When you finally die, what will happen to your body?

When you finally die, a lot of people believe that you go to heaven or hell. 72% of Americans believed in heaven, while 54% believed in hell. This episode of the Infographics Show is about what happens when people die.

After death, many people believe that we might be ensconced in some cloud-strewn paradise, or alternatively, if we have not adhered to the ethics prescribed to us by our chosen religion or denomination of that religion, we might be faced with eternal hellfire and the prospect of groveling to a bearded red man who hardly ever puts down his pitchfork. But let's start with some empirical reality and what actually happens to the body when we die.

Doctors know when a person is dead because their heart no longer beats and there is no electrical activity in their brain. Brain death equals dead, although machines can keep you going for a little bit longer. You can also have what’s called a cardiac death, which means the heart stops beating and blood no longer flows through your body. The strange, even wonderful thing is, people who have suffered cardiac death but have been brought back to life have said they were aware of what was going on around them.

Others have talked about walking towards a light in such near death experiences. If you are brought back from clinical death, but only have a 4-6 minute grace period before you finally 'die', this is called biological death. If you make it to the light and pass through, this is called 'recovery' or 'game over'; your ultimate fate depends on how long it takes for your body to decompose.

Resisting the urge to defecate and urinate can be a messy affair when you're no longer with us. As your muscles relax, your sphincter will loosen, allowing food and drinks to spill out of you - and any gas you may have built up will also escape. The same goes for urine,, so dying unsurprisingly can be messy. And as for ejaculation...well, that's up to men.

You may give birth after you have died if you were pregnant. It's called coffin birth, and it doesn't happen often. Instead of pushing, the gases in your abdomen will squeeze the newborn into the world. As the body gets rid of what is trapped inside, noises may be emitted from your mouth as air escapes.

Some nurses and people working near dead bodies have reported hearing very alive-sounding moans and groans coming from the bodies. You may twitch, but this doesn’t mean there is life in you, these are just muscle contractions. You could also soon get an erection if you died lying on your stomach. All your blood will pool to a certain area of your body if you die that way.

The color you see on TV when someone dies is called “livor mortis”. It’s the process of your body cooling down without any blood flow, and it starts to look like a dark purple color. Death chill is the name for this stage, which happens quite soon after death.

The corpse will stay cold until it matches the temperature of its surroundings. You will become stiff within about 2-6 hours, and this we call “rigor mortis”. This is because calcium is getting into your muscle cells. Cells break down without blood flow and this leads to bacteria growth, and that’s why you start to decompose. You may look like your hair or your nails have grown, but that isn’t the case.

Your skin is receding, which is causing the impression of growth. The skin will loosen and blisters will form on your body. The next stage is putrefaction, when bacteria and microorganisms start feeding on you. You'll start to smell bad, like rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month.

Decomposition begins with soft tissues such as skin, fat, and muscle. These quickly turn into liquids which then dissolve other body parts. If you are embalmed and buried, decomposition could be a slow process. You'll be eaten by insects, maggots, plants, and animals within a month if left above ground.

Some experts believe that it might take 8-12 years before you are reduced to nothing but a skeleton. After around 50 years, even your bones will become part of the Earth. We should add the rate of decomposition depends on a variety of factors, too many to list here. But we think you get the picture. While some people report that their near-death experience was a scene to behold, that’snot always the case. One person writing on Reddit said his experience was as follow. It was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing.

In many religions, the belief is that the soul is separate from the body. French philosopher Rene Descartes believed this, and Friedrich Nietzsche talked about the concept of eternal recurrence, or eternal return. This means that all existence or energy in the universe will keep repeating itself for ETERNITY. Isn’t that something to strive for?

Reincarnation is a cycle where a soul starts over again after death, but not in the same exact life. Some say it's connected to deja vu, which is a feeling of familiarity or recall. If we can become enlightened and end this cycle. Buddhists believe we can reach nirvana.