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What Happens If You’re Buried Alive?
Claustrophobia; one of the biggest and most understandable fears there is.
Being trapped in a small space and being unable to get out is petrifying.
But imagine if this small space was underground; imagine if you were buried alive.
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions, I am Rebecca Felgate and today
we are asking What Happens If You’re Buried Alive.
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Claustrophobia is a natural human instinct.
We need oxygen to live, and our hatred of being boxed in basically stems back to a natural
concern we will run out of air.
Running out of air would be the primary issue if you were buried alive.
Depending on the size of the container you are buried in, this would happen between two
to five hours after burial.
If you were not buried in a container at all, just buried under sand, dirt, snow, or another
material, your chances of survival would be lessened as there would be less area of oxygen.
If you were lucky you would be able to dig one, but if you were unlucky, you would feel
crushed by the weight of what is burying you, breathe it in and choke on it, or suffocate
very quickly.
Say you ARE buried in a container, your best chance of survival is trying not to panic.
Of course, that is easier said than done, you ARE in an awful situation so panicking
would seem like a natural response.
The problem with panicking, though, is that it uses up so much air.
The more you panic, the quicker you breathe.
To survive for the longest… you would need to take medative breaths, breathing out slowly
to conserve as much oxygen as you had left.
If you stayed buried, with no help coming and no way out, eventually all of the oxygen
would turn to Carbon dioxide and you would become very sleepy.
You heart rate and blood pressure would increase, you muscles would tremor, your hearing and
vision would be impared and you would feel very dizzy and confused.
Eventually you would black out and soon your vital organs would shut down, leading to your
death.
If you are buried with some kind of communication device, hopefully you would be able to get
word to someone to come and rescue you.
If that does happen, the shallow, slow breathing will buy you precious time until someone can
find you.
If you have nothing on you, and you think you can break out of whatever you are buried
in, you could give it a go.
With any luck, it will be cheap wood you can smash through.
Containers are usually weakest in the middle so try kicking your way out.
If the container is breached, soil or whatever you are buried in will start to fall in.
You must start moving the soil, for instance, to the sides of the container, cramming as
much of it to the sides of the box as you can, packing it in.
When you have packed as much to the side of you as is possible, you will need to stand
up as best you can and start trying to wiggle your way out of the earth, hands in the air
like a worm.
It is best to cover your mouth with something if you can so you don’t breathe in the dirt.
Hopefully your hand will break through to the surface and you will be able to at least
pull yourself out far enough to breath fresh air and scream for help, that is if you weren’t
buried by some kind of sick assailant, who could be in earshot and waiting to finish
you off.
Dark.
If you’re buried in an avalanche, you’re timescale is even shorter, due to the risk
of hypothermia.
Here you have about ten minutes and the hope of help from a rescue team.
This is why it is ill-advised to ski off-piste and it is always a good idea to carry an avalanche
rescue backpack.
So….
That is what happens when you get buried alive.
Fingers crossed you don’t get buried alive.... just…don’t get buried alive….it doesn’t
sound like any fun what so ever.
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