When the weather turns warm, in some cases, that sealed casket becomes a pressure cooker and bursts from accumulated gases and fluids of the decomposing body. The next time relatives visit grandma, they could find her rotting remains oozing from her tomb in the form of a nauseating thick fluid.
Exploding caskets
Once a body is placed in a sealed casket, the gases from decomposing cannot escape anymore. As the pressure increases, the casket becomes like an overblown balloon. However, it's not going to explode like one. But it can spill out unpleasant fluids and gasses inside the casket.
The body then starts to putrefy; soft tissues break down into a liquid and microbes ferment the body's sugars, releasing gases like methane, hydrogen sulphide and ammonia in the process. These gases can build up inside a decomposing corpse and sometimes, if the pressure becomes too high, they can rupture the stomach.
We have heard this a few times and the answer is no. Unless a pacemaker has made its way into the cremation chamber, then the body will not explode under the heat.
The body does not feel pain during cremation because the person is no longer alive. When a person dies, their brain stops sending signals to the body. This means that the person cannot feel pain or any other sensation.
Hindus believe that the soul of the deceased stays attached to its body even after its demise, and by cremating the body, it can be set free. As a final act, a close family member forcefully strikes the burning corpse's skull with a stick as if to crack it open and release the soul.
If you are looking at a long-lasting ground casket, pick a steel or metal casket. If the grave site is low on water content or moisture, metal caskets are known to last even longer, over five decades. Under favorable weather conditions, experts say that metal caskets may even last more than that – up to 80 years.
For the most part, however, if a non-embalmed body was viewed one year after burial, it would already be significantly decomposed, the soft tissues gone, and only the bones and some other body parts remaining.
It is natural to wonder what happens when you die. From a physical standpoint, death occurs when the body's vital functions stop entirely, including respiration (breathing), heart function, and, finally, brain function.
For approximately the first 3 hours after death the body will be flaccid (soft) and warm. After about 3-8 hours is starts to stiffen, and from approximately 8-36 hours it will be stiff and cold. The body becomes stiff because of a range of chemical changes in the muscle fibres after death.
What's really returned to you is the person's skeleton. Once you burn off all the water, soft tissue, organs, skin, hair, cremation container/casket, etc., what you're left with is bone. When complete, the bones are allowed to cool to a temperature that they can be handled and are placed into a processing machine.
If the coffin is sealed in a very wet, heavy clay ground, the body tends to last longer because the air is not getting to the deceased. If the ground is light, dry soil, decomposition is quicker. Generally speaking, a body takes 10 or 15 years to decompose to a skeleton.
By 50 years in, your tissues will have liquefied and disappeared, leaving behind mummified skin and tendons. Eventually these too will disintegrate, and after 80 years in that coffin, your bones will crack as the soft collagen inside them deteriorates, leaving nothing but the brittle mineral frame behind.
In a closed casket funeral, the casket remains closed during the viewing and the funeral service. Family members and guests are not able to see the body, and some prefer this option for a variety of reasons.
Medical schools in the early 1800s bought cadavers for anatomical study and dissection, and some people supplied the demand by digging up fresh corpses. Gravesites reaching six feet helped prevent farmers from accidentally plowing up bodies.
Unless a casket is made of metal and sealed with a material that won't degrade, bugs will eventually get inside.
Burying a body 6 feet deep may have been a way to stop animals from smelling the decomposing bodies. A body buried 6 feet deep would also be safe from accidental disturbances like plowing.
A study carried out by researchers at Australia's first 'body farm' also found that corpses can move during the decay process. And it's more than just a twitch. They found that movement occurred in all limbs after death, including in the advanced decomposition stages.
Your heart no longer beats, your breath stops and your brain stops functioning. Studies suggest that brain activity may continue several minutes after a person has been declared dead. Still, brain activity isn't the same as consciousness or awareness. It doesn't mean that a person is aware that they've died.
3-5 days after death — the body starts to bloat and blood-containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose. 8-10 days after death — the body turns from green to red as the blood decomposes and the organs in the abdomen accumulate gas. Several weeks after death — nails and teeth fall out.
A toe tag is a piece of cardboard attached with string to the big toe of a deceased individual in a morgue. It is used for identification purposes, allowing the mortician, coroner, law enforcement, and others involved in the death process to correctly identify the corpse.
Children (usually below the age of 5), too, are buried as it is believed their soul has not stayed in the body long enough to develop any attachment.
The body parts that do not burn are bone fragments. Teeth usually burn during cremation, but not entirely. Teeth are made up of four different kinds of tissue—the soft tissue (pulp) is burned during cremation, while the toughest tissue (enamel) may survive the cremation.