So if you died in your sleep. How long till someone realized you were missing? As an alternative if you don’t live alone everyone in your household died, lets say there was a carbon monoxide leak that took you all, how long would it take?
I have a project due tomorrow, so someone would call. And I go into the office on Thursdays, so if I skipped that, and my boss was in, she might notice.
StG
My wife would notice, if for no other reason that she is Leet the Wonder Dog[sup]TM[/sup]'s second choice of “person I need to harass at 5:58am every morning because I’m hungry and need to go tinkle”.
If everybody died, it might be a while. My daughter would figure it out when my wife didn’t answer her cell phone. Work would be a while longer - the second day of me not showing up for meetings with no notice would probably trigger something.
Regards,
Shodan
In my case, I’d have to change the question to,* “How long would they keep it under wraps before the truth came out?”
*
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so they would probably be the first to notice that I didn’t show up. I doubt they’d do anything about it though.
Because of that doctor’s appointment my workplace probably wouldn’t start worrying until about noon. Then they’d start calling around. If I didn’t have that appointment they’d probably start poking around by 9:30am. (It’s happened before, when I forgot to set the alarm and slept in.)
You didn’t ask, but the best time for me to die and have the longest possible wait time before being missed would probably be next monday night. I have the week off, and my family probably won’t expect to hear from me until friday night. (Um, should I be admitting this on the internet? If anybody comes looking for an easy target I live in Barbados, fifty miles off the coast on the bottom of the ocean.)
Yea, maybe someone would notice. The cats would be hollering at 6:45 for their breakfast. Anyone in the near vicinity would hear because they are Siamese and VERY loud. Seriously sometimes one of my kids call just to ask me if I am still alive. Mr.Wrekker would notice after a while, if he’s in town. No neighbors, no job, sibs all live out of state.
If I alone died, my wife might notice the next morning if she needed to ask me something before she left for work. Otherwise it would be sometime after she got home.
If everyone died, a week would be about the maximum but probably about three days before someone got concerned enough about the lack of contact.
By the morning, if not shortly after it happened. Kids, husband, dogs.
It seem’s to be my job to make and bring a cup of coffee to my wife so she can get up in the morning. If I didn’t answer when she asked as she does every morning “did you make coffee”?, then. If we both died work would be calling within a day as we would be missing appointments.
Since my rent is due at the end of the month, I would guess it would take no longer than 2-3 weeks at most. After I am delinquent long enough, apartment management would come by checking.
Also, I am supposed to play piano for an event on June 24, so people would ask around when I failed to show up. But they don’t know my address.
I live a far distance from most family, and talk to them only seldomly, so they wouldn’t check in; it’s normal for us to go weeks without communication.
LOL, I just brought this subject up with my siblings at our annual dinner. I live alone, keep no regular contact with anyone (not I said annual dinner with my siblings) and have no more than a few sentence conversations with my apartment complex neighbors. During the times when I’m unemployed, I pondered how long would someone notice the stench from my decomposing body. Since I keep the A/C on whenever I’m home, lowering it 72 or lower during the night, it would take longer to decompose.
I’ve actually been considering getting one of those “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” monitors just to speed up the discovery process. 
BTW, I sincerely hope to die in my sleep at home!
Ahhh… forgot about rent. I have it on automatic payment and have a couple of months worth of payments in my savings account, which is automatically drawn upon for overdraft, so I’d guess it’s a race between the stench and the rent not being paid!
The next day at work. I called in sick once because I was throwing up all night. Boss went into a meeting right after talking to me. Co-worker seeing I was at work and could ask boss was about to send the police for a wellness check until I woke up saw her frantic messages and sent her a text message. NOW… if I am going to be out for any reason, I make sure she knows. I do NOT want the police knocking on my door.
Wife and I each have normal five-days-a-week jobs. We might receive phone calls or emails after missing the first day or two of work, but I don’t think anyone from our respective workplaces would come to our house or ask the police for a welfare check.
We scarcely interact with neighbors, typically only by waving as we drive down the street if they happen to be outside; none of them would get suspicious until our yard became severely unkempt, which would take weeks. We live in a single-family home, so I doubt anybody ringing the front doorbell would notice any decomposition odors.
Out-of-state family might call and leave a message after a week or so, but it would be several weeks before they became concerned enough by the lack of callback to ask the police for a welfare check.
Pretty sure nobody would confirm our deaths for weeks.
The next morning people at work might start asking around, but it would probably take another day before anyone decided to really follow up. I have people I work with, but not on a moment by moment basis. I don’t really have a boss keeping track of me.
At the hotel I’m staying at, the next morning the cleaning crew would find my body, but might take a while to track down who to contact.
About two weeks. I will be visiting relatives around July 4th and they will get worried if I don’t come up or call and cancel.
If it was tonight might be longer than a month. Due to leave on vacation the 21st and not get back until the 8th of July, so unless the airline or travel agency contacted someone, nobody would miss me until then, and probably not for a week or two after that.
My colleagues are accustomed to see me at work around 8 AM or earlier, so they would worry if I didn’t show up without letting them know that I was sick. So, I wouldn’t have too much time to decompose before someone came over to check on me!
My wife would notice when it was time to get up.
Probably about three days as I live by myself. I think that’s about when work would get concerned. A good friend of mine does have a key to my apartment so he’d probably check on me if I hadn’t responded to any text messages for that long.