What happens when you finally kick the bucket, so to speak?

Despite the scientific understanding of death, many people still hold onto the belief in an afterlife.

In 2014, a poll conducted by the Telegraph found that nearly 60% of UK citizens believed in some form of life after death. In the US, a Pew Research survey in 2015 revealed that 72% of Americans believed in heaven as a reward for a good life, while 54% believed in hell, which was described as a place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished.”

With that in mind, welcome to this episode of the hereafter; What happens when you die? It seems a lot of people do believe that after death we might be ensconced in some cloud-strewn paradise, or conversely, if we haven’t 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 grovelling to a bearded red man who hardly ever puts down his pitchfork. However, let's begin with the empirical reality of death and what happens to the body

Physicians determine death when the heart stops beating and there is no longer any electrical activity in the brain. Brain death equals dead, although machines can keep you going 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 and wonderful thing is, people that who have suffered cardiac death were revived, reported that they were aware of what was going on around them and some even described walking towards a light during a near-death experience. You can be brought back from what we call clinical death, but you only have a grace period of about 4-6 minutes.

Let's move on to what happens after you pass through the light, otherwise known as biological death. Once you've crossed over, it's game over - the final whistle has blown and you're as dead as a dodo. Unfortunately, things start to get a bit messy after that, but what do you care, you’re dead.

Once you’re definitely no longer with us, your muscles relax, and so does your sphincter, causing any food you've eaten to spill out, along with gas and urine. It's not a pretty sight, so dying not surprisingly is a bit of a messy affair. And men, you might even ejaculate. Women who were pregnant may experience what's known as "coffin birth," where gases in the abdomen squeeze the newborn out after death. It doesn’t happen often, though

Sometimes, air may escape your body, causing moans and groans that sound eerily alive to those working with your corpse. Nurses and people working close to dead bodies have regularly reported hearing very alive-sounding moans and groans coming from dead 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 and the blood flowed down there. All your blood will pool to a certain area of your body. This is called “livor mortis” and it’s the reason parts of you will have that dark purple colour you have seen on TV. These are the lovely things that can happen quite shortly after you go.

Within a few hours, with no blood flowing through your body, your body temperature will start to decrease, and it will begin to cool down, a process known as "algor mortis" or "death chill. It will keep cooling until it is at the same temperature as your surroundings. After 2-6 hours, your muscles will become stiff due to the influx of calcium into your cells, a condition called "rigor mortis." Without blood flow, cells break down, leading to bacterial growth and that’s why you start to decompose. Your hair and nails may to grow longer, but this is due to your skin receding, making it seem like they're growing. Blisters may also form on your skin as it loosens.

The next stage is known as putrefaction, in which bacteria and microorganisms begin to feast on the body. As a result, you will soon start to stink as bad as anything you could have imagined. One individual characterized the stench as "Rotten eggs, faeces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy."

Soon everything that is soft will liquefy, while bones, cartilage, and hair will remain intact.

By the time you are buried, you are already well into the process of decomposition. However, if you are embalmed and buried, the process of decay may be slow. If left above ground, you will be a liquefied mess within a month, and will be consumed by insects, maggots, plants, and animals... Underground, some experts believe that it may take 8-12 years before you are reduced to nothing but a skeleton. After approximately 50 years, even your bones will return to the Earth. It should be noted that the rate of decay is influenced by a variety of factors that are too numerous to list here, but I think you get the picture. While some individuals report that their near-death experience was awe-inspiring, this is not always the case. One person on Reddit recounted their experience as "just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing."

Like many religions, French philosopher Rene Descartes believed that the soul is distinct from the body, and perhaps something lingers on after death. Friedrich Nietzsche spoke about the concept of eternal recurrence, or eternal return, in which all existence or energy in the universe forever repeats itself ad infinitum. You live the same life, over and over again, forever. Now doesn’t that make you want to live well?

This idea is similar to the Buddhist belief in the "Wheel of Samsara," in which all souls and lives begin a new cycle after death, although not the exact same life. Reincarnation is what we call this, and some people connect it to what is sometimes known as deja vu. Buddhists believe that we can escape this vicious cycle if we can become truly enlightened, therefore achieving nirvana.

Alternatively, do we go to heaven after our bodies cease to function, tipping our hats to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, hoping he will not deny us entry for stealing a candy bar during a school trip to Niagara Falls? Will we be taken to paradise, a place filled with wonderful food and beautiful maidens that make our dead knees weak? Or will we simply fertilize the Earth, our souls merely a worldly fancy that distracted us from our cosmic insignificance and the feeling of futility that we sometimes experience on this planet? I cannot answer this question, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

Share your thoughts in the comments and please don’t die on me! Thanks for reading, and, as always, don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next time!

While this story was pretty grim, let’s for a second step away and think about your life NOW and how you can make it better.