Either immediately or within a few hours. Even if I were to die shortly after my daughter had gone to a sleepover, I think my dog would probably whine enough that someone would be called; she’s a needy dog.
Well, for the person finding your body it’s never going to be pleasant, but it’d be worse if you’d started to look like an actual rotting corpse rather than just a chillingly cold human body.
Wife. Kids.
Within a few hours.
Slightly OT, but the newborn baby of some friends of mine stopped breathing out of the blue a few weeks ago. Her dad noticed this and CPR’d her back to life quickly enough that she is not only not part of the SIDS statistics, but apparently none the worse for her experience.
So in their case, apparently the answer is “less than a minute”
Almost immediately. My wife and I are retired and inseparable.
.
I live alone on the top floor of a 2-family house, with the landlord living downstairs. If she didn’t see me for a day or two, I’m sure she would wonder and check it out.
Such a morbid thought but it occasionally crosses my mind because apparently I’m a morbid person.
Right now, I’m living in a student residence with individual rooms. It would take less than 24 hours for friends to realize I’m not reachable, but it might take a little longer for them to make someone break down the door.
My permanent residence is my parents’ house. There, I’d be discovered almost immediately.
I’m moving into an apartment in January. My roommates would find me within a few hours.
As with many of us, my employer would be the first to react to my demise, probably within a few days. This is depressing but it’s reality.
Summertime, probably about a week. Winter? two weeks to a month maybe, possibly longer.
People who live alone can e-mail a friend or relative every morning to let someone know they are ok. If the internet is down or the computer crashes, the receiving person could call and check up. Just mail a quote for the day.
I would have to time my death pretty carefully in order to avoid being discovered within a few hours. I suppose if I keeled over while my boyfriend was away on a bike trip I could go a day or so without being discovered.
As I am married, I would probably be discovered within a few minutes, when I failed to heed her beck and call.
Hypothetically single, I’d wager a couple of days to a week.
Honestly… I don’t know. Probably quite a while. I am single, live alone, no family, no local friends. If I just stopped showing up for work they would put me down as a no-call-no-show and after 3 days I woud be fired.
Not that it would matter, y’know, with me being *DEAD *and all…
This actually worries me, not because I care what happens to my body, but because of my pets. They wouldn’t go hungry, but I imagine it might make them harder to adopt out if they had been snacking on their previous owner…
Not sure how long, mom hardly ever comes down here.
And she’d likely mistake any evidence that might penetrate the ceiling into the upstairs, would assume I must be cleaning out one of the bongs again; either that or I must have secured yet another bag of really shitty weed.
Almost immediately because I HAVE NO PRIVACY. While I love my family and wouldn’t truly change any of my major life decisions there are times I fondly reminisce about the days I lived alone & my time was mine.
Live alone with three cats. More likely my workmate would be checking up on me within 24 hours if she’s being conscientious about things. Family most likely wouldn’t think there’s a problem for at least a few days minimum.
My mother-in-law, who was living on her own, had a stroke in her kitchen and collapsed on the floor. She wasn’t found until the following morning, when she was missing at the office, and a workmate went to her house (which was in a small town, in walking distance of the office). In her case it probably didn’t matter – she was found alive, but remained in a coma in hospital for a while until she died – but in other cases prompt medical assistance would make a big difference.
In my case, my wife would probably notice that I’m less responsive than usual within a few hourse.
This thread makes me realize how seldom I am truly alone. I mean, I’m glad — I love my family and enjoy being around them, and people at work. But jeez, like Eve said, if I dropped, there would be someone there to notice before I even hit the floor.
I voted longer than a week. I live by myself and though I do see my neighbors around from time to time, I don’t think they’d get suspicious at not seeing me coming and going since my schedule while regular, isn’t typical. Even among my closest friends, my communication tends to be very ebb and floe so it’s not unusual for even someone close to me to go a week or more without hearing anything from me. Hell, even when people call me, I don’t always pick up and I’m often late with returning messages if I even do. So, it would easily be a week or more before my brothers and parents thought anything fishy enough to talk to eachother about it and physically check on me. I could see it taking longer too.
The upper limit would be a month when I miss my rent payment and presumably come to evict me. My rent is the only thing I don’t have automatically billed, but if I did, I could see the upper limit even being until my lease expired since I have enough in the account to cover rent until then. So I guess it’s a good thing it’s not on auto-pay. I wouldn’t see my job checking in on me just calling and leaving me a couple messages and eventually firing me over the phone, though I am friends outside of work with a few people, so maybe that might get someone curious when they heard about it. Still probably a minimum of a couple weeks before the cops got called related to work.
I said “Almost immediately” because I am assuming the cats count. They are, after all, carnivores, and collectively they weigh about as much as I should - and about as much as I would a few minutes later, unless a human found me.
Well, this is a disturbing line of thought, especially because I don’t know how long it would take. I live alone, so it would be days, if not weeks. My father lives nearby and has a key, but he doesn’t come over often and we only really talk 1-2 times a week anyways. I have friends who come over once a week or so, but I don’t really know who they’d react if they showed up and found the door locked and me not answering my phone. My job has very flexible hours and little direct oversight so I don’t know how long it would take for my absence to really be noticed and no idea how long after that it would be before anyone came and found me.
I’m going to stop thinking too hard about this for now, before I end up crying in the corner and calling friends to come check on me regularly.