To prepare for their own death, humans can write a last will and testament to be clear about who gets their property and possessions. A person will sometimes also volunteer to be an organ donor. This might mean giving the whole body to medical research. It can also save the lives of others by making organ transplants possible.
For a long time, many people have been afraid of death and a lot of people have wondered about what may happen to people after they die. This is one of the largest questions of philosophy and religion. Many people believe there is some form of afterlife.
Ancient rulers sometimes did insist not only that their own bodies, and much property, but even their servants and relatives be destroyed at their funeral.
Christianity has a special focus on death because of the state killing of Jesus Christ by the Romans. In Islam this is thought to demonstrate the injustice of human systems of dealing out death, and the ability of the best people to overcome it and even forgive it. In Christianity itself it is thought to prove that Jesus himself was really God and so could lose his body and still have the power of resurrection. In Buddhism reincarnation is believed to occur. Reincarnation is an idea taken from Hinduism.
Confucianism advises respect for parents and forms of ancestor worship to respect both dead and living ancestors.
Every ethical tradition including the medical view of the body has some ritual surrounding death. Often these excuse behaviours that might be hated if they did not have the ritual. For instance, one may say that organ transplant is like cannibalism.
Very much of what happens at a human death is ritual. People who wish theirs to be dealt with a certain way, and who wish a particular treatment like cremation of their body, should decide in advance and set up the necessary payments and agreements. This makes it much easier for their family after they die, since there is no longer the ability to clearly communicate the wish.
For the same reason, saying goodbye is important. Most of the stress of death seems to come for loved ones who "did not have a chance to say goodbye".
Maybe it is to relieve this stress that rituals are created, and to bring together those that knew someone so that the personal experience a person can no longer communicate for themselves, can be exchanged by others.
Some ritual, such as seances, claim to allow people to speak to the dead. This is not claimed to be very reliable, both by scientists and even by those who do them very often.
Aside from wills, goodbyes, organ donations and funerals, there is important personal experience to decide to pass on, or not, when someone knows they may soon die. Palliative care focuses on basic decisions people make when they are very close to the end of their lives, and it ensures someone is always available to talk to them. It is a replacement for heroic medical intervention that may keep them physically alive but with no quality of life. Human psychology must prepare for death if it is anything other than a quick surprise:
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote that there were several stages in dying, of which denial was the first, and acceptance was the last. Recording one's life is often something people with acceptance will do to leave a memoir or a full autobiography:
Because events leave living memory, and may only be part of oral tradition, there are projects to record everything that people remember about World War I and the Shoah. The first of these was to record everything remembered about the U.S. Civil War. This discipline has changed history since we have so many more first person accounts of the times, and made social history much more standard.
There are other terms for death. Examples are, "to pass away", "to go to a better place", "to buy the farm" (generally used in the military), "to leave the earth", "big sleep", and "to kick the bucket". the term "gone" may also be a term for describing death. "for example": if a person has died, they are also said to be "gone", as in "gone to a better place" or "no longer here".
Old age is not the only thing that can end a person's life. People make other people die. This is called killing or murder. Three famous murders are John Wilkes Booth killing Abraham Lincoln, James Earl Ray killing Martin Luther King Jr. and Lee Harvey Oswald killing the President of the United States John F. Kennedy. People can also die by accidents resulting in terminal trauma, hypothermia, starvation, suicide and dehydration.
Diesel-electric
A diesel-electric engine is a diesel generator, a diesel engine that drives an electric generator. The generator feeds electric power to an electric motor which turns a driveshaft. Its efficiency is higher than when an engine drives a shaft through gears. Most locomotives and many ships use diesel-electric drive.
Many diesel-electric drives, especially small ones, store the electricity in a battery. Some designs also store braking energy in a flywheel, which can also charge a battery. However, these add even more complexity and weight to the vehicle, so are more appropriate for city driving where service stations are always available and there is much stop and go driving.
Because they do not require any change or investment in stations nor much in vehicle design, diesel-electric vehicles are believed to be the most likely replacement for today's internal combustion engine. When properly tuned, they have low emissions and they use only about one-third of the fossil fuel of most gasoline engines powering similar vehicles.
Honda and Toyota are presently delivering consumer priced diesel-electric cars. By contrast, hydrogen infrastructure is thought to be decades off, and is not fully implemented even in Iceland where there is abundant free geothermal electricity.
In countries like India, government is focusing on fully electric trains rather than diesel electric. That too electricity will be produced by renewable sources like Solar.
Many activists feel that promoting hydrogen is a stall, a way to avoid forcing the shift to diesel-electric vehicles in the nearer term.
Embassy
A foreign embassy is the official office of one country in another. It is usually in the capital city of the other country. It is where the ambassador and other representatives of the home country work. Much of the diplomacy (talk) between the two governments happens there. They represent their country to the host government.
Europe
Europe is the western part of the continent of Eurasia, often thought of as its own continent. It is separated from Asia by the Ural Mountains in Russia and the Bosporus strait in Turkey.
Europe is bordered by water on three sides. On the west is the Atlantic Ocean. To the north is the Arctic Ocean. The Mediterranean Sea separates Southeastern Europe from Africa. On the eastern border of Europe are the Ural River and Ural Mountains.
There are at least 43 countries in Europe (the European identities of 5 transcontinental countries:Cyprus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey are disputed). Most of these countries are members of the European Union.
Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometers (3,930,000 square miles). This is 2% of the Earth's surface (6.8% of its land area).
As of 2017, about 510 million people lived in Europe.
Europe contains the world's second most-active volcano, which is Mount Etna that is currently the most-active volcano in the continent.
Europe is a major tourist attraction. People come from all over the world to see its many World Heritage Sites and other attractions.
Europe is named after a princess in Greek mythology called "Europa." The myth says that Zeus kidnapped Europa and took her to Crete, where she became the mother of King Minos (from whom Europe’s first civilization gets its name, the Minoans).