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The Infographics Show Science Philosophy

What Happens When You Die?

The Infographics Show opens with a poll and ends with the universe. The question is the oldest one we have, what happens when you die, and the answer comes in two halves. The first half is belief: surveys say most people think some part of us lives on. The second half, and the real meat of this seven minute explainer, is empirical realism, a minute by minute account of what actually happens to a body once the heart stops, narrated with the channel's trademark gallows humor.

Published Feb 21, 2018 7:03 video 13 min read Added Jun 14, 2026 Open on YouTube →

At a glance

The Infographics Show opens with a poll and ends with the universe. The question is the oldest one we have, what happens when you die, and the answer comes in two halves. The first half is belief: surveys say most people think some part of us lives on. The second half, and the real meat of this seven minute explainer, is empirical realism, a minute by minute account of what actually happens to a body once the heart stops, narrated with the channel's trademark gallows humor. It walks the full sequence, from the three clinical definitions of death, through the undignified relaxation of every muscle, into the named stages the coroner knows by their Latin (livor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, putrefaction), and out the far end where, after roughly fifty years, even your bones become part of the Earth. Then it pivots back to the metaphysics it started with, Descartes and the soul, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence, the Buddhist wheel, and heaven, and admits, honestly, that on the big question it cannot tell you the answer.

This is the page version of that video, rebuilt in full. Every stage, every interval, every number, every joke, in the order the narrator delivers them.

Belief versus biology: how the video frames the question

Before a single body cools, the video establishes that death is contested territory. It leads with data, not dread.

In 2014, the Telegraph polled UK citizens, and just under 60 percent said they believe some part of us lives on.
In 2015, Pew Research asked Americans, in what the narrator calls "still a very Christian nation," what happens after you die. 72 percent believed you go to heaven, defined as a place "where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded."
54 percent of U.S. adults said they believed in hell, "where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished."

The narrator sketches the popular afterlife with affection and a grin: a "cloud-strewn paradise" on one side, and on the other "a bearded red man who hardly ever puts down his pitchfork." Then it draws the line that organizes the whole episode: "But let's start with some empirical realism and what actually happens to the body when we die." The metaphysics gets bracketed and saved for the end. What sits in the middle is biology.

Three ways to be dead

The video is careful, and correct, that "dead" is not one thing. It names three thresholds, in order of severity, and they matter because the early ones are reversible and the last one is not.

Figure 1. The three thresholds the narrator names. Physicians declare death when the heart stops and the brain goes electrically silent. Cardiac and clinical death still leave a four to six minute door open. Step through it and you reach biological death, what the video calls "game over, the final whistle, dead as a dodo."

Physicians know you are dead, the narrator says, because the heart stops beating and there is no longer any electrical activity in your brain. Brain death equals dead, although machines can keep you going a little bit longer. Separately there is cardiac death, where the heart stops and blood no longer flows.

Here the video lingers on the strange part. People who have suffered cardiac death and been brought back report they were aware of what was going on around them. Others describe walking toward a light, the classic near death experience. You can be revived from this state, what the video calls clinical death, but only inside a grace period of about four to six minutes. Pass through the light and out the other side, though, and you have crossed into biological death. That is the line you do not come back from, and everything after it is the body on its own.

The undignified part: what happens in the first minutes

The narrator is blunt that this section is unglamorous, with the perfect shrug: "This is where it gets kind of undignified, but what do you care, you're dead." The mechanism for almost all of it is simple. Once you are gone, your muscles relax, and a relaxed muscle cannot hold anything closed.

The sphincter relaxes, so "that triple Whopper and large fries you had for lunch" leaves the body.
Trapped gas may leak out and, in the narrator's words, "cause a stink."
The bladder lets go too. As the video sums it up, "dying not surprisingly is a bit of a messy affair."
Men may ejaculate. Women who were pregnant may experience coffin birth, where, rather than pushing, "it's the gases in the abdomen that squeeze the newborn into the world." The video stresses this is rare.
As trapped air escapes, noises can come from the mouth. Nurses and people who work near dead bodies "have regularly reported hearing very alive-sounding moans and groans coming from dead bodies."
Twitching can happen, but it is not life, just muscle contractions.
If you died face down, blood pooling forward can produce an erection.

That pooling has a name. As blood settles under gravity to the lowest parts of the body it is called livor mortis, and it is the source of the dark purple coloring "you have seen on TV." The narrator's deadpan tag for this whole catalog: "These are the lovely things that can happen quite shortly after you go."

The Latin clock: the body cools, stiffens, and breaks down

With no heart pushing blood, the body becomes a kind of clock the coroner can read. The video walks the three classically named mortis stages, plus the decay that follows, in order.

Figure 2. The named stages on a rough timeline. Livor mortis and algor mortis begin almost immediately. Rigor mortis sets in over roughly two to six hours as calcium floods the muscle cells. Decomposition overlaps and then takes over once cells start to break down. The intervals are the video's own.

Algor mortis, the "death chill." With no blood flowing, the body begins to cool, and it keeps cooling until it reaches the same temperature as its surroundings.

Rigor mortis, the stiffening. The body becomes stiff within about two to six hours, because calcium is getting into your muscle cells.

Decomposition begins. Without blood flow, cells break down, which leads to bacteria growth, and bacteria growth is why you start to decompose. The narrator clears up a famous myth here: your hair and nails do not keep growing. What actually happens is that the skin recedes, giving the illusion of growth. The skin also loosens, and blisters appear on the body.

Putrefaction and the long road to nothing

The next named stage is putrefaction, when "bacteria and microorganisms start feasting on you." This is where the smell arrives, and the video does not flinch. It quotes a description of the odor as "Rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy."

From there the timeline stretches out, and the video gives concrete intervals for each environment.

Soft tissue liquefies. Everything soft becomes liquid, while the hardy parts, "bones, cartilage and hair," hold out longest. By the time most bodies are put in the ground, decomposition is already well underway.
Above ground: a liquefied mess within about one month, "feasted on by insects, maggots, plants, and animals."
Embalmed and buried: decomposition can be a slow process.
Underground, untreated: some experts say 8 to 12 years to be reduced to a skeleton.
The end state: after around 50 years, "even your bones will become part of the Earth."

The narrator adds the honest caveat that the rate of decomposition depends on "all manner of factors, too many to list here. But we think you get the picture."

0 min Biological death. Heart stopped, brain electrically silent, past the four to six minute window. The body is now on its own.
first minutes Muscles relax. Sphincter and bladder let go, gas escapes, possible moans, twitches, coffin birth, all mechanical, not life. Blood begins to pool as livor mortis tints the lowest skin purple.
immediately on Algor mortis. The body cools toward room temperature and keeps going until it matches its surroundings.
2 to 6 hr Rigor mortis. Stiffening as calcium enters the muscle cells.
hours to days Decomposition starts. Cells break down, bacteria grow, skin recedes (the hair and nail "growth" illusion) and loosens, blisters form.
days + Putrefaction. Microorganisms feast, the unholy smell sets in, soft tissue liquefies while bone, cartilage and hair remain.
~1 month Above ground: a liquefied mess, worked over by insects, maggots, plants and animals.
8 to 12 yr Underground: reduced to a skeleton, per some experts.
~50 yr Bones return to Earth. Even the skeleton becomes part of the ground.

Back to the big question: what the philosophers and religions say

Having walked the body all the way to dust, the video returns to where it started, the question of whether anything survives. It does not argue for an answer. It lays the options on the table.

It opens the metaphysical half with a counterpoint to all the cloud-strewn paradise talk, a near death account that was no scene at all. A Reddit writer described his as: "It was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing." Then the survey of ideas:

Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, "believed the soul was separate from the body, as many religions will tell you, and perhaps when we die something lingers on."
Friedrich Nietzsche and eternal recurrence: all existence or energy in the universe "has forever and will forever keep repeating itself ad infinitum." You live the same life, again and again, forever. The narrator's nudge: "Now doesn't that make you want to live well?"
The Buddhist Wheel of Samsara and reincarnation: souls begin a cycle again after death, but not the same exact life, an idea some people link to deja vu. Buddhists hold the cycle can be ended through enlightenment, achieving nirvana.
Heaven, sketched with the channel's humor: tipping your cap to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, hoping he overlooks "that candy bar when we went on a school trip to Niagara Falls," and a paradise "replete with excellent foods and gorgeous maidens."

Against all of that it sets the materialist option: that we "simply seed the Earth," our souls "nothing more than a worldly fancy that took our minds off our cosmic insignificance." The video then does the rare and honest thing: "That's something we can't tell you, but we would love to know what you think."

Note on the chapters below: YouTube's own chapter list labels the philosophy segment "George Berkeley," but the narration in that stretch names Descartes, not Berkeley. The chapter titles are reproduced verbatim from the source; the spoken content is what is rebuilt above.

Belief versus what the body does: a side by side

The video's structure is a deliberate contrast, the comforting stories we tell about death against the unsentimental mechanics. Here they are in one ledger.

Question	What belief offers	What the body does
Does something survive?	Yes for most polled: ~60% UK, 72% of Americans expect heaven	Unknown; one account was "just black emptiness, nothing"
The first hours	The soul departs, a walk toward the light	Muscles relax, livor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis at 2 to 6 hours
The long term	Eternal reward, eternal return, or rebirth on the wheel	Putrefaction, liquefaction, skeleton in 8 to 12 years, bones to Earth by ~50
Who decides the verdict	St. Peter, karma, the cosmos	Bacteria, insects, calcium, and gravity

Key takeaways

"Dead" comes in degrees. Cardiac and clinical death are reversible inside a four to six minute window; biological death (brain death, no electrical activity) is the point of no return.
Almost everything in the first minutes traces to one cause: muscles relax, so the body releases what it was holding, and blood pools downward as livor mortis.
The body becomes a readable clock. Algor mortis cools it, rigor mortis stiffens it in about two to six hours via calcium entering muscle cells, then decomposition begins.
Hair and nails do not keep growing. The skin recedes, creating the illusion.
The full timeline: liquefied above ground in about a month, a skeleton underground in 8 to 12 years, bones absorbed into the Earth by around 50 years, with wide variation by conditions.
On the afterlife the video takes no side. It presents Descartes, Nietzsche, Buddhism, and heaven, and admits the honest unknown.

Chapters

Timestamps are clickable. Click one and the player jumps there and keeps playing while you read. These six are the video's own chapter markers, reproduced verbatim.

0:00 Untitled Chapter 1 (the polls, belief versus empirical realism)
1:24 Cardiac Death (the three definitions, the near death light, the first undignified minutes)
3:18 Rigor Mortis (algor mortis, stiffening, decomposition, putrefaction, the long timeline)
4:46 George Berkeley (the soul, Descartes, "black emptiness")
5:20 Eternal Recurrence (Nietzsche, living the same life forever)
5:44 Reincarnation (the Wheel of Samsara, nirvana, heaven, and the open question)

Notable quotes

But let's start with some empirical realism and what actually happens to the body when we die. narrator, 1:24

Brain death equals dead, although machines can keep you going a little bit longer. narrator, 1:36

You can be brought back from what we call clinical death, but you only have a grace period of about 4 to 6 minutes. narrator, 2:05

This is where it gets kind of undignified, but what do you care, you're dead. narrator, 2:30

Rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy. narrator, 4:18

After around 50 years, even your bones will become part of the Earth. narrator, 4:38

It was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing. narrator, quoting Reddit, 4:55

That's something we can't tell you, but we would love to know what you think. narrator, 6:30

Resources mentioned

The Infographics Show, the channel, and its companion episode This is How You Will Die.
The Telegraph, source of the 2014 UK poll on life after death.
Pew Research Center, source of the 2015 U.S. survey on heaven and hell.
Rene Descartes and his view that the soul is separate from the body.
Friedrich Nietzsche and the concept of eternal recurrence.
The Buddhist Wheel of Samsara and the goal of nirvana.
Reddit, source of the "black emptiness" near death account.

The one idea to walk away with

The video's quiet trick is to answer a metaphysical question with biology, and then admit that the biology does not actually answer it. We know, in clinical detail, what happens to the body: it relaxes, it pools, it cools, it stiffens, it decomposes, and in about fifty years it rejoins the Earth. What we do not know is whether any of that is the whole story. The Infographics Show stares straight at the messy, undignified, fully mapped end of the body, and still leaves the bigger door open, which is probably the most honest thing a seven minute video on death could do.

Full transcript

What happens when you finally kick the bucket, so to speak? Despite our mostly science-grounded views on death these days, it seems many of us believe in life after it. In 2014, UK citizens were polled by the Telegraph, and just under 60 percent of respondents said they believe some part of us lives on. In the U.S., still a very Christian nation, Pew Research in 2015 asked people what happened after you die. The survey found that 72 percent of Americans believed you go to heaven, which was described as a place "where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded." 54 percent of U.S. adults replied that they 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 Infographics Show, What happens when you die? Don't forget to subscribe and click the bell button so that you can be part of our Notification Squad. 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 groveling to a bearded red man who hardly ever puts down his pitchfork. But let's start with some empirical realism and what actually happens to the body when we die. Physicians know you're dead because the heart stops beating and there is no longer any electrical activity in your 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, even wonderful thing is, people that have suffered cardiac death but have been brought back to life have said they were aware of what was going on around them. Others have talked about walking towards a light in such 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. But let's say you get to the light and pass through; this is what we call biological death, game over, the final whistle, dead as a dodo. This is where it gets kind of undignified, but what do you care, you're dead. Once you're definitely no longer with us, your muscles relax, and this means your sphincter will too, meaning that triple Whopper and large fries you had for lunch will spill out of you. The gas you have in you may also leak out and cause a stink. The same goes for the pee you've got in your bladder, so dying not surprisingly is a bit of a messy affair. And men, you might even ejaculate. As for women, you may give birth after you have died if you were pregnant, which is something called "coffin birth". It doesn't happen often, though. Instead of pushing, it's the gases in the abdomen that squeeze the newborn into the world. As the body gets rid of what is trapped inside, noises may be emitted from your mouth as air escapes. 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 color you have seen on TV. These are the lovely things that can happen quite shortly after you go. With no blood flowing through your body, it will begin to cool down, known as "algor mortis", or simply "death chill". It will keep cooling until it is the same temperature as your surroundings. You will become stiff within about 2-6 hours, and this we call "rigor mortis". This is because calcium is getting into your muscle cells. Cells break down without blood flow and this leads to bacteria growth, and that's why you start to decompose. You may look like your hair or your nails have grown, but that isn't the case. What is happening is that your skin is receding, giving the impression of growth. The skin will loosen, too, and blisters will appear on the body. The next stage is putrefaction, when bacteria and microorganisms start feasting on you. You'll soon start to stink as bad as anything you could have imagined while you were alive. One person described the smell as: "Rotten eggs, feces, and a used toilet left out for a month x 1000. It is unholy." Soon everything that is soft becomes liquefied, with things like bones, cartilage and hair remaining strong. You're already well on your way to decomposing by the time you are being put in the ground. But if embalmed and buried, decomposition could be a slow process. Left above ground, you'll be a liquefied mess within about a month, feasted on by insects, maggots, plants, and animals. Underground, some experts say it might take 8-12 years before you are reduced to nothing but a skeleton. After around 50 years, even your bones will become part of the Earth. We should add the rate of decomposition depends on all manner of factors, too many to list here. But we think you get the picture. While some people report that their near-death experience was a scene to behold, that's not always the case. One person writing on Reddit said his experience was as follows: "It was just black emptiness. No thoughts, no consciousness, nothing." French philosopher Rene Descartes believed the soul was separate from the body, as many religions will tell you, and perhaps when we die something lingers on. Friedrich Nietzsche talked about the concept of eternal recurrence, or eternal return, meaning all existence or energy in the universe has forever and will forever keep repeating itself ad infinitum. You live the same life, again and again, forever. Now doesn't that make you want to live well? Here we could make similarities to the Buddhist belief of the "Wheel of Samsara", wherein all souls, lives, will begin a cycle again after death, except not the same exact life. Something we call reincarnation, which some people say is connected to what we sometimes call deja vu. Buddhists believe we can end this vicious cycle if we can become truly enlightened, therefore achieving nirvana. Or do we make our way to heaven after our bodies stop working, tipping our cap to St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, hoping he won't deny us entrance for stealing that candy bar when we went on a school trip to Niagara Falls? Will we be taken into paradise, a place replete with excellent foods and gorgeous maidens that make your dead knees go weak? Or will we simply seed the Earth, our souls nothing more than a worldly fancy that took our minds off our cosmic insignificance and the feeling of futility that we sometimes experience here on terra firma? That's something we can't tell you, but we would love to know what you think. Share your thoughts in the comments and please don't die on us! Also, be sure to check out our other video called This is How You Will Die! Thanks for watching, and, as always, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe. See you next time! While this video was pretty grim, let's for a second step away and think about your life NOW and how you can make it better. If you are one of the many living people who are running a business or thinking of starting one, you probably need a website. But since we all have limited time on earth, you don't want to spend too much time figuring out how to set everything up and then keep on worrying about maintenance.