As of 2022, an estimated total of almost 110 billion humans have died, or roughly 94% of all humans to have ever lived. [5] . The cause of death is usually considered important, and an autopsy can be done to determine it.

Understanding the Context

There are many causes, from accidents to diseases or crime and war. Death itself is a process. Thinking of death in this way — as a series of events, dying — makes it easier to understand the changes your body goes through to transition from life to death. From your first breath to your last, your existence depends on processes your body sets into motion.

Key Insights

What happens when you die is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries on Earth, simply because none of us know the answer and yet all of us will experience death eventually. Humankind’s great thinkers have been pondering this question for millennia. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, researchers are able to watch how patterns of brain activity change in the moments leading up to death. Death, the total cessation of life processes that eventually occurs in all living organisms. The state of human death has always been obscured by mystery and superstition, and its precise definition remains controversial, differing according to culture and legal systems.

Final Thoughts

Thanatology focuses on describing postmortem bodily modifications, as well as perspectives concerning psychosocial, medical, ethical, and spiritual aspects of death. Prior to the 1980s, the legal standard defined death as the absence of cardiopulmonary function including the loss of all vital signs. [2] . There are many different ways a human body can be damaged beyond repair, and all causes of death have their own effects on the body. To find out more about them, we'll take a look at some of the most common (and also some of the strangest) ways to die, and what science says they feel like.