This is almost certainly true for most plane crashes or ship sinkings.
However, it is not necessarily true of a car crash, and this is a common misconception. In most motor vehicle accidents, individuals do not die instantaneously, and it can take many hours or even days for death to be pronounced.
If you have standby services in place, and they are able to get to the hospital in a reasonable interval, then this would not affect your preservation that much, in the absence of blunt trauma to the head or cerebral hemorrhage.
So, if you accept the premise of cryonics in the average case (obviously a big if), then dying in a car crash is not necessarily going to stop the procedure from being successful.
However, it is not necessarily true of a car crash, and this is a common misconception. In most motor vehicle accidents, individuals do not die instantaneously, and it can take many hours or even days for death to be pronounced.
I’m not a doctor, but I suppose that in most cases where death is pronounced after days the cause of death is traumatic brian injury, therefore even if cryopreservation can be performed immediately after death is pronounced the brain will be already extensively damaged. Other cases of death in a car crash probably involve cardiac arrest caused by damage to the heart, lungs, major blood vessels or spine. In these cases I suppose that ischemia occurs within minutes to hours from the trauma, therefore unless there is a cryonics team on standby at every hospital, the brain is going to suffer many hours of ischemic damage before cryopreservation can be performed.
Good point. As somewhat of a nitpick, I’ve heard that with some types of brain injury (especially those resulting from rotational forces and indirect impacts), a large portion of the total damage may be from secondary effects—my understanding is that this results from a chemical cascade that may only appreciably occur 4-30 hours after the event.
No citations and won’t even bother for a hypothetical case—just a bit that I’ve read here and there. Google keywords are probably “secondary injury”, “DAI”, and “diffuse axonal injury”.
This is almost certainly true for most plane crashes or ship sinkings.
However, it is not necessarily true of a car crash, and this is a common misconception. In most motor vehicle accidents, individuals do not die instantaneously, and it can take many hours or even days for death to be pronounced.
This is why, for example, people are more likely to die if their car crashes in a rural area than an urban one, where they have less access to hospitals.
If you have standby services in place, and they are able to get to the hospital in a reasonable interval, then this would not affect your preservation that much, in the absence of blunt trauma to the head or cerebral hemorrhage.
As an example of this, consider one of the most famous car crashes: Princess Diana, who died three and a half hours after a particularly high-impact car crash.
So, if you accept the premise of cryonics in the average case (obviously a big if), then dying in a car crash is not necessarily going to stop the procedure from being successful.
I’m not a doctor, but I suppose that in most cases where death is pronounced after days the cause of death is traumatic brian injury, therefore even if cryopreservation can be performed immediately after death is pronounced the brain will be already extensively damaged.
Other cases of death in a car crash probably involve cardiac arrest caused by damage to the heart, lungs, major blood vessels or spine. In these cases I suppose that ischemia occurs within minutes to hours from the trauma, therefore unless there is a cryonics team on standby at every hospital, the brain is going to suffer many hours of ischemic damage before cryopreservation can be performed.
Good point. As somewhat of a nitpick, I’ve heard that with some types of brain injury (especially those resulting from rotational forces and indirect impacts), a large portion of the total damage may be from secondary effects—my understanding is that this results from a chemical cascade that may only appreciably occur 4-30 hours after the event.
No citations and won’t even bother for a hypothetical case—just a bit that I’ve read here and there. Google keywords are probably “secondary injury”, “DAI”, and “diffuse axonal injury”.