# The five-year coma challenge!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-five-year-coma-challenge/705228>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [November 21, 2014, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-five-year-coma-challenge/705228 "2014-11-21T05:48:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-five-year-coma-challenge/705228/21 "2014-11-21T23:44:28Z")

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My choice was before the black plague in Europe, then wake up in the midst. Culture in the black plague was supposedly apocalyptic in nature, since so many were dying people thought the world was ending. You fall into a coma and wake up surrounded by people sick and dying, thinking the world was ending.

I wish I knew more about non-american (and by proxy European and roman) history. But I don’t.

Maybe someone who fell into a coma in 1952 during Stalin’s personality cult and woke up in 1957 when Khrushchev had tried to remove Stalin’s human rights abuses and cult of personality from the USSR.

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**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-five-year-coma-challenge/705228/22 "2014-11-22T00:49:15Z")

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> [@Frylock](#):
>
> I know but I don’t understand why he lept to the conclusion that Eisenhower was dead.

> [@Sage\_Rat](#):
>
> No one would ever elect Nixon, because Nixon is a crooked, evil man. Ergo, Eisenhower must be dead, probably assassinated by Nixon.

> [@Frylock](#):
>
> Ahhh okay.

Plus he hadn’t been told yet that it was 20 years he’d been out. Just “quite a while.” So he probably assumes a couple years tops at that point.

> [@Wesley\_Clark](#):
>
> Maybe someone who fell into a coma in 1952 during Stalin’s personality cult and woke up in 1957 when Khrushchev had tried to remove Stalin’s human rights abuses and cult of personality from the USSR.

And how about, say, 1972-77 in China? Wake up after the end of the Cultural Revolution.

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**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\
**Post date:** [November 22, 2014, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-five-year-coma-challenge/705228/23 "2014-11-22T05:14:25Z")

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> [@panache45](#):
>
> August 7, 1940 - August 7, 1945 . . . in Hiroshima.
> 
> Go from a country at peace to a country defeated . . . and the bomb.

Japan was hardly at peace in 1940. The attacked China in 1937. They took over French Indochina in 1940.

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**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\
**Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-five-year-coma-challenge/705228/24 "2014-11-23T04:18:22Z")

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> [@OldGuy](#):
>
> Japan was hardly at peace in 1940. The attacked China in 1937. They took over French Indochina in 1940.

I suspect he meant it was peaceful inside Japan itself. No warfare or bombings inside the borders and any hint of such in the near future would have been met with heavy disbelief. A Japanese waking up like that inside his country in late 1945 would have been in for quite a shock.

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