# How long would one stay alive in this horrific scenario? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 27, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972 "2011-06-27T01:42:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/1 "2011-06-27T01:42:11Z")
John is entombed in some sort of concrete mold, lying on his back. There is a hole in the concrete with a tube for breathing, a hole with an Iv going in to his arm, and some sort of waste disposal system (catheter + hole in concrete, hole below butt for solid waste disposal). How long would someone stay alive like this? What would kill them first? Would their blood eventually clot from lack of movement? Would circulation get cut off to parts of the body? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/2 "2011-06-27T01:46:59Z")
Concrete gets really fucking hot when it cures. If he was placed in it before it set, he’d be cooked alive. ---
**Author:** ![Jman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jman/32/4416_2.png) [@Jman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jman)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/3 "2011-06-27T01:49:40Z")
There would also need to be room for chest expansion, or suffocation would happen pretty quickly I’d imagine. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/4 "2011-06-27T01:50:12Z")
I would think the alkalinity of the uncured and curing concrete would kill you with full-body exposure before anything like blood coagulation would. The pH of fresh concrete can be as high as 13 or 14, which is as alkaline as lye. ---
**Author:** ![Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b38774/32.png) [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swords_to_Plowshares)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/5 "2011-06-27T01:54:36Z")
Hmm, okay. Maybe a pre-molded shell in two halves that’s closed once the victim is placed in there? The point is, breathing, feeding, and waste are taken care of, but head, arms, and legs can’t move, and there’s sensory deprivation as well. Even disregarding the issue of concrete heating up when it cures, the body does produce heat, so it would still get really, really hot in there, leading to sweating. No real air circulation so it just keeps getting hotter. Edit - this wasn’t my idea. I heard it on another board as part of a two-sentence horror story. ---
**Author:** ![Sarabellum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarabellum/32/3492_2.png) [@Sarabellum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarabellum)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/6 "2011-06-27T02:11:24Z")
Seems to me there was a Grey’s Anatomy episode concerning this. I’d think you could survive for quite some time, though. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/7 "2011-06-27T02:16:09Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Concrete gets really fucking hot when it cures. If he was placed in it before it set, he’d be cooked alive. The heat as well as the leaching of liquids from your body would be big problems - you’d have to be pumping a lot of fluids in, and I don’t see that going well for very long. ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/8 "2011-06-27T03:27:57Z")
If nothing else, I don’t picture that catheter and IV line remaining infection-free. Are we doing just dextrose, TPN (amino acids/nutrients/minerals), or can we put drugs in there too? What kind of monitoring? And are we actively trying to keep the guy alive or are we doing the bare minimum maintenance and lettin’ him go? I assume that with proper nutrition, some anticoagulants/other drugs when needed and keeping that concrete at a comfortable temperature, he might die of boredom. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/9 "2011-06-27T04:05:42Z")
Is there some reason for the concrete enclosure, or were you just imagining the person being immobilized? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/10 "2011-06-27T04:21:46Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > Hmm, okay. Maybe a pre-molded shell in two halves that’s closed once the victim is placed in there? > > The point is, breathing, feeding, and waste are taken care of, but head, arms, and legs can’t move, and there’s sensory deprivation as well. > > Even disregarding the issue of concrete heating up when it cures, the body does produce heat, so it would still get really, really hot in there, leading to sweating. No real air circulation so it just keeps getting hotter. > > Edit - this wasn’t my idea. I heard it on another board as part of a two-sentence horror story. If it’s a cured shell in a room temperature environment heat loss is going to far more of problem than heat retention as the mass of the concrete at room temp (say 80 degrees) will be a huge heat sink and will pull heat away from the body via skin contact far more efficiently than air. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/11 "2011-06-27T07:36:56Z")
If the person is awake (not drugged) and in complete darkness (or complete light) without being able to move, I think he’d go insane in a couple of days. BBC did a docu once where they put a couple of volunteers in sensory deprivation rooms - dark, goggles, headphones, gloves - with a bed. First they tried to sleep really long, but soon after, they had auditory and visual hallucinations. It was 24 or 48 hrs, so not really long, but the volunteers were all shaken and in bad shape (did really bad on memory and concentration tests afterwards compared to before). The amount of how much it influenced the subjects was a surprise both to them and to the testers (and shows why sensory deprivation is such a “good” = effective white torture method). ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/12 "2011-06-27T07:46:36Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > Edit - this wasn’t my idea. I heard it on another board as part of a two-sentence horror story. A wild Doper appears! ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/13 "2011-06-27T08:12:02Z")
> [@constanze](#): > > If the person is awake (not drugged) and in complete darkness (or complete light) without being able to move, I think he’d go insane in a couple of days. BBC did a docu once where they put a couple of volunteers in sensory deprivation rooms - dark, goggles, headphones, gloves - with a bed. First they tried to sleep really long, but soon after, they had auditory and visual hallucinations. It was 24 or 48 hrs, so not really long, but the volunteers were all shaken and in bad shape (did really bad on memory and concentration tests afterwards compared to before). The amount of how much it influenced the subjects was a surprise both to them and to the testers (and shows why sensory deprivation is such a “good” = effective white torture method). “Longer than you think, Dad!” ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 8:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/14 "2011-06-27T08:59:24Z")
> [@chaoticbear](#): > > I assume that with proper nutrition, some anticoagulants/other drugs when needed and keeping that concrete at a comfortable temperature, he might die of boredom. With no movement allowed at all, thrombosis is going to set in within a few days. After that it’s a toss up what will kill you first: the embolism, the necrosis or the loss of clotting factor. Even with all the drugs in the world, the bedsores are gonna be lethal within a few months, probably within weeks. Lying on a solid material composed of grains of square-edged sand with no way to relieve pressure and no way to keep it dry? Bedsores are gonna develop within days, they’re gonna be open lesions within a week. And because they are caused by a lack of blood flow all the IV drugs in the world won’t heal them. Even if you could keep the person so full of antibiotics that the infection couldn’t spread to the bloodstream, they will still die because: 1) The ulcers will spread, and once you have 10% of you body covered in weeping ulcers you will be losing galloins of water an hours. 2) Even if you can keep the live bacteria out of the bloodstream, the autolytic breakdown products are going to kill the victim either through anaphylaxis or by overloading the liver kidneys trying to detox that crap. My semi-educated guess would be a week max before thrombosis causes death, and if you can treat that then maybe a month before the ulcers become fatal. ---
**Author:** ![ctnguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@ctnguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ctnguy)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/15 "2011-06-27T09:35:02Z")
Incidentally, I was recently reading of something similar, used by [Abu Nidal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nidal)’s terrorist organisation on its own members suspected of disloyalty: [ [QUOTE=“Abu Nidal”, Wikipedia] Between interrogations, prisoners would be confined alone in tiny cells, bound hand and foot. If the cells were full, a prisoner might be buried alive, with a steel pipe in his mouth to allow him to breathe. Water would be poured into it occasionally. When word came that Abu Nidal wanted the prisoner executed, a bullet would be fired down the tube instead, then the pipe removed and the hole filled in. [/QUOTE] ]([Abu Nidal - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nidal#Committee_for_Revolutionary_Justice)) ---
**Author:** ![chaoticbear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@chaoticbear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaoticbear)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/16 "2011-06-27T11:14:22Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > With no movement allowed at all, thrombosis is going to set in within a few days. After that it’s a toss up what will kill you first: the embolism, the necrosis or the loss of clotting factor. > > Even with all the drugs in the world, the bedsores are gonna be lethal within a few months, probably within weeks. Lying on a solid material composed of grains of square-edged sand with no way to relieve pressure and no way to keep it dry? Bedsores are gonna develop within days, they’re gonna be open lesions within a week. And because they are caused by a lack of blood flow all the IV drugs in the world won’t heal them. Even if you could keep the person so full of antibiotics that the infection couldn’t spread to the bloodstream, they will still die because: 1) The ulcers will spread, and once you have 10% of you body covered in weeping ulcers you will be losing galloins of water an hours. 2) Even if you can keep the live bacteria out of the bloodstream, the autolytic breakdown products are going to kill the victim either through anaphylaxis or by overloading the liver kidneys trying to detox that crap. > > My semi-educated guess would be a week max before thrombosis causes death, and if you can treat that then maybe a month before the ulcers become fatal. If I managed to make it to “a few days”, I’d already be wishing for death. Then again, I may have a lower threshold of boredom. ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/17 "2011-06-27T11:29:10Z")
> [@chaoticbear](#): > > If I managed to make it to “a few days”, I’d already be wishing for death. Then again, I may have a lower threshold of boredom. “Finally! Time to finish that six-part opera I’ve always wanted to compose! Dum-de-di-duuuuu!” Coma patients seem to survive okay. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/18 "2011-06-27T11:37:21Z")
> [@Swords\_to\_Plowshares](#): > > John is entombed in some sort of concrete mold, lying on his back. There is a hole in the concrete with a tube for breathing, a hole with an Iv going in to his arm, and some sort of waste disposal system (catheter + hole in concrete, hole below butt for solid waste disposal). > > How long would someone stay alive like this? What would kill them first? Would their blood eventually clot from lack of movement? Would circulation get cut off to parts of the body? That’s basically the same situation as a patient who needs an iron lung to stay alive. The world record for survival in an iron lung is 60 years. > **[Iron lung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_lung)** > > An iron lung is a type of negative pressure ventilator, a mechanical respirator which encloses most of a person's body and varies the air pressure in the enclosed space to stimulate breathing. It assists breathing when muscle control is lost, or the work of breathing exceeds the person's ability. Need for this treatment may result from diseases including polio and botulism and certain poisons (for example, barbiturates and tubocurarine). > The use of iron lungs is largely obsolete in modern med... ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/19 "2011-06-27T13:00:47Z")
> [@Sr\_Siete](#): > > “Finally! Time to finish that six-part opera I’ve always wanted to compose! Dum-de-di-duuuuu!” > > Coma patients seem to survive okay. Coma patients are unconscious. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2011, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972/20 "2011-06-27T13:03:09Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > That’s basically the same situation as a patient who needs an iron lung to stay alive. It’s nothing like an iron lung. Patients in iron lungs have as much mobility as a bedridden patient who is not in an iron lung. They are able to turn over, flex their limbs, stretch their spines, lift their arms and legs above their heads and so forth. Basically anything that you can do without getting out of bed, a patient in an iron lung can do. In contrast, in the situation described int he OP the victim cannot so much as raise a single finger or turn his head. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-long-would-one-stay-alive-in-this-horrific-scenario/586972.md?page=2)