I live with three roommates, and I never spend the night out of the room. By the next morning–I will sometimes stay out of the room until late–they’d start wondering, and if I hadn’t shown by the end of the day, they’d probably get worried.
If I died on the way home or to my boyfriend’s house, they’d know something was wrong within a few hours. I keep my cell phone on, they’d call if I were late, if they couldn’t get an answer and I was more than two hours late, they’d probably start to panic.
I am a student at University which means that people wouldn’t really miss me in class all that much. I have a partner for my Physics Lab but he can easily go on without me so school wouldn’t miss me at all. I don’t have a girlfriend so she wouldn’t find me.
My group of friends know that I spend a lot of time by myself so if I suddenly don’t answer my phone for a month or two they wouldn’t really think too much of it.
I live in the same building as my sister but we are both really busy right now so we go a week or two without running into each other. My brother lives within 10 minutes as well and we usually do things on weekends so probably by the second weekend he’d worry.
I talk to my parents every week so here is when people might start to worry about me. They call on Sunday and if I don’t answer they just call the following day until they reach me. I’m guessing that by the Wednesday or Thursday after that first Sunday, my mother would probably call my sister (who lives in my appartment building) and ask if she’s seen me. So probably by the Thursday they’d find me so if I died on a Monday, that’s what 10 days?
Well dying at home I’d be found within 24 hours, probably 6 at most actually. I live with 2 guys both of which who come home at the latest by the time the bars close, one is home at least by 7pm though so I’d be found pretty quick.
Dying away from home? Probably about 24 hours. My roomie worries about me (I wandered off to buy beer and ended up hanging at a friends for longer than I should have taken. He went searching for me then called up all friends within a radius of where I was supposed to be walking), so if I didn’t get home by the next morning without calling he’d be on the phone to everyone we know as well as my parents probably.
What I used to wonder about was what would happen if I suddenly died while commuting to work. The morning train I used to ride was so packed that the crush of the crowd would hold me upright until we got downtown. With so many millions of people in this city riding every day, I’m sure it’s happened.
No more than a few hours. Considering my boss is the type to call if someone’s more than 20 minutes late, it would be either her or my boyfriend (with whom I live with) who would find me.
If I was on my own and not working at the place I am right now–it could easily be a few weeks, considering I call my folks maybe once or twice a month and they rarely call me.
At the most, a few days (through the weekend). But I’ve considered getting a personal “deadman’s switch” because I’d want someone to feed my bird Brat (although a close species have been known to feed off of dead penguins…)
A few hours ago, my heart decided to go a bit wonky for about three seconds and scared the beans right out of me. Had it not straightened up and flown right, I’d have been calling 911. While I was sitting there checking my pulse, in the back of my head I was thinking “hmmm, don’t show up for classes without calling for a sub, someone’ll be out here before first period is over to check on me.”
So, on a school day, I’d be found that morning. Weekend . . . it would be Monday morning. Explaining the site that Ms. phouka was found slumped over would be another whole mess.
I live alone with my cat, 100 miles from my parents. If I died, it’d be about five days before my mother started trying to reach me. It just occurred to me that my mother doesn’t have my work number, and my boss doesn’t have an ‘emergency’ number. We have a pretty high turnover at work, so even with ‘dedicated’ employees, they don’t call when somebody doesn’t show up.
I’ve got some acquaintances at school, but nobody that has my number or address. They’d probably just think I flaked out of school.
I figure if I died on. . . Monday, it’d be at least Friday before anybody started to wonder where I was, and possibly the following week before anybody started to worry. If it were my mother, she’d think I was just having a busy weekend and/or partying and not going to call her until the next weekday.
Ugh. Now I’m wondering if my cat would actually eat me if I were dead and she ran out of food.
I think it would take longer than anybody on this thread. It could take months.
I’m a student and I live alone. After a few weeks, some of the students would probably start to wonder, but no one in my classes knows much about me other than I miss a lot of class (!). None of my friends in NY know how to get in touch with my parents, so even if they were worried, they wouldn’t know how to do anything. Eventually a professor might notice and report it to the administration, who might call my parents if I didn’t respond to them. But I’m in grad school, so it’s not like they keep close tabs on you. I talk to my mom about once every other month, but she wouldn’t think anything of it if I didn’t call. I have a friend at home I talk to pretty regularly - about once a week, but if I didn’t call he would assume I was just busy. After a month, he’d probably start to think about calling my parents, but wouldn’t do anything for a couple more weeks. If I died right now, my parents would wonder when I didn’t show up for Christmas.
Kind of depressing. I guess it’s my own fault for being so erratic and unreliable. I could drop out of school and disappear to Madagascar and people would shrug their shoulders.
It would be about three days before anyone at work decided to do some serious checking on me. I have joked with them about me being found partially eaten by my cat. Maybe the incident mentioned by Steel Wheels has reminded them that if I’m not heard from, something is wrong. My neighbour across the hall might notice I haven’t been around but there is no guarantee.
There was a previous thread some time ago here in which I posted a link to a software deadman’s switch like posted above by brachyrhynchos. The link wasn’t working at the time I posted in the other thread but it is now.
Hmmm . . . My boyfriend and a few other close friends all work with me, so even if The Management didn’t call when I didn’t show up for a shift, at least two people would worry if I hadn’t called in. My mother calls every other week or weekly sometimes. I also have a roomate, who, while used to me not coming home for a couple days at a time, is also used to me calling to check up on her. So I figure probably not more than 48 hours, 72 at most.
almost immediately. What with the gf and the ex calling constantly, the joint custody, my almost perfect record of talking to my kids EVERY day I dont have them, I figure 12 hours
Well, I live alone (no other humans here, at least), and I’m currently without a job, plus I live a couple thousand miles from my parents, so it’d be at least two weeks before anybody noticed I was missing. Probably more like a month.
That’s under normal circumstances, of course; I’m getting together with my family for Thanksgiving this year, so my mom and stepdad would wonder when I didn’t pick them up at the airport next week.
If I died on the Friday evening of a weekend that my boyfriend was out of town, it would probably take until Tuesday morning for him to get really worried. We only communicate by email or in person (he hates the phone), so it would be my failure to answer email that tipped him off. If he was out of the picture, I would guess my school would be the next most concerned, but they’d probably give me a week or so before they got really worried. My parents currently live on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and although we talk about once a week, if I missed a week or didn’t answer the phone for a little while it wouldn’t worry them too much. It would probably actually be more of a tip off if I was either 1) never signed onto my IM programs (if I died with the computer off) or 2) always signed onto them (if I died with it on). In terms of dying away from home, since I live in an urban area and don’t drive, it would be very hard for me to die without it being noticed by someone almost right away (no deserted areas around here) unless, of course, foul play was involved.
Gut, even though I’m probably going to “win” this contest, I don’t think I can handle that software. I could see me leaving town for a month and forgetting about it. I think I’ll go with my preferred solution and get a boyfriend.
Hmmm. Well, I have a 7 on/7 off schedule. If I died at the beginning of one of my off weeks, I could go the whole week with no one knowing, most likely, unless a family member needed help moving or something. But that’s rare. So a week easily. And I’d suspect it’d take another day or two before my boss tried to get ahold of me and find out where I was. So a week and a half, easy.
With not working, there’s no boss to worry, and I live alone, rarely stopping by the apartment office for anything. The first regular thing that would be missed would be a rental payment at the first of the month. Basically, I suppose it depends on how close to the end of the month I died.
My classmates might get concerned…but that’s only a might, no guarantees there.
If I wasn’t home when somebody got hungry, they’d probably start looking for me. That could’t possibly be more than twelve hours. I’ll try to remind myself of this the next time I’ve got two ravenous growing boys in the kitchen getting underfoot while I’m trying to get supper on: At least they won’t let my rotting corpse lie in a quarry for long…
