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00:00 The modern human has an average life expectancy of around 73 years old.
00:05 There are some 8 billion people in the world, with around 60 million of them dying every
00:09 year.
00:10 Due to birth rates that rise at about double the pace, the global population is still increasing.
00:16 But it's a fact that today, at our current level of evolution and advancement, death
00:20 is still an inevitable part of life.
00:23 All living things do have a limit.
00:25 As a result, humanity is still routinely sidetracked into contemplating its own impermanence.
00:30 In both an individual and societal sense, we're always acutely aware that nothing
00:35 lasts forever, including ourselves.
00:37 Psychologists believe that this is a fundamental driver behind why we do the things we do.
00:42 For a selected few, however, circumstances combine so that they really have managed to
00:47 die twice.
00:49 This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question, "What if you
00:53 wake up after you're pronounced dead?"
00:57 Do you need the big questions answered?
00:58 Are you constantly curious?
01:00 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
01:03 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!
01:06 Somewhat surprisingly, there are a number of ways to define death.
01:10 And the clinical, absolute moment of your passing is often understood differently in
01:14 different parts of the world.
01:15 The discrepancies mostly boil down to either cardiopulmonary, which is essentially heart
01:20 death, or brain death.
01:22 When your heart stops beating, or when your brain stops functioning.
01:25 The tricky aspect, however, is that the legal definition of death isn't universally set,
01:30 creating something of a grey area between the two.
01:33 In some cases, that grey area is partly to blame for the stories we're about to encounter.
01:38 In other cases, malpractice is to blame, or simply unexpected, even unparalleled situations.
01:44 Meanwhile, the accepted signs of death can be misinterpreted as well.
01:48 Nevertheless, and whatever the reason, these are some of the most shocking examples of
01:52 people waking up after they've been declared dead.
01:56 First to the case of Walter Williams, a man from Mississippi who in 2014 was found unresponsive
02:02 in his home and declared dead at the scene.
02:05 A short while later, Williams was taken to a local funeral home, where embalmers began
02:10 preparing his body for burial.
02:12 To everyone's astonishment, however, he started moving and breathing.
02:16 The medical community later attributed his resurrection to a condition known as "Lazarus
02:21 Syndrome", where the heart spontaneously starts beating again even after failed attempts
02:25 at resuscitation.
02:26 What's unusual, though, is that no one's sure exactly how the Lazarus Syndrome works,
02:32 only that it is extremely rare.
02:34 Unfortunately, Williams' second life was short-lived, as he died just 15 days after
02:39 coming back around.
02:41 But in the intervening time, he was reportedly healthy enough to spend it conscious and talking
02:45 with his family.
02:46 Next, the incredible story of Lyudmila Stebletskaya.
02:50 A Russian woman in her early 60s, her doctors declared her dead after a short stay in a
02:55 hospital in 2012.
02:57 She was then placed in a morgue, and preparations for her funeral had begun.
03:01 Members of her family had even reportedly ordered for her grave to be dug.
03:05 But there was a dramatic U-turn when her daughter arrived at the hospital to say her final goodbyes,
03:10 only to discover that her mother was now alive and conscious.
03:14 What's especially amazing about this, however, is that Stebletskaya had spent three days
03:19 in the morgue in the intervening time, with her body kept in freezing temperatures until
03:24 she fortunately awoke just moments before her own autopsy.
03:28 Our third case is the in-coffin reawakening of Angélou Hayes.
03:33 In 1937, Frenchman Angélou Hayes was involved in a motorcycle accident that left him with
03:38 severe head injuries.
03:40 Soon after, doctors declared him dead, and according to reports, he was promptly buried.
03:45 However, it transpired that Hayes had only slipped into a deep coma, and when his body
03:50 was exhumed, reportedly following question marks over an insurance claim, Hayes was discovered
03:55 inside, but alive.
03:57 It's thought that after his accident, his breathing had been so shallow that it hadn't
04:02 even registered on the recording devices of the time.
04:05 But eventually, after some weeks of rehabilitation, Hayes went on to live a long life, again defying
04:11 the odds and again confounding medical professionals.
04:15 Case number four, and to Beiyu, China, where in 2012, a 95-year-old woman shocked her community
04:21 by seemingly returning to life six days after having died.
04:25 Li Zhufeng's story made headlines all over the world when she was first found unresponsive
04:30 in her home by neighbors, and after multiple attempts to revive her, was declared dead.
04:36 As per the local custom, Li Zhufeng's body was then placed in an open coffin for a period
04:40 of time to allow those who knew her to pay their respects.
04:44 There was seemingly nothing unusual about the situation until the sixth day, when visitors
04:49 were confused to find the coffin suddenly empty.
04:52 According to reports, Li Zhufeng had simply woken up, stepped out of her own casket, and
04:58 was found by her friends in her kitchen busily cooking.
05:01 Our penultimate story is that of Velma Thomas, who first suffered a severe heart attack at
05:06 her home in West Virginia in 2008.
05:09 According to reports, she also fell victim to multiple other cardiac arrests en route
05:14 to and inside the hospital where doctors would ultimately declare her dead.
05:18 It's said that she was clinically dead with zero brain activity for more than 17 hours,
05:23 and that her life support was switched off.
05:26 But then, when doctors were preparing Thomas' body for organ donation, the procedure was
05:31 swiftly halted because, despite the apparent impossibility, she started to breathe again.
05:36 As with Walter Williams, Velma Thomas' experience has largely been put down to an example of
05:41 the Lazarus Syndrome.
05:43 Although again, medical professionals just aren't sure exactly how it was that she managed
05:48 to pull through.
05:49 And finally, to the frozen miracle of Jean Hilliard.
05:52 Hilliard was found frozen literally solid in sub-zero temperatures in Minnesota.
05:57 After her car had broken down, she had gone to find help, but got caught in a blizzard
06:02 and was discovered six hours later literally frozen stiff.
06:06 When she was brought to the hospital, she was in such a bad way that her body temperature
06:10 was reportedly too low to register on a standard thermometer.
06:14 Given the situation, her doctors very nearly declared her dead, but her family insisted
06:19 on keeping her body at the hospital.
06:22 And incredibly, Hilliard did soon begin to thaw.
06:25 Then, after a few hours, she regained consciousness.
06:29 Her astounding recovery challenged conventional notions of when a person is truly beyond revival.
06:35 Because when she arrived at the hospital, her body was literally lifeless.
06:38 But after only a few hours, that life had returned in full.
06:42 In all of these cases, we see the extraordinary and unpredictable nature of life, even after
06:48 someone finds themselves declared dead.
06:50 And while each story is unique, they collectively contribute to the broader discussion about
06:56 the limits of medical certainty and the potential for unexpected recoveries.
07:00 There are huge ethical implications here, to challenge our understanding of death, and
07:05 to underscore the need for continued research into when it really is the point of no return.
07:10 For now, what's important to remember is that, while there are yet more examples out
07:14 there, waking up after being pronounced dead is still an extremely rare phenomenon.
07:19 For the overwhelming majority of the time, there is no reason to doubt a diagnosis of
07:24 death.
07:25 And what's clear is that, in the cases when mistakes have been made, there was at least
07:29 some time enough following the death to allow for a miraculous revival.
07:33 For all the people that we've covered in this video, they found themselves in a highly
07:37 unusual position.
07:38 For them, death actually wasn't the end.
07:41 To some extent, it might be said that they lived through the experience of dying.
07:46 Sometimes they were able to survive for just a short while more, other times they went
07:50 on to live long lives that they might have otherwise been denied.
07:53 But their stories all stand as testament to the fact that medical science, for all its
07:58 immeasurable advancements, does still encounter situations that challenge even our most fundamental
08:03 understandings of life.
08:05 Looking into the future, and technologists might expect any and all confusion over death
08:10 to be avoided in the coming generations, as we edge ever closer to genuine immortality
08:16 in whichever guise.
08:18 But for now, this seeming grey area between life and death is of extreme importance.
08:23 Because while it doesn't happen often, it seems that it is possible to visit death and
08:27 return.
08:31 Everything lives, everything dies, and the world keeps on turning.
08:35 That's the general idea, anyway, right?
08:38 Well, yes, except that we humans have an innate and ancient tendency to imagine that this
08:43 life isn't all there is.
08:46 That there's something else beyond this mortal coil.
08:49 Some other place to which we're all headed.
08:52 This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question; is life after
08:56 death possible?
08:57 Are you a fiend for facts?
08:59 Are you constantly curious?
09:01 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
09:04 And ring the bell for more fascinating content!
09:07 The concept of life after death can be debated from three main angles; faith, science and
09:13 technology.
09:14 In terms of faith and theology, some refer to heaven and hell, everlasting paradise or
09:20 reincarnation.
09:21 Then, there are various more scientific and academic approaches pertaining to the preservation
09:26 of consciousness.
09:27 And finally, there are the more technological answers, imagining a future time when life
09:32 can be saved and digitalized via machine.
09:36 Through the lens of faith, today's question is really an irrelevant one.
09:39 Of course life after death is possible, if you believe strongly enough.
09:43 With science and technology, though, the answer isn't quite so straightforward.
09:47 The tricky matter of consciousness is key.
09:50 It's something which has long puzzled the world's foremost thinkers, philosophers
09:54 and scientists.
09:56 What is it?
09:57 Where is it located?
09:59 And what happens to it when our physical bodies are no more?
10:02 Rene Descartes is usually billed as the flag-bearer for the modern debate, thanks to his belief
10:07 that our consciousness is the only thing we can actually be truly certain of.
10:12 The basis of his often-quoted 17th century mantra, "I think, therefore I am".
10:18 Fast forward to the 21st century, however, and the debate is still in full swing.
10:23 In 2015, Oliver Berkman, writing for The Guardian, asked why the world's greatest minds still
10:29 couldn't solve the mystery of consciousness.
10:31 In his article, he referred back to a mid-90s science conference when one David Chalmers
10:36 referred to the issue of consciousness as "the hard problem" - a term which eventually
10:41 inspired a 2015 play by Sir Tom Stoppard.
10:45 For Chalmers, when it comes to the brain, there are many easy problems and one hard
10:50 one.
10:51 The easy problems are things like "how do our senses work?" and "how do we remember
10:56 stuff?"
10:57 In reality, these questions actually aren't all that simple to answer, but they're still
11:01 a breeze compared to the hard problem, which for Chalmers is "how do all those other problems
11:07 amount to experience?"
11:09 How is it that, yes, we see colours, feel pain, hear the waves crashing on the rocks
11:14 at night… but, crucially, are left with a sense of being irrespective of all of that?
11:20 But what does this scientific, philosophical quandary have to do with the question at the
11:24 top of today's video?
11:26 Is life after death possible?
11:27 Well, for as long as science cannot absolutely align consciousness with a physical, material
11:32 thing - with a specific part of the brain, for example - there's an argument that it
11:36 doesn't need our bodies or brains to carry on.
11:40 And then there are any number of things it could do, post-body and post-brain, all of
11:45 which amount to some form of afterlife.
11:48 This is just one interpretation, though.
11:50 For many, the expectation is that we will one day be able to definitely say that consciousness
11:55 is the product of the human body, and probably of the human brain.
11:59 We will one day be able to solve Chalmers' hard problem… at which point we might try
12:04 to encapsulate consciousness, prolong it, or create an artificial version of it to potentially
12:10 live forever.
12:12 But at that hypothetical future stage, we could very well confidently claim that life
12:16 after death is possible.
12:18 What's interesting, though, is that according to one study, we might've already measured
12:22 it.
12:23 In 2014, the AWARE study - an acronym for "Awareness During Resuscitation" - was
12:29 published by a team from Southampton University in the UK.
12:33 It charted the apparently conscious experiences had by those who had survived a cardiac arrest,
12:39 in between the time of clinical death and their heart restarting - a period when their
12:43 consciousness should've shut down.
12:46 For almost half of the heart attack survivors, results suggested that there was some level
12:51 of awareness post-death.
12:53 They could see or hear what was going on around them, or they built memories of it, or even
12:58 suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder linked to it.
13:01 In all cases, to some degree, it could be said that the patients were alive after dying.
13:07 But still, the widely held expectation is that even if death is like this - even if
13:12 there is a between time when a dying person is conscious of their fate - then it should
13:16 only last for a few minutes.
13:19 At which point, the hard problem of consciousness regains its mysterious hold, and the apparent
13:24 afterlife ends.
13:25 It's this window between life and death, then, that science and technology most wants
13:30 to open up.
13:31 If there is any moment at which a person's essence of life remains, even when their physical
13:36 body does not, then growing numbers of people want to bottle that moment up.
13:40 It may sound like a sci-fi writer's dream dystopia, but in the modern world we are trying
13:45 to relocate consciousness out of organic bodies and into more reliable, less perishable ones.
13:52 But before we do this, we need a watertight understanding of what it is we're trying
13:57 to move.
13:58 The race is on to map the human brain.
14:01 So far, we've made big steps in the right direction.
14:04 In July 2019, news broke that scientists had managed to complete the connectome of a tiny
14:10 species of worm.
14:12 A connectome is essentially a brain map.
14:14 It details every single neural connection inside a brain.
14:19 And the 2019 news represented the first time we'd fully completed the connectome of any
14:24 organism.
14:25 Now, the structure of worm brains is something we can confidently say we know about.
14:29 And it's something we could potentially recreate over and over again.
14:33 The jump from worm to human brain is clearly a considerable one, but these early successes
14:38 prove that it will one day be possible.
14:41 And at a future time, when we can map not only the human brain in general, but also
14:45 specific brains from person to person, we could end up with effective blueprints for
14:50 every human being.
14:51 The personalities, individual traits and even consciousness of everyone, translated into
14:57 data.
14:58 But where would we go from here?
15:00 It's one thing to have the maps and diagrams of a brain to pore over and work from, but
15:05 it's another thing to go ahead and build it.
15:07 And even if we could, would this ever truly constitute as life after death?
15:12 Is, say, a recreation of your brain and consciousness inside an android of the future really the
15:17 same thing as your brain as it is right now?
15:21 If science heads in this direction, then very quickly these will be the sorts of ethical
15:25 questions that the world would be facing.
15:27 Thankfully, before any of those future problems arise, however, our quest to preserve life
15:32 even after death is likely to yield a number of other positive discoveries.
15:36 The Human Connectome Project is arguably one of the most forward-thinking and ambitious
15:41 initiatives on the planet today, as it represents the biggest effort we've made so far to
15:46 map the human brain.
15:48 It's a joint project linking a number of the world's best universities and hospitals.
15:53 And its primary goal actually isn't life after death; it's just that understanding
15:57 the potential for life after death could be an offshoot of the study.
16:01 In the meantime, it aims to get to grips with all manner of neurological conditions and
16:06 brain disorders, ranging from depression to psychosis to Alzheimer's disease.
16:11 The general idea is that once we've gotten to grips with our brains, it's possible
16:15 that the entire human race could benefit.
16:17 So, the answer is threefold.
16:19 The afterlives we're told about via various religions and alternate worldviews rely on
16:24 faith.
16:25 And for as long as you have faith, then whichever afterlife you subscribe to is deemed possible.
16:30 Many scientists among us are more interested in the nature of consciousness, though, and
16:35 in deciphering once and for all why, in some cases, it appears to extend until after we
16:40 die, creating to some degree a life after death once more.
16:44 But finally, for the technologists in our mists, life after death will surely be possible
16:49 in the future.
16:51 All we need to do is successfully map the human brain, tweak our connectomes so that
16:55 they can apply to everyone, and then design some sort of digital android world in which
17:00 to house them all.
17:02 Which camp do you fall into?
17:04 Do you view the afterlife as a concept to believe in, a science to master, or a tech
17:09 breakthrough waiting to happen?
17:11 Because that's why life after death is possible.
17:15 What do you think?
17:16 Is there anything we missed?
17:17 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you
17:20 subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.
17:23 (cat meows)