Nonetheless, the editors remained skeptical that premature burials had actually ever occurred during their era. Even if a person should be so unlucky as to be buried while unconscious, the editors pointed out that the average coffin contains so little oxygen that asphyxia would probably precede any return to full consciousness.
Modern experts are even more emphatic that living burial remains a near-impossibility.
But I've never heard an allegation in my lifetime of someone being buried alive. And then, of course, there's all that postmortem activity to consider. They're transported, there's a funeral director, burial doesn't occur for quite some time. Finally, he says, the rigors of the embalming process effectively precludes the possibility of any life within the coffin. Still, those of us who harbor fears of a conscious entombment could always turn to a device mentioned by the JAMA editors of yore.