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00:00 As we currently understand it, death comes to us all.
00:03 In recent decades, the average life expectancy has risen for human beings, but there's
00:08 still the inevitable waiting at the end.
00:10 And yet, although death is unavoidable, it's also one of life's greatest mysteries.
00:15 This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at 25 things that will or could
00:20 happen when you die, according to science, religion, philosophy, technology, and theories
00:26 on the future.
00:27 Do you need the big questions answered?
00:29 Are you constantly curious?
00:31 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?
00:34 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content.
00:36 This video will look at death and dying from multiple angles.
00:40 First at the physicality of death, according to science - what actually happens to your
00:45 body?
00:46 Then at the possibilities for death, according to religion - what happens after you die?
00:51 Third at the possibilities according to non-religious philosophy - what logically happens, without
00:56 the need for faith?
00:58 Then at death as per technology - could you one day be brought back to life?
01:03 And finally, at death according to theoretical science - can we really hope to live forever?
01:08 So let's get into it.
01:10 25.
01:11 Heart and Brain Death
01:13 While it may seem surprising, the rules, laws, and definitions of death aren't universally
01:17 the same around the world.
01:19 Broadly, there are two competing ideas.
01:22 One is that you die when your heart stops beating, otherwise known as heart or cardiac
01:25 death.
01:26 The other is that it's when your brain stops functioning, otherwise known as brain or brain
01:30 cell death.
01:31 Under typical conditions, there's only about 30 seconds between both.
01:35 Brain cells start to perish around 30 seconds after the supply of oxygen to the brain from
01:40 the heart ends.
01:41 However, as in some cases the onset of brain death can be prevented, it means that time
01:46 of death can sometimes be a controversial science.
01:49 24.
01:50 Palar Mortis and Liver Mortis
01:53 With mortis roughly translating to "mean death" or "at the moment of death" in Latin, these
01:58 are two of what are generally considered the first four stages of death.
02:01 Palar mortis typically sets in within minutes, causing the skin to turn noticeably pale due
02:06 to the shutting down of blood flow in the body's capillaries.
02:09 Liver mortis takes hold within the first few hours, and involves the blood that had once
02:13 been pumping settling in lower parts of your body due to gravity.
02:18 It causes a purplish-red discolouration, observable on the skin that's resting against the
02:22 ground or another solid object, for example if a person dies lying down.
02:28 23.
02:29 Algar and Rigor Mortis
02:31 These are another two of the first four stages, known as the "chill of death".
02:36 Algar mortis is when body temperature begins dropping towards ambient temperature.
02:40 How quickly this occurs can vary depending on environmental conditions, and it can therefore
02:44 provide clues regarding time since death.
02:47 Rigor mortis is perhaps one of the most well-known post-mortem phenomena, where muscles stiffen
02:52 due to biochemical changes within muscle tissue.
02:55 Starting from small muscles like those around the eyelids and jaw, before spreading to other
02:59 parts of your body.
03:01 It usually sets in within two to six hours after death, and it can last for up to three
03:05 days total.
03:06 22.
03:08 Decomposition (Part 1)
03:09 Although there are stages of it that can take days, weeks, and even months, decomposition
03:14 of the body actually begins immediately.
03:16 Putrefaction is easily the most infamous aspect of the natural process, where bacteria and
03:21 fungi break down and digest tissues.
03:24 It's this that releases the gases responsible for the smells associated with decay, as well
03:28 as the bloating of the body.
03:30 It's also due to putrefaction that skin and muscles ultimately deteriorate into nothing,
03:35 and the major organs succumb to liquefaction.
03:38 21.
03:40 Decomposition (Part 2)
03:41 Some of the lesser-referenced aspects of decomposition aren't perhaps universal, but are still common,
03:47 such as marbling, when bacteria in the blood causes greenish-black patterns beneath the
03:51 skin that resemble marbled textures.
03:53 There's also desiccation, where body parts dry out, including the lips, which can reveal
03:59 a seeming grin.
04:00 And finally, as decay progresses further, bodily fluids are known to escape from natural
04:05 openings such as the mouth, nose, or ears.
04:08 While in some circumstances, the fats inside the body convert into what's known as "grave
04:12 wax", which can actually preserve it for longer in some cases.
04:16 20.
04:17 Heaven (Part 3)
04:18 The good place, according to multiple religions.
04:21 Heaven is said to be where gods, angels, saints, and all worthy souls are living out an eternal
04:26 afterlife in paradise.
04:28 In general, it's a transcendental realm beyond physical reality.
04:32 It can't be proven by science, and for the most part relies on faith.
04:36 Nevertheless, it's where countless doctrines claim you will go, especially if you follow
04:40 particular rules.
04:42 Religions relating to heaven actually date back far beyond the emergence of texts like
04:46 the bible, with various ancient groups, including the Sumerians, said to believe in a "plane
04:51 among the stars".
04:53 Perhaps the most commonly shared aspect across all religions, however, is that there are
04:56 levels to it.
04:58 19.
04:59 Hell Most religious versions of hell, the bad
05:02 place, are also built around a graded system, with the innermost regions being the worst
05:07 of all.
05:08 Hell is usually depicted as a realm of punishment and suffering, typically inflicted on anyone
05:12 who hasn't followed the rules.
05:15 In some belief systems, such as in most versions of Christianity, it's an inescapable place.
05:20 Eternal damnation really is forever.
05:22 However, in others, such as in some versions of Hinduism and Jainism, hell is escapable.
05:29 There remains the threat of being cast into Naraka, a hellish place filled with pain and
05:34 torment, but the cycles of life and death do perhaps offer a way out.
05:39 18.
05:41 Reincarnation Religion doesn't only offer up everlasting
05:43 peace or eternal damnation.
05:46 Multiple religions, Hinduism and Buddhism in particular, propose reincarnation as the true
05:51 fate for all of us, most of the time.
05:53 Life and death are pitched as two parts of a cyclic, ongoing experience when, although
05:58 you never really realise it from one life to another, this life is merely the latest
06:03 in a long line of lives that you've lived.
06:06 In Hinduism specifically, the cycle is called samsara.
06:10 Through it, the soul is reincarnated into different lifeforms, based on the karma you've
06:14 racked up from all your previous existences.
06:17 17.
06:18 Nirvana Of all the spiritual possibilities for what
06:22 happens when you die, perhaps nirvana is the most comfortable, forgiving, and desirable
06:27 of all.
06:28 A supreme endpoint in Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and others.
06:33 It's the breaking free of the shackles of earthly life itself.
06:36 It's the ultimate salvation, the end of suffering, and the final liberation from that
06:41 cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
06:44 If a soul were to reach nirvana, otherwise known as moksha, then it very literally could
06:49 never be happier.
06:50 It will have essentially completed life and reality.
06:53 Although, of course, the trick to achieving nirvana is only very rarely uncovered.
06:58 16.
07:00 Resurrection No matter their differences, there is a
07:02 common theme throughout all or most religions.
07:06 After you die, judgment.
07:08 In whatever version of the ever-after that's promised, there's typically a being, or
07:12 a process by which or through which, the soul is tested and graded.
07:16 In ancient Egypt, there was the spirit's journey through Duat, an underworld populated
07:21 by various gods, all of which have their say on how well or badly your life was lived.
07:28 Across many of the world's leading religions, however, the judgment is said to come following
07:32 universal resurrection.
07:34 This is a crucial moment at some point in the future, when all souls are brought back
07:38 to life to receive final judgment.
07:41 And it's often said to happen just moments before the end of the world.
07:45 15.
07:47 Eternalism As we enter into the realms of philosophy,
07:49 there's seemingly still room for a variety of afterlives… although not quite in the
07:55 same way.
07:56 Eternalism is a view of time, in which all points in time are equally real.
08:01 It means that our lives - the past, present, and future - always exist inside a wider structure
08:07 also referred to as the "block universe".
08:10 Therefore, even after death, one's life (or perhaps one's essence) would still exist
08:15 as an eternal part of the fabric of space-time.
08:18 In this way, it could simply be that nothing will happen when you die, because there has
08:22 always been a time when you will die, and that moment is but one of a multitude of others
08:28 that are all equally always there in the grand scheme of things.
08:33 14.
08:34 Annihilation The view that nothing happens after you die
08:37 can be taken in a different direction, too.
08:40 Theories on annihilation suggest that you, your consciousness, just ceases to exist at
08:45 the moment that you pass, and there is no afterlife.
08:48 It crosses paths with the eternal oblivion theory, which again says that nothingness
08:52 is the only thing that will happen.
08:54 It's also tied in with nihilism.
08:57 Scientists believe that there's no inherent purpose or value in life at all, and that
09:01 extends to death.
09:03 Therefore, when you die, nothing inherently meaningful happens because both life and death
09:08 are insignificant.
09:09 Along another, similar train of thought, there's Epicureanism, which says that upon dying there's
09:15 simply non-existence - a state similar to "before birth" with no consciousness or experience
09:21 attached.
09:22 13.
09:23 Floating Consciousness If annihilation feels a little too bleak, there
09:27 are philosophies that offer an alternative.
09:29 Dualism is probably one of the most famous.
09:32 Championed by Rene Descartes, it argues that the mind or soul could be a non-physical substance
09:37 distinct and separate from the body.
09:40 Some interpretations suggest that after death, although the body is no more, the soul continues
09:45 in some form.
09:46 There may be some crossover with panpsychism, a theory of mind in which the mind is a key
09:51 fundamental part of reality as a whole.
09:54 Once the body and the brain perishes, the panpsychic mind no longer has a means to know
09:59 itself in the same way.
10:01 But that doesn't mean that it no longer exists.
10:04 Or maybe some form of metaphysical dissolution is what's closest to the truth.
10:08 Where your body and mind disintegrate, your individuality is lost, but whatever energy
10:13 or soul there might have been is still flushed out into space, onto something new.
10:19 12.
10:20 Try Again If floating in the unknown is still just not
10:23 filling you with optimism, though, then there are some philosophies that posit literal "try
10:28 agains" for life, the universe, and everything.
10:31 Eternal recurrence, or eternal return, is a mode of thought rooted in the Stoics of
10:35 ancient Greece, but was given new life in the 1880s via the work of German philosopher
10:41 Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly in his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
10:46 Broadly, the idea is that you live your life an infinite number of times, and as Nietzsche
10:51 saw it, with no changes from one to the next to the next.
10:55 However, the Russian Pyotr Uspensky built on eternal return, further suggesting that
11:00 small changes could be made between lives, until eventually one could break out of it.
11:05 Here, philosophy clearly resembles religious reincarnation.
11:09 11.
11:11 Bad Heaven For centuries, scientist philosophers and
11:14 religious thinkers have wrestled with a number of paradoxes about the beliefs of humankind.
11:19 The prospect of heaven, to some, is particularly difficult.
11:22 For one, can heaven really exist if hell does, too?
11:26 If those in heaven have knowledge of hell, or if they know of the souls of loved ones
11:31 that haven't made it to heaven, then can they ever truly be at peace?
11:35 If they're unaware of hell as part of eternal bliss, then do they still have free will?
11:40 And if they don't, if their experience is in any way controlled by something else, then
11:45 again is heaven actually good?
11:47 For those debating this, the answer is often to end all hope for heaven to begin with,
11:52 and instead to live and enjoy the life on Earth that we have.
11:56 10.
11:57 Hard Drive Heaven Moving now toward the future view of death,
12:01 and of all the technical solutions that might one day be available, mind uploading is easily
12:06 the most well-known, and arguably the most likely.
12:09 Increasing numbers of technologists and futurists envision a coming time when not only will
12:14 the human brain be mapped fully and individually, but our consciousness will be completely traceable
12:20 and rebuildable as well.
12:22 This means that digital consciousness might soon be housed indefinitely as non-physical
12:27 information, ready to be pulled back up whenever it's needed.
12:30 On the one hand, it theoretically means that you might one day be "switched back on"
12:35 as soon as your biological body gives out.
12:37 On the other, perhaps it suggests that so long as there exists enough digital information
12:42 about them, then anyone who dies in the future could be brought back via machine, whether
12:47 they like it or not.
12:49 9.
12:50 Technological Resurrection What's fast becoming the traditional sense
12:54 of mind uploading can be and has been built upon, however.
12:58 Already, many have moved past the plainer view of a speculative future in which the
13:02 souls of everyone are digitised, only to be housed on faceless, bodiless machines.
13:08 Instead, it may be that one day the soul of a deceased person is channelled through biotechnology
13:13 and artificial intelligence to be placed inside an individual machine, aka a robot.
13:20 Clearly it's an entirely hypothetical possibility.
13:23 However, if all the headiest projections for future tech are realised, then it actually
13:28 isn't that far out to imagine that soon, after you die, you'll wake back up with
13:33 a wholly enhanced, cybernetic future ahead of you.
13:37 8.
13:38 Cryonics It's another outwardly science fiction idea,
13:41 but another that technology is currently working on.
13:44 Otherwise known as suspended animation, or cryosleep, cryonics is still the world's
13:50 leading method in which we may one day achieve it.
13:53 At present, being brought back to life after being frozen post-death, as cryonics promises,
13:59 certainly isn't possible.
14:01 Although that is also kind of the point of it.
14:03 For those who place their faith in cryonics, they're generally envisioning a future time
14:08 - a) when it is possible to resuscitate people out of deep freeze, and b) when it's also
14:14 possible to grant those reborn with longer, healthier, perhaps even immortal lives from
14:19 that point forward.
14:21 In the cases when only the head of a person has been preserved, then it's predicted
14:24 that wider tech solutions will again be able to rebuild a body.
14:29 7.
14:30 Deepfake Ever After We've all seen, in recent times, just how
14:33 quickly and significantly AI technologies in particular can grow.
14:38 So much so, it may be that in the future, having your actual, genuine soul on file might
14:43 not even be necessary anymore.
14:46 From the point of view of life after death, there are already whispers of meticulously-tailored,
14:51 personal assistants akin to Alexa or Siri… but with the exact voice, phrases, mannerisms,
14:58 beliefs and opinions of a person who in reality has died.
15:01 These are essentially chatbots that are trained before you die to carry you on after you've
15:07 gone… a deepfake so convincing that it's as though you're still here.
15:11 As with most technological predictions for the future, there are some major ethical issues
15:15 in play.
15:16 6.
15:17 The Sim Reloads The Simulation Hypothesis easily ranks as one
15:21 of the most influential alt-theories on reality of recent times.
15:26 Popularised in the early 2000s by the Oxford professor Nick Bostrom, it suggests that it's
15:31 much more likely that we live in a sim than don't.
15:33 It's gotten so much attention in the last few decades, in part because we do now have
15:39 countless simulated worlds that we have created for ourselves, most notably in gaming and
15:44 entertainment.
15:45 So, the theory is that if we can do it, then why not someone else?
15:49 And why not create us while they're at it?
15:52 From the point of view of death specifically, however, one quite profound implication is
15:56 that dying is simply restarting your sim.
15:59 So, rather than reincarnated, are we all ultimately destined to be reloaded?
16:05 5.
16:06 Parallel Lives (Part 1) What if your death in one timeline creates
16:11 a parallel world where you continue to live?
16:14 That's the question at the heart of various theories on so-called "quantum immortality".
16:19 While highly speculative and controversial, the concept draws on principles from quantum
16:24 mechanics - specifically, the "many worlds" interpretation proposed by the US physicist
16:29 Hugh Everett in 1957.
16:31 Broadly, "many worlds" says that all possible outcomes from quantum measurements (and therefore
16:37 from any moment in time) actually do occur in forever-dividing "branches of reality",
16:43 or parallel worlds.
16:45 For some, this might create something of an infinite regress, in which some form of someone
16:50 could survive their own death an infinite number of times.
16:53 Importantly, though, mainstream science does not generally support it.
16:59 4.
17:00 Parallel Lives (Part 2) Life flashing before your eyes is one of the
17:03 most commonly cited aspects of a near-death experience.
17:07 What's interesting, though, is that science still isn't entirely sure how or why it happens.
17:12 Historically, this has opened the door for speculative theories concerning higher planes
17:17 and parallel universes… the suggestion being that, upon death, a person's entire essence
17:23 is granted some kind of higher view of everything they've ever done in this world.
17:27 However, there is growing research to paint a different picture.
17:31 Instead of second lives and parallel dreams, scans have revealed that memory centres in
17:36 our brains are among the first to be triggered when we're dying.
17:39 As such, it's now more widely believed that life flashing before your eyes is more likely
17:44 the result of your brain trying to deal with the ultimate, final trauma.
17:48 3.
17:50 Cosmic Consciousness When it first emerged, biocentrism was something
17:54 of a game-changer in terms of the potential for life, or at least awareness, after death.
17:58 Championed, in particular, by the US doctor and author Robert Lanza, it says that we create
18:04 the universe rather than the other way around.
18:07 Thanks in large part to the observation effect in quantum mechanics, and the fine-tuning
18:12 problem across the universe as we understand it, the biocentric view says that nothing
18:17 can exist without our minds to construct it.
18:21 Some take it further, though, and match biocentrism with something close to dualism, as per Rene
18:26 Descartes.
18:27 And the idea follows that after the death of our bodies, our minds may live on, continually
18:32 fuelling reality, just in different, unknown ways.
18:36 2.
18:37 Green Shoots Green burials certainly aren't a hypothetical
18:41 future situation.
18:42 They're already here, and in fact are widely used.
18:45 In short, it's when the body of any deceased person is interred in any way so as to speed
18:50 up the natural processes that will happen to it… all of which we covered in the first
18:54 part of this video.
18:55 However, when the concept is matched with various philosophies around the nature of
19:00 death, and especially about the eternalness of the soul, then there might arguably be
19:04 reason to believe that in some way, a green burial gives your consciousness the best chance
19:09 to live on.
19:10 If, for instance, everything is connected as one, as per reincarnation, eternalism,
19:15 and the block universe, then in your next life, some part of you really could be a tree.
19:21 1.
19:23 Another Dimension Finally, the question of life and death eventually
19:26 takes us to the bid for a theory of everything.
19:29 Broadly, the theory of orchestrated objective reduction, or ORC-OR, put forward by the British
19:35 physicist Sir Roger Penrose and the American anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, posits that
19:41 consciousness is generated inside cellular microtubules - inside the neurons of our brain.
19:48 It isn't a product of how our brains work, specifically.
19:50 It's as though it's just there, permeating through our brains on a quantum level, something
19:56 like a signal through a radio tower.
19:58 Some interpretations are, then, that consciousness is wrapped up in another dimension beyond
20:03 those we typically think and live in.
20:06 And therefore, when we die, perhaps all that really happens is that our consciousness - our
20:10 essence, soul, spirit, etc. - is released from our bodies, but does live on, naturally
20:17 and inevitably.
20:18 So, what do you think?
20:20 In this video we've covered what happens, or could happen, after you die, from the point
20:24 of view of science, religion, philosophy, technology, and wider theoretical thinking.
20:29 Clearly, and importantly, the fact is that nobody knows for sure.
20:33 Death remains a mystery, but in the meantime, we all have lives to live and to make the
20:38 most out of.
20:39 Our experience on this planet, with this body, at this time, through these eyes, is precious…
20:46 no matter what happens next.
20:48 What do you think?
20:49 Is there anything we missed?
20:51 Let us know in the comments.
20:52 Check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell
20:56 for our latest content.