What happens if you die alone?
If someone dies alone in their home, how long before they're found?According to reports, it is rare for a body to be found within three days of death, with an average of 17 days remaining.What happens to the remains of people who die alone?In May 2014, the police in Qianjiang, Hubei Province, China, arrived at the scene and opened the door, only to find the body of a man lying on the bed. Various liquids were seeping out and leaking to the ceiling of the building below.This case is not unique. Many news reports have reported that the bodies were highly decomposed and smelled.Neighbors discovered that being discovered by relatives and friends was not that frequent.This is in keeping with the fact that relationships have become both easier to maintain and more distant in modern society.After the death is confirmed by the police and the medical examiner, the cause and manner of death are determined.Determining the cause of death has an important role in determining whether it was an unnatural death.In the case of an unnatural death, a criminal investigation is involved. In the case of an unnatural death, the mishap is classified as a non-criminal case, and the examination of the body usually ends there.In either case, it leads to the next question, who was this body?Usually, the police will contact the house to verify the situation, or search the ID card, social security, bank card, etc. found at the scene, compared with the permanent population registration, to lock the name and identity of the deceased.The next of kin will then be contacted to identify and claim the remains to make sure they are correct.What if the person who died in the house wasn't the owner or the tenant?In this case, in addition to DNA, fingerprints and other biological tests, the police will also ask for help from colleagues in other jurisdictions within the public security system, or release body identification notices to the society through multiple channels, such as local government websites and local media. Information spreads like dandelions. Often in a small city, it takes two to three days to find the relatives of the dead bodies by this method. But if, in the end, he can't be identified, what happens to the victim?He'll be classified as an unclaimed body.The definition of unclaimed remains varies from province to province, and many of these unidentified or unclaimed bodies lie silent in the freezer of funeral homes, accompanied by electricians on routine patrols, security guards on night duty and countless other bodies that have also gone unclaimed.For those who can contact their immediate relatives, the public security authorities will issue a death certificate, which the family can take to a funeral home for cremation.The business scope of funeral homes is very wide. In addition to the well-known cremation and storage of ashes, funeral homes also undertake a variety of services such as body reception, refrigeration, makeup, dressing and stripping, farewell ceremony, etc.In the case of unclaimed bodies, however, the warmth and branding are kept out by freezers.According to a 2016 report by the Beijing News, at a cooperative storage site in Beijing's Dongjiao Funeral homes, the longest remains remained unclaimed for 22 years.By 2019, five funeral homes in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, had amassed nearly 30,000 such urns, the oldest of which had been left unattended for 25 years.The same is true in many places.We may think that lonely death only exists in media reports and is far away from real life, but it has become a frequent social phenomenon in Japan. In the past four years, there have even been a number of cases of cohabiting lonely death. The deceased died alone, but the cohabiting people didn't know about it until several days later, the third party found out about it.According to the statistics Bureau, people living alone are becoming an important part of our population, and the death of people living alone has become a topic we have to pay attention to.But fortunately, in order to solve this situation, over the years, special regulations and measures have been introduced.In July, for example, the city of Jiangmen issued a detailed circular clarifying the duties and legal responsibilities of departments and organizations in handling unclaimed bodies, so that the subsequent cremation of bodies under different circumstances can be followed by laws.In the circular, cremated remains of unclaimed bodies should be kept for no less than three years from the date of cremation.The cremains that remain unclaimed after the expiration of the retention period will be dispersed uniformly by the funeral home for ecological burial.In this way, they returned to nature and the living people on Earth after being alone for many years after their death.Throw them into the material cycle.
