Back to the main page Everybody will die, that is one thing that we are absolutely certain of. From a biological point of view, death is a process, not an event. This is because the different tissues and organs in a living body dies at different rates. We can divide death into somatic death and cellular death. Somatic death is when the individual is not longer a unit of society, because he is irreversibly unconscious, and unaware of himself and the world.
Cellular death is when the cells quits respiration and metabolism.
When all cells are dead, the body is dead. But all cells do not die simultaneously, except perhaps in a nuclear explosion. Even in a victim of a car bomb, where the body becomes fragmented, individual cells will continue to live for a few minutes or longer. Different celltypes can live for different times after cardiac arrest. Nervous cells in the brain are particulary vulnerable to oxygen deprivation and will die within 3-7 minutes after complete oxygen deprivation.