It could be a while. My job would probably phone but if they got no reply wouldn’t care enough to do anything about it, I’d just be that jerk who ditched his job during training. My dad will call me occasionally and if I didn’t respond after 3 voicemails, he might think about coming over to investigate. It could be a week until his next call and a fortnight of me “ignoring” him after that to prompt him to do something. If for some reason my dad didn’t call me, it would probably be months or more before anything else triggered.
A day maybe? Both the wife and I are expected at work, and the kid expected at summer camp. Ppl will be calling, texting, emailing etc. asking why we aren’t where we’re expected to be. By the following morning when the same thing happens all over again, red flags would be raised, and emergency contacts would be contacted (my parents). Us not responding to them asking WTH is going on would have them heading to our house and their grisly discovery pretty quickly.
This time of year, 24 hours tops; my neighbors see me in my garden multiple times a day, starting around 7am. If they didn’t notice, my boyfriend and I chat or email at least a few times a day and I know he’d wonder if he didn’t hear from me somehow.
During the school year, within 24 hours as work would notice that I hadn’t shown up and hadn’t called and would quickly start with the emergency contacts. But we finished on Friday. So, probably next Tuesday. I’m going on vacation and my parents are giving me a ride to the airport.
If we both died, 3 days probably. If my mom didn’t hear from one of us, she’d wig out.
My landlord would come by looking for the rent. If I die on the 2nd of the month, I’m gonna be lying there for a while.
Probably by noon.
The store would notice I wasn’t there and, knowing I live alone, would probably ask the cops to do a wellness check on me. So two days tops.
They be looking for my wife at her job by 10AM latest. I could go a couple of days out of contact with my job. If we didn’t get called from work it wouldn’t be too long before one of the kids needs help paying for something. If not that I might as well be Shemp.
My wife would notice I died sometime the next day, at latest on the weekends since I sleep in, at earliest in the 6 o’clock hour.
For my family, probably the same day. My wife and kids have friends that constantly IM and would probably become concerned if they weren’t returned.
What a morbid question.
It would depend on the expiration time… if it was prior to bedtime, I think it might be a couple of hours at most, if my wife got to watching a movie, and my carcass lay there slumped over the keyboard until she got up to go to the bathroom or get a snack. Most of the time it would be no more than 30 minutes though.
After bedtime, probably no less than 6 hours (usual sleep time for me), and no more than 8 (wife weekday sleep-in time). I think my wife would wake up at some point between 6 and 8 hours and notice that I hadn’t got up for work at the usual time.
If it were just myself suddenly dying in my sleep, my wife would notice by morning, at the very latest. As she has to get up to go to the bathroom every 2 hours or so throughout the night, and has a strong tendency to notice noises (or the lack thereof), I’d wager that she’d notice I wasn’t breathing the next time she got up to pee.
If it were both of us, it might well take a day or two. There’s no one else in the house but the two of us (our cat passed away a couple of weeks ago). I work from home a couple of days a week, so my absence from the office wouldn’t be particularly remarkable, but if it’s a day on which I have a few conference calls, and I miss them, some of my colleagues might start looking into things. My wife doesn’t work, but she’s active enough on Facebook, and talks to her mother and sister regularly enough, that I suspect her “going silent” for more than a day would lead to someone looking into it.
Work would notice that I’m not there tomorrow, and probably call and leave a message. Tomorrow’s my Friday, though, so they probably wouldn’t call until Saturday or even Monday. I don’t know what the company policy is for looking for people who don’t show up; not the kind of thing that comes up in the interview.
My daughter would probably text me when I didn’t show up for dinner on Friday, and probably follow up with the occasional text or phone call until stopping by. So, probably sometime next week before someone finds me.
This time of year, probably two weeks or less. We get dead creatures raising a stink fairly often in our neck of the woods, but decay of a full-sized human corpse during the current hot, humid spell would probably annoy our neighbor Shirley enough to trigger a house check before long.
Well actually, it shouldn’t take more than a few hours on a weekday before my cow-orkers would raise hell over having to take care of the extra workload.
We’re all going to die. I’m pretty sure my husband would notice. But there’s a morbid curiosity that makes me jealous of you guys who win the longest stinkfest.
I’m jealous of you folks who’d actually be noticed if you weren’t around.
You matter to me. I don’t know how long it would take for me to notice. But I would notice.
During the school year, when my son didn’t show up for school, we would get a call in the morning. When no one answered on either my phone nor my husband’s, there’s a chance that the school would send someone for a wellness check that day. If not that day, then definitely the next. My son is a fifth grader, and they are not known for skipping, like a high schooler might be. And at any rate, my son in particular has never had a no-call, no-show before.
My work would be calling me if it were a no-call, no-show, but they wouldn’t do a wellness check. I’m not sure how many days I would have to be gone before they requested a wellness check. I’m sure they would eventually do one, though. I work in a small place with a handful of employees, and I have a very good reputation for showing up promptly. I even call if something holds me up fifteen minutes, like an accident on the road to work.
Now, if someone from work happened to mention that I wasn’t there to the morning minyan I attend, who had also noticed my absence, someone from the minyan might come out to check on us. I’m not sure what they’d be able to do, though. If no one answered their knock, maybe they’d call the police. Maybe not.
My husband’s work would call him on the first day of no-call, no-show, but he has somewhat flexible hours, so they probably wouldn’t call until about noon. He works for a very big hospital, and I doubt they would do a wellness check. They’d probably just start the process of firing him in absentia after the third day of not showing up.
Neither of us work, and unless we had some definite plans with friends, it might be a quite a while if we both died. Especially if we died on a Tuesday night. I routinely call/get called by my sister every Sunday, and my SO talks to his mother every Tuesday. With the weekly obligatory communication out of the way, we could probably lie there until the end of the following week before anyone was worried enough to call for a welfare check.
The wild card would be the dog. If she gets upset and starts barking or howling nonstop, a neighbor walking their dogs down the road in front of the house might hear her. If she doesn’t freak out orally to attract attention she could survive quite some time with a full water bowl, three toilets, and the rotting flesh of our corpses. 
I’m retired and live alone.
I contracted necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating bacteria) and almost died at home. However, at some point I became lucid enough to call my neighbor and ask if she would come feed my cats since I couldn’t get out of bed. After letting herself in, she found me delirious and screaming in pain. She called 911, and I was in the hospital for the next five months.
I don’t remember any of this, but I’ve been told I would’ve been dead within 24 hours if I hadn’t called her.
When I finally got to come home from the hospital, I was weak and frightened and in danger of falling. I realized I needed a safety system, so I now text my sister (who lives far away) morning and evening. If I fail to do so, she’ll contact my neighbor, who will investigate.
So, before . . . I might’ve rotted for months before it was noticed. Now it would be noticed in less than 24 hours.