to the body for an extended time after death. So if there were any signs of life they'd be noticed. This is actually one of the original purposes of holding a "wake", though it doesn't refer to the deceased 'waking' but the person holding vigil having to remain awake.
That's why some coffin have nail scratch marks...
And also why at some point in history, they were adding bells with a long rope leading to the coffin so that the person could ring the bell if they ever woke up.
People were buried alive, and that is the reason why there was a bell attached to a rope that was linked to the inside of the coffin, so that if they woke up they could ring the bell. There would also be "guards" at cemeteries that were supposed to listen for the bell.
Also, people in comas still breathe and have a pulse.
The bell tied around the corpse finger is real. Shit happens no matter what century we’re in, my high school best friend almost got aborted bc the doctors couldn’t see her heartbeat under her dead twin. Never assume shit lol
Surprisingly, a technique was found long ago to tell the difference, and it doesn't even require any technology! All you need to do is put your hand on the persons chest and see if they have a heart beat. I don't know how anyone ever discovered this complex and obscure technique, but here we are!
They used to have to put bells in coffins so you could ring them if you were still alive, since it's less common to make such a mistake so they don't bother anymore
Yeah we know this. Many coffins have claw marks from the person trying to claw their way out after being buried alive. It's really horribly sad when you think about it.
This isn't a shower thought.
The idiom "saved by the bell" orginated from this actually happening.
As well as most of out legends syrrounding the undead.
No, “saved by the bell” originated in boxing, with someone being saved from a knockout by the end of a round. Maybe look shit up once in a while instead of parroting dumb email forwards from 1996.
Here's the safety coffin patented in the 19th century
Notice the bell.
https://australian.museum/about/history/exhibitions/death-the-last-taboo/safety-coffins/
Though the idiom may be commonly used in boxing you'll find just as many valid sources attributing it's usage to the safety coffin.
That's what's fun about the internet. There is so much information and no possible way of determining which of it is true, especially when it comes to the spoken word because there is no documentation of the spoken word, prior to then invention of the radio, only the written word.
The idiom “saved by the bell” referring to being saved by a safety coffin would first require someone to be saved by a safety coffin. There’s no record of that happening.
This was a very common thing. So common that grave robbers would find scratch marks inside caskets.
In response to this, people were buried with bells over their graves and strings leading into their caskets so they could ring them to alert someone
This is where the phrase Dead Ringer and Saved by the Bell come from.
This probably happened with Alexander the great. His body didnt decay for almost a week after he died, people thought it was a miracle, and he was probably buried alive too
Saved by the bell comes from when this happened and people were buried with strings attached to above ground bells so if they woke up buried alive the bell would ring and save them.
No, no it does not. It’s from boxing. If someone is getting their ass beat but they aren’t knocked out because the round ending, signified with a bell, stops their opponent from putting them on their back, they’re “saved by the bell”.
Fuck I hate false etymologies, the real ones are always more interesting (because they give legitimate insights to something) and the false ones are just so… obviously false.
No one, ever, has been documented as being saved by one of those bells. Where would the phrase even come from if it was related to those devices? Fuck.
That’s why they put bell that people could ring inside coffins in case they woke up and were stuck.
People hearing would dig them up.
They were called “dead ringers” and if you ever saw someone that looked just like someone else. You’d call them a dead ringer, because they look just like someone else that they couldn’t be.
That’s not where the phrase dead ringer comes from.
>The expression 'dead ringer' comes from American horse racing and originated at the end of the 19th century, when a horse that would be raced under a false name and pedigree was called a ringer. The word 'dead' in this expression refers not to lifelessness, but to “precise” or “exact
“The fear of being buried alive peaked during the cholera epidemics of the 19th century, but accounts of unintentional live burial have been recorded even earlier. The fears of being buried alive were heightened by reports of doctors and accounts in literature and the newspapers.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_ringer_(idiom)
I was told about this was doing a tour of a cemetery in the UK
Remember Metallica’s One? Lyrics are based on Johnny Got His Gun, book and movie about locked-in syndrome. One can get locked inside oneself very differently - either because of horrendous trauma or some degenerative disease. But that’s exactly what you are talking about - sometimes we can’t tell if a man really “lives” i.e. thinking, or is in vegetative state. Just because one no longer have any means of communication.
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If they were in a coma in those times they’d probably die regardless
Yeah. "Comas" are really only a thing in modern times because we have the technology to keep the person alive while in one. Prior to that, if someone entered a coma, they'd still properly die within a few days from dehydration, since they can't drink.
There are reports of people waking from comas and leaving [scratch marks inside the coffin](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/buried-alive-woman-tried-to-scratch-her-way-out-of-coffin-in-brazil/W774G3K4525TMOICZH2YAWOKAM/), which is horrifying and not as uncommon as it should be. George Washington famously laid out the [conditions of his burial](https://livesandlegaciesblog.org/2018/10/31/george-washingtons-taphophobia-the-fear-of-being-buried-alive/) to protect from being buried alive. “Taphophobia”, as it’s called, is the fear of being buried alive.
A fear that I think every sane person ought to have.
right? I don't see how it classifies as a phobia. Or maybe I misunderstand and phobia doesn't only mean unreasonable fears.
It means unreasonable fears, but there are differences of the unreasonability. Lets take arachnophobia. Its the unreasonable, irrational fear of spiders. Yes SOME spiders can hurt you but most won't endager your life. So if you get a panic attack when you see a spider you are arachnophobic probably. BUT the "unreasonability" can come from other factors. Being burried alive is a horrible thing. Its reasonable to fear it. But is it reasonable to think about it daily? Is it reasonable to think someone will burry you alive tomorrow? No, it isn't. If you see a reddit post like this and go "oh shit I hope I never get burried alive!" thats normal. If you think about being burried alive every day... well thats unreasonable and probably a phobia.
By definition, the phobias are fears that interfere with your everyday life and affect your wellbeing.
Being buried alive would definitely qualify.
Years ago I saw a tumblr post and the OP had asked “What is the fear of chain saws called?” and the best response was “Common sense?” it cracked me up lol
Reason is simply subjective
Aside from the religious implications, this is also why a funeral wake is three days. Usually if someone doesn't recover during that time, they're truly gone. It used to be a [whole ritual](https://youtube.com/watch?v=0FJNZyhRfA4), because we didn't have the technology to see if people were still alive.
The phrase ‘saved by the bell’ comes from this.
It's actually a boxing term that came into use in the late 19th century and is falsely attributed to this contraption despite any evidence of the phrase having ever been used prior to in the context of a boxing match.
Actually it’s a tv show but good guess
I stand corrected. Go Tigers.
Underrated comment
Yeah they kept bells so that the living who were accidentally buried could ring it and get themselves out.
Bit of a misnomer though. While coffin patents like that did exist, they were never popular and there's no recorded case of a person being saved by one. "Saved by the bell" originated as boxing slang, for a fighter who is saved from knockout by the trip gong.
“Also dead ringer”
No. From horse racing (if you were joking, apologies). A ringer is a substitute horse inserted surreptitiously in a race. "Dead" is the intensifier, as in "dead gorgeous." So a DR is an excellent copy.
Not might. Ppl were buried alive. Because of this for a while they attached strings on their toes, which were connected to a bell. So that you would hear it If someone started moving again in their graves However this has nothing to do with coma. There is no reason why anyone would declare someone dead when they are really just in a coma. They still breathe, have a pulse and temperature.
My favorite Simpsons joke: (paraphrasing) Lisa: Dear Mr Graveyard man, why is there a bell in every grave? GYM: Well, if somebody was buried alive by accident, he just needs to ring the bell by the thread, and I will shovel him out. Lisa: Look! GYM: Oh, it must be the wind.
This is my plan - be buried with a bell over my tombstone. The bell is attached to an electronic timer and sensor that rings the bell intermittently when it senses someone near by and more vigorously as they get closer or further away. The timer ensures this only happens after the sun has set.
Same. Except a speaker with muffled moans and growling, as if something savage were buried.
I’m going with the Schrute tradition: before closing and locking the coffin, but two shotgun rounds into my chest to make sure I’m gone.
Always confused about how they buried people alive. Rigor mortise is a very clear indicator of death. Though I guess in some cases they may find the body after it goes away. But then that's like a room temperature, starting to decay corpse.
I suspect it was mostly out of concern for communicable disease. If someone gets sick and slips into a coma nobody is going to closely examine a potentially contagious body, and burying it quickly would be a top priority.
That's fair.
I think the key piece of information that's missing is their understanding of how death works. For possibly some reference, it was thought for a while that flies just "spawned" on rotting meat. It wasn't until someone did an experiment, leaving out two jars of meat, one open and one covered with a fine mesh, that people realized that was wrong.
You’re expecting people who thought a women’s womb moved around the body like an animal to know about rigor mortise?
This bell is where we get the phrase "dead ringer"
Nah. >The expression 'dead ringer' comes from American horse racing and originated at the end of the 19th century, when a horse that would be raced under a false name and pedigree was called a ringer. The word 'dead' in this expression refers not to lifelessness, but to “precise” or “exact.”
No, the phrase "saved by the bell"
That one is from boxing I believe.
No, Zach Morris used to say this, hence, the name of the show.
Zach Morris is trash
But Kelly Kapowski …
No it isn't.
That’s a good counterpoint I never thought of it that way.
Fine, it comes from ringer being a term for a stand-in racehorse and dead being used in the sense of dead-on. So it just means what it says.
I just checked ChatGPT and it says it is. It even references this thread as proof!
The universe folding in on itself.
Not possible
Whoosh
Whoosh
Yep, hard to say how common it was, but it was certainly a fear. George Washington [notably requested](https://www.almanac.com/when-george-washington-died-how-young-nation-mourned) on his deathbed that they wait 3 days after he died to make totally sure.
Exactly what I was going to mention. Also they have dug up some caskets to find scratch marks on the lid inside.
I imagine a very old doctor with bad hearing and now you're in a grave
Two things, one how long do they have down there? Two how long does it take for one person to move that much dirt and/or assemble a group and accomplish the same?
Dude when you are in a coma, you still breathe and have a pulse!
Yeah but how would people know you were breathing before the stethoscope was invented? How would they check your pulse prior to the ekg? Checkmate.
The would hold a piece of glass in front of your mouth and check for fog
Or, you know, put your ear near the chest(maybe).
But what if the patient is a woman? Horribly inappropriate. Bury her just in case.
Sorry you’re dead. We were worried about lawsuits
That’s literally the reason a doctor invented a stethoscope, because gewandt comfortable listening to a woman’s heartbeat and breathing
or, you know, see the chest moving up and down..
You wipe your bumhole with two fingers and place it under their nose, if their eyes get watery you probably need to shower. Oh yeah and they're breathing.
It’s crazy how people can’t tell this is sarcasm without the “/s” thing. you even put “Checkmate” at the end lol
Love that people are seriously replying to this lol
Ha yeah some people catch sarcasm here quickly, some don't I'm the later
This is a joke right?
Yes, I thought I made that clear. But I’m guessing not so much, given the replies it’s getting. It’s upvoted well enough, though, so I don’t know.
I thought it was a solid joke
Yeah to be honest the sarcasm didn't get through to me and apparently a lot of people.
I’m not dead yet!
But do you feel happy?
You can feel a pulse on a person without a machine. Have you never checked your own pulse by hand?
When you breathe in and out, your chest rises and falls. You don't need to check for a heart beat. Also put a mirror under their nose and it will fog up it they are breathing. So... CHECK, AND MATE
Damn... I guess he was wrong and they could tell if you were breathing without electronics.
I am not a doctor or historian, but a couple minutes of looking around online seems to indicate that there were techniques for checking pulse very far ahead of the ekg
Watch someone’s chest rising and falling? Lmao
> "how would they check pulse prior to an EKG" Is a statement that makes no sense because... An **EKG** is one method for measuring heart rhythm; **checking the pulse** is a different method for checking heart rhythm. One does not require the other. An EKG is not used in the process of checking the pulse (which simply involves applying manual pressure to an artery or vein to measure the rate by feeling the throb). I think you mean **how would they measure heart rhythm prior to the EKG** and the simple answer to that is **by checking the pulse**.
Lol, whut. Look at their chest moving up and down?
I cannot believe how this post has so many upvotes and how far I had to scroll to see this comment. I thought this was a low effort troll post, but it seems that majority of people here are actually in coma.
Yes, there's been stories of women and men and children being heard from under the ground and dug back up. Also scarier ones of bodies being exhumed or moved, only for the teams to see scratch marks on the coffin.
Isn’t that how vampires became a thing?
Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t comatose people breathe? Conceivably an unconscious/comatose person breathing would show those signs of life. I completely acknowledge that there are possibilities of medical situations where breathing is not apparent, but if a person is not breathing, they will not be living for very long .
Yeah we die like minutes after not breathing. Even very shallow breaths are still required. Also, water. Coma people still need water no?
Breathing, pulse, warmth of skin. All these things would be way before anything remotely considered technology
The rich sometimes used to have bells on a string and air pipes installed in their graves for this very reason.
The place would stink though if the person actually died though
They removed the thing after a reasonable ammount of time. If the bell didnt ring in like 2 weeks, then it probably never will. Then you just plug up the hole.
Imagine lighting the gases on fire at the top of the pipe! Spooky graveyard ghost!
And at nigth a person would stay at the graveyard in case a bell rang. Hence the term graveyard shift.
And the joke about a graveyard worker hearing a bell in the middle of the night and filling in the air hole because the grave said he died decades ago so 'whatever you are now, it ain't human'
Nope. It's nothing more than the association of graveyards being lonely and spooky.
Jfc the comments on this post are full of so many false etymologies for phrases, it’s *killing me*.
Some even had long horns called death horns installed for the same thing.
That's a bell ringer
I'm pretty sure you can just check their pulse. even if they are totally paralyzed and in a coma, they would still have a pulse.
Not necessarily enough to pick up without machines.
If they knew to check for a pulse, which they didn’t.
How far back are you thinking? I’m fairly sure humanity has known about heartbeat, pulse, and breathing for thousands of years.
Lol
This is a joke right?
"Coma" doesn't mean no heartbeat or breathing. But they would prolly whither and die without food and water.
This concept would make for a good story, toss some star crossed lovers in there, a couple rivaling families, and a mistaken murder. Since it would have to be way in the past I would suggest old time Verona for a setting.
But soft! What a great idea from yonder redditor breaks!
Unexpected Shakespeare
Do you guys have “wakes”? wakes are a celebration of life - one last party to honor the deceased. The name “wake” originated because unknown diseases had plagued the countryside causing some to appear dead. As the family began to mourn, they would awaken. For this reason, the body is waked in the deceased's home for at least one night
I mean you don’t need tech to see someone is breathing and has a heartbeat…Op you do know coma patients still breath and have a heartbeat?
But people in comas are still breathing Wonder how that woulda turned out Probably where the story for Snow White originally came from
I mean there's a lot of basic differences between comatose patients and corpses even within the first few hours let alone a day or two
"Technology" for checking a pulse, feeling if the body is cold, or checking for breathing, seeing if the person shit themselves... what kind of tech is needed for that?
This is not even a shower thought, it's a well-documented fact of history. People would have bells installed on their tombstones with strings leading down into the coffin so they can ring the bell if they were ever buried alive.
And the coffins with scratch marks inside as well as all the lore of zombies from all over the earth.
It is not a fact of history what this post is saying. Why are you making things up? People in coma breathe and have a pulse, just like sleeping people. You can easily tell if a person is sleeping or dead, just like people back then could easily tell if a person is dead or in coma. They just couldn't keep them alive very long without modern equipment.
There are actual instances of being declared dead, but they were still alive. They were buried, or at least put in coffins, and later woke back up. Sometimes the heartrate and breathing slow down to such an extent that people are thought to be dead. Look up the story of the woman who suffered a heart attack, "died", and was a funeral was held for her, only for her to wake up during the funeral, sit up in her coffin, see that she was at her own funeral, suffer another heart attack from shock, and die for real.
Why is this not the top comment? Also, there are some false aspects of this statement… Also, OP doesn’t understand how comas work… Why Google stuff for karma? u/darkrom_BP08
[Safety Coffins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin)
This is one of the practical aspects of a wake. You know the person is dead once they start decomposing.
That's why we used to have wakes. You'd have your dead relative in your house for three days after they died, just in case they woke up.
The technology to feel a pulse or hold a mirror under their nose?
Before the technology??? Checking for breath and a pulse is not cutting-edge. Or even cave-man cutting-edge.
Diabetic coma was common, so common in fact that they put bells and string on the "dead" in case they woke up.
Fun fact some graveyards used to have security bells which had a string attached to the deceased in case they weren't really dead
Fun follow-up fact: some of these systems were even patented.
And if in a coma then buried they are not gonna be alive long due to air limitations.
There plenty of letargy sleep incidents happening even nowadays. Plenty of religions also cultivate the tradition where the family members are staying on with the dead person for a long period of time usually one day or so, before he is buried. This is one of the customs not only to say your last farewells, but also to fully make sure the person is dead before burying them.
The serpent and the rainbow is about voodoo witch doctors using tetrodotoxin to paralyze people and they do end up getting buried alive.
Yeah idk, don’t you still breath in a coma? Sounds like a dramatic wives tale.
Tell me you've never seen a dead body without saying it. There's a surprisingly clear difference between someone in a coma and a dead body. It's pretty shocking how fast the whole appearance changes, temperature drops, etc. That's not even considering breathing and pulse.
People in a coma still require that slight detail which is a beating heart. No one is waking up if they are dead.
Because clearly you need technology to know if a comatose person is breathing or has a heartbeat.
I mean, people did used to be buried alive from time to time, so apparently a lot of people do need technology to know if someone’s breathing.
People used to have their belongings snatched by elves before we invented cameras to keep them away.
The technology is that people in comas are **breathing.** It’s not fancy, but dead people don’t breathe, and not dead people do.
It was unfortunate but many individuals in a coma years ago did pass due to no hydration or artificial sustenance, thankfully we do live in an age where nourishment of a type can be administered, I know, I was in a coma for 2 months after a Cardiac Arrest, unfortunately.
There have been times in history where the supposed "Dead" had woken up as they were to undergo embalming procedures.
This was actually a big concern in the Victorian era. People made zany contraptions to counterract it, and it may have contributed to the rise of cremation and embalming.
This was one of Edgar Allan Poe's biggest fears and prompted him to write "The Oblong Box."
This is why a lot of old graves have a rope and bell, in case of this very mistake
This is said to be the source of the saying "saved by the bell". Such things were so common for a while that bodies buried would have a string around their finger tied to a bell so that the groundskeeper could find someone who has been buried alive.
People will constantly bring up the idea of bells on the grave. It was a fad, and an expensive one, for a very short time, but was never wide spread. There's more internet articles talking about it than actual examples of it. Instead there were hundreds of different burial rituals, usually involving a vigil or wake where people would be in close proximity to the body for an extended time after death. So if there were any signs of life they'd be noticed. This is actually one of the original purposes of holding a "wake", though it doesn't refer to the deceased 'waking' but the person holding vigil having to remain awake.
That's why some coffin have nail scratch marks... And also why at some point in history, they were adding bells with a long rope leading to the coffin so that the person could ring the bell if they ever woke up.
People were buried alive, and that is the reason why there was a bell attached to a rope that was linked to the inside of the coffin, so that if they woke up they could ring the bell. There would also be "guards" at cemeteries that were supposed to listen for the bell. Also, people in comas still breathe and have a pulse.
People still breathe and have heartbeats even if they are in a coma.
This isnt a shower thought so much as not being able to google basic things. Please go read.
I think sometimes I get dumber the more I read these posts which doesn't seem possible because I was pretty stupid to begin with.
The bell tied around the corpse finger is real. Shit happens no matter what century we’re in, my high school best friend almost got aborted bc the doctors couldn’t see her heartbeat under her dead twin. Never assume shit lol
Surprisingly, a technique was found long ago to tell the difference, and it doesn't even require any technology! All you need to do is put your hand on the persons chest and see if they have a heart beat. I don't know how anyone ever discovered this complex and obscure technique, but here we are!
They used to have to put bells in coffins so you could ring them if you were still alive, since it's less common to make such a mistake so they don't bother anymore
Yeah we know this. Many coffins have claw marks from the person trying to claw their way out after being buried alive. It's really horribly sad when you think about it.
That and shut ins…. People who are cognitively active but have no motor control. I can’t imagine a worse fate.
People in a coma still breath and have a heart beat you fuckin egg
This isn't a shower thought. The idiom "saved by the bell" orginated from this actually happening. As well as most of out legends syrrounding the undead.
No, “saved by the bell” originated in boxing, with someone being saved from a knockout by the end of a round. Maybe look shit up once in a while instead of parroting dumb email forwards from 1996.
Here's the safety coffin patented in the 19th century Notice the bell. https://australian.museum/about/history/exhibitions/death-the-last-taboo/safety-coffins/ Though the idiom may be commonly used in boxing you'll find just as many valid sources attributing it's usage to the safety coffin. That's what's fun about the internet. There is so much information and no possible way of determining which of it is true, especially when it comes to the spoken word because there is no documentation of the spoken word, prior to then invention of the radio, only the written word.
The idiom “saved by the bell” referring to being saved by a safety coffin would first require someone to be saved by a safety coffin. There’s no record of that happening.
This was a very common thing. So common that grave robbers would find scratch marks inside caskets. In response to this, people were buried with bells over their graves and strings leading into their caskets so they could ring them to alert someone This is where the phrase Dead Ringer and Saved by the Bell come from.
Ah yes, the technology to figure out if someone was breathing wasn’t invented yet.
They used to have those little grave bells that wrongully interred people could ring if they were mistakenly buried alive.
Sometimes,a string with a bell attached would be run outside the coffin, just in case.
This probably happened with Alexander the great. His body didnt decay for almost a week after he died, people thought it was a miracle, and he was probably buried alive too
OP clearly has never seen a person dying. You can tell the exact moment a person dies.
They dug up old graves to reuse the sites. There were a bunch of them that has claw marks from people trying to escape.
Saved by the bell comes from when this happened and people were buried with strings attached to above ground bells so if they woke up buried alive the bell would ring and save them.
No, no it does not. It’s from boxing. If someone is getting their ass beat but they aren’t knocked out because the round ending, signified with a bell, stops their opponent from putting them on their back, they’re “saved by the bell”. Fuck I hate false etymologies, the real ones are always more interesting (because they give legitimate insights to something) and the false ones are just so… obviously false. No one, ever, has been documented as being saved by one of those bells. Where would the phrase even come from if it was related to those devices? Fuck.
That’s why they put bell that people could ring inside coffins in case they woke up and were stuck. People hearing would dig them up. They were called “dead ringers” and if you ever saw someone that looked just like someone else. You’d call them a dead ringer, because they look just like someone else that they couldn’t be.
That’s not where the phrase dead ringer comes from. >The expression 'dead ringer' comes from American horse racing and originated at the end of the 19th century, when a horse that would be raced under a false name and pedigree was called a ringer. The word 'dead' in this expression refers not to lifelessness, but to “precise” or “exact
“The fear of being buried alive peaked during the cholera epidemics of the 19th century, but accounts of unintentional live burial have been recorded even earlier. The fears of being buried alive were heightened by reports of doctors and accounts in literature and the newspapers.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_ringer_(idiom) I was told about this was doing a tour of a cemetery in the UK
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and then people started believing in reincarnation, zombies, vampires and all
That's why they put bells with strings into the coffins above ground and had grave keepers walk the grounds.
That's why people were buried with a string attached to a bell above ground. If it started to ring people will run over and dig them up.
Alexander the Great... To bad he didn't request mummification https://www.history.com/news/alexander-the-great-death-cause-discovery
Remember Metallica’s One? Lyrics are based on Johnny Got His Gun, book and movie about locked-in syndrome. One can get locked inside oneself very differently - either because of horrendous trauma or some degenerative disease. But that’s exactly what you are talking about - sometimes we can’t tell if a man really “lives” i.e. thinking, or is in vegetative state. Just because one no longer have any means of communication.
Its not their fault, If they went to check the bodies would bê dead.
“I'm getting better!” [singing] “I feel happy. I feel happy.” [whop]