Just thinking about how long it took to realise there was a problem with Gene Hackman, and that could easily happen to me if I somehow disabled myself, could be nobody has reason to check on me for weeks. Is there a good service that will send a message to your family if you don’t access it for 72 hours or so, or some other system to make sure if you go completely inactive somebody will be informed?
You could become a reliable customer at a local eatery.
The simplest thing is to have regular contact with a family member. My parents’ neighbor spoke with his late wife’s niece every evening so when he didn’t call her one day last year, she called the police for a welfare check. Sadly, they found him deceased. But at least too much time hadn’t elapsed.
There’s this kind of thing:
You can have an arrangement with a neighbor, as in this New York Times article.
She had been lonely every day for the past quarter of a century, she said, ever since her daughter and husband had died of cancer, three months apart. Mrs. Ito still had a stepdaughter, but they had grown apart over the decades, exchanging New Year’s cards or occasional greetings on holidays.
So Mrs. Ito asked a neighbor in the opposite building for a favor. Could she, once a day, look across the greenery separating their apartments and gaze up at Mrs. Ito’s window?
Every evening around 6 p.m., before retiring for the night, Mrs. Ito closed the paper screen in the window. Then in the morning, after her alarm woke her at 5:40 a.m., she slid the screen back open.
“If it’s closed,” Mrs. Ito told her neighbor, “it means I’ve died.”
Mrs. Ito felt reassured when the neighbor agreed, so she began sending the woman gifts of pears every summer to occasionally glance her way.
Dead Man’s Switch will send messages to your choice of recipients if you don’t check in regularly
Once set, you’ll get a message asking you to check in by simply clicking a link. If you don’t check in before 24 hours, your custom message will be sent to your recipients.
I use this every time Mrs. Watering goes out of town for more than a few days.
ETA: Dang. Ninja’d.
There’s something very sad about that. It could be a short opera.
(Actually, it’s something that occasionally occurs to me, as a solitary person nearer 80 than 70, but I think daily reminders would very soon prove old).
I think about this often. It’s just one of the many reasons I have decided not to retire just yet. At least if I don’t show up to work someone will notice quickly.
I have no immediate family left and do not interact with my cousins on a daily basis so it could be some time before anyone noticed.
Perhaps someone would notice if I haven’t picked up accumulated mail?
I don’t think I could do one of those daily email notification set ups.
I’d forget one too many times and emergency services would soon tire of that ineptitude.
There’s another sad story elsewhere in that New York Times article.
The first time it happened, or at least the first time it drew national attention, the corpse of a 69-year-old man living near Mrs. Ito had been lying on the floor for three years, without anyone noticing his absence. His monthly rent and utilities had been withdrawn automatically from his bank account. Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.
For me, I don’t think they would get old per se, but I’m afraid I would forget to notify them when I am away on a trip, especially if it’s outside the country. There are already too many things to think about when traveling, and I always forget things.
A similar thing happened to a woman in the UK
When she was found, she was surrounded by presents she had wrapped for Christmas, so she had at least some social connections (unless they were intended for charity), yet she went unnoticed for 3 more than 3 years.
This would be my fear. I travel out of the country frequently and I am certain that I would forget that among the endless things that are necessary to take care of.
For several years now I post a “Weekly Check-In” on Facebook every Monday morning. I started doing this a few years ago after I made a casual comment about an extended hospital stay and one of my nieces basically tore me a new one for not letting the family know about my health problems. When I started doing this the post was primarily news of doctor appointments and health updates, but as my health issues have normalized (for someone my age and past issues) they’ve become more like semi-rambling narratives about my life and my cat.
One indicator that someone may be incapacitated is if their water usage stops. With many municipal water systems going to continuous electronic monitoring, it seems like they could have a notification sent out when water use is uncharacteristically low. Typically, the notifications are built around notifying you of leaks or very high usage, but I’m sure it could also have notifications for extremely low usage for cases like this. There are also separate water monitoring and shutoff devices, like Fl*me (misspelled to foil spammers, replace the * with a u). These devices can shutoff water automatically in a leak. They may also have ways to send out notifications for very low usage. Relatives could also have the monitoring app so they could check water usage whenever they were concerned.
In our building (55+ joint), every apartment has a plastic lever attached to the entry door. Someone goes around every night, and flips the lever so it rests against the door jamb. If the door is opened, the lever falls, which tells the staff person that someone has exited/entered the apartment within the past 24 hours. If it is still in place, they knock and then enter with a master key to check on the occupant. Simple but effective.
The types of medical alarm systems (phone landline based) that we got for my parents and my father in law in their respective last years at home had an optional dead man‘s switch feature (in additional to the standard active alarm by wireless pendant). If activated, failure to press a button on the box within a certain period prompted a phone call and, if that was not answered, a call to the designated neighbours and, if that was not answered, a visit by the response car of the service (staffed by the local social service charity that supplied the alarm system).
But I can see how, in some parts of the US, an unanticipated visit by that response team might endanger them. I read about instances here in Germany of firefighters (the people called for opening doors with extreme prejudice) occasionally breaking down apartment doors of seniors who were forgetful and hard of hearing. Might be dangerous if said seniors are armed.
The thing about many of these smaller dead-man-switch services is that you have no real guarantee that the service provider would be solvent and effective enough to actually do their job by the time you die.
If you regularly use Google services (Gmail, Chrome logged in, Photos, etc.), they offer an inactive account manager program (free) that will both notify people you select and also give them access to certain parts of your account (if you want) if you don’t use any of the services for X amount of time: About Inactive Account Manager - Google Account Help
You can leave a message there of your choosing. Mine is something like “If you’re getting this message, it’s been X time since I was online. This is highly unusual and probably means I’m dead.” You can set up what they can access (if anything, or they can just be notified).
EDIT: A significant downside of this is that the minimum inactivity period seems to be 3 months. By then your neighbors would’ve probably noticed the stench.
Apple also has a digital legacy program, but as far as I can tell, that won’t proactively notify your contacts after inactivity… it just lets them access your stuff after you’re gone, but only if they can provide a death certificate. It won’t let them know that you’ve been gone for months, the way Google would.
I’m quite happy having an Apple Watch on now. I’m 77 and still riding mcycle and the watch will pick up any crash or fall ( had one of those when day out of hosp ).
I was out cold in the kitchen. If I’d had the Apple Watch on maybe my burns from the pasta would have been less. If the watch triggers it gives you 30 seconds to respond or it call emergency. I picked up mine for $60 Aus with GPS and cell and 44mm face. Apple Watch Series 6 Review (2025) | Garage Gym Reviews
Some small damage but it works fine. The watch is fun and informative. I have 8 monitoring apps on my wrist that I use a few times a day. Heart beat, O2 saturation, wind, weather, exercise there is just a ton of things it can do but best of all…if I fall or in a crash - it will alert authorities AND designated loved ones immediately.
You can put a SIM in it but as long as phone is nearby it works through the phone
Post your Wordle score every day with family and friends. They can send someone to check on you if you don’t post.
Gmail has a schedule send option which you could use for this purpose if you don’t mind managing it yourself. Compose an email and click the up arrow in the Send button to access “Schedule send”
Set the date for the next day or two. Then before it’s sent, change the date to another few days out. You can find your scheduled emails over in the actions on the left side. You may need to expand “More” to see it:
As long as you remember and don’t mind resetting the date, then this could work to inform people if you were incapacitated.
As for the contents of the email, I might recommend making it somewhat casual since it could easily go out simply because you forgot to reset the date. Perhaps something like “Hi. This is my automatic notification of non-activity. I probably just forgot to reset it and I’m probably okay, but just in case, please give me a call.” That way people don’t get too scared if it’s just a false alarm.