{"id":479,"date":"2010-01-27T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T21:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2013-06-21T21:11:25","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T04:11:25","slug":"how-to-survive-being-buried-alive-in-a-coffin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/how-to-survive-being-buried-alive-in-a-coffin\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Survive Being Buried Alive in a Coffin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> how to survive being buried alive in a coffin.\u00a0 Yesterday, I posted an article on taphophobia<\/a> and I got an email from a reader wondering if I could write-up an article on the best ways to actually get out of a coffin, if you happen to find yourself buried alive in one.\u00a0 So here goes.<\/p>\n

First, DON’T PANIC!\u00a0 Seriously, panicking will drastically reduce the time you have to work yourself out of this jam.\u00a0 You’ll use up all your oxygen quite quickly in this state and you likely don’t have a lot of time to start with.\u00a0 Typically you could survive for one or two hours before using up your oxygen, as long as you don’t panic.\u00a0 If you happen to be good at meditating, you could last quite a bit longer, such as the case of this man who survived nearly two hours on the air trapped in his helmet<\/a>.\u00a0 But of course in his case, he had people digging him out.\u00a0 If you don’t think anyone is coming to dig you out, then putting yourself in a deep meditative state probably wouldn’t help you be able to extradite yourself from the situation; this would only prolong the inevitable.\u00a0 Now try to relax yourself as much as possible.\u00a0 The more relaxed you are, the longer you have to get yourself out and the clearer you will think.<\/p>\n

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Now, from here there are a few things you might do depending on your apparent situation. First, check to see what you have on you.\u00a0 Increasingly these days, people are burying other people with their cell phones<\/a> for some so that they can call them, at least while the battery lasts.\u00a0 Personally, I think this is a little more depressing than anything, calling and never having them answer.\u00a0 But this is good if your relatives did this.\u00a0 If you’ve got this, flip it on and hope you have a signal and good battery life.\u00a0 Once you get a hold of someone and you know they are coming, practice meditating and relaxing as much as possible to conserve oxygen.\u00a0 Talking to them at length is not a good idea.\u00a0 This will use up a lot of oxygen.\u00a0 Make sure they know this is not a hoax and they are coming with everything from a shovel to the National Guard, then hang up and relax.\u00a0 One simple meditation anyone can master is to simply repeat some word over and over again in your head slowly; might I suggest “Vacca Foeda”.<\/p>\n

Don’t have a cell phone?\u00a0 If your relatives were cheap, they buried you in a nice flimsy coffin.\u00a0 This is nearly the best case scenario.\u00a0 If you get out of this, you’ll be forever thankful for the cheap construction of your presumed final resting place.\u00a0 Given the weight of the 6 feet or so of earth above you, your coffin might have already caved in one place or another.\u00a0 This is a good thing.\u00a0 If this has happened, you are literally almost home free (unless you are really short, then you have a bit more work to do).\u00a0 Odds are, considering you are still alive in your coffin with limited air supply, you weren’t buried that long ago.\u00a0 So the earth should be quite loose.<\/p>\n

Now,\u00a0 take off your shirt most of the way by pulling it up over your head so it comes off inside out, but doesn’t come all the way off (think hockey fight); so that your shirt is basically now just inside out over your head.\u00a0 Now tie off the shirt at the top so it is sealed.\u00a0 At this point, you’ve basically made a “bag” out of your shirt that your head is now in.\u00a0 This is to help protect you from breathing in dirt.<\/p>\n

If your coffin hasn’t already been breached by the weight of the earth above, use your legs to kick an opening somewhere in the coffin.\u00a0 Generally, the best place will be around the middle of the coffin which is usually the weakest point in terms of being able to hold weight.\u00a0 Best to keep your head and torso close to the opening to make sure you don’t accidentally get stuck in the coffin where you can’t move around because of all the dirt.<\/p>\n

If you are buried in a typical cheap coffin, it shouldn’t actually be that hard to breach as the weight of the earth above will already be bowing the top board quite a bit; it is even somewhat likely that the earth has already breached the cheap coffin somewhere, without need of your help;\u00a0 if you feel dirt in the coffin, thank your lucky stars because the hardest part is accomplished already.\u00a0\u00a0 If not, you’ll want to kick has hard as you can to try to get the board flexing.\u00a0 You won’t be able to move the board much because of the weight of the earth, but that’s fine.\u00a0 You mainly just want to make that weight of the earth work for you by kicking the board and hopefully having the weight of the earth flex the board down more every time until it breaches.<\/p>\n

Once you have successfully breached the coffin, use your legs and hands to push the earth coming in towards the edges of the coffin.\u00a0 Fill the coffin as much as possible with dirt, packing it in, without losing the ability to be able to get your head and torso out of the hole, head first.<\/p>\n

Once you’ve packed in as much dirt as you can, simply get your head near the breach and use all your strength to stand up with your arms straight up; you may need to make the breach bigger as you do so, but this shouldn’t be too hard with a cheap coffin.\u00a0 As you are doing this, try to get one leg up out of the coffin so you can further push yourself up by standing on the outside parameter edge of the coffin lid.<\/p>\n

If you are buried around 6 feet deep and are anywhere from 5 feet tall or above, you should be able to not only have your arms break the surface at this point, but also have your head break the surface due to the fact that you pushed a foot or two of earth into your coffin.\u00a0 Now getting yourself completely out may take a little time without help, but considering the earth should be fairly lose, should be one of the easier things you just had to do.<\/p>\n

Once your head has broken the surface and you can freely breathe, feel free to let yourself panic a bit if you need to and scream your head off, perhaps cackling madly; I mean, you are about 95% there at managing to escape being buried alive.\u00a0 I think a good healthy manic mad cackle is in order.\u00a0 Go ahead;\u00a0 I’ll wait…\u00a0 Now that that’s done, if no one has come to your rescue, go ahead and worm yourself out as best you can using your arms to pull yourself out, wriggling your body as you go to further loosen the earth holding\u00a0 you in.<\/p>\n

Now you might be saying to yourself, “My relatives aren’t cheap, they’ll bury me in a fancy stainless steel coffin”.\u00a0 Well, I’m sorry to say, you are probably screwed then.\u00a0 They wasted a lot of money on an expensive coffin for what they thought was just a carcass and now not only was it a waste of resources, it will spell your ultimate demise.\u00a0 The best you can do in this case is to try to tap loudly on the metal with some piece of medal such as a belt buckle or the like.\u00a0 Then hope someone is still hanging around your grave site.\u00a0 This isn’t totally unlikely considering you couldn’t have been there long considering you still have air to breathe.\u00a0 Still probably best not to yell at this point as it would quickly diminish your oxygen supply and probably cause you to start panicking.\u00a0 Best to tap as loud as you can in some pattern, so someone on the surface knows you are still alive.\u00a0 If you have nothing to tap with, feel free to panic and yell now.\u00a0 You are probably going to die anyways, might as well go out losing your mind (really, better than going out sane as asphyxiation is not pleasant from all accounts).<\/p>\n

If your family was really nice and wealthy, they’ll have buried you in a “safety coffin”.\u00a0 These coffins are equipped with means of letting yourself out safely or means of notifying the outside world you are in fact still alive.\u00a0 In either case, these tend to always come with some sort of lighting device that doesn’t consume oxygen, like a flashlight.\u00a0 Use it and you’ll likely find whatever is needed to allow you to alert the outside world that your death was greatly exaggerated.\u00a0 Note, it is generally not a good idea to light a match or a lighter if you have one.\u00a0 Not only might you catch yourself on fire, but you’ll use all the oxygen in the coffin extremely quickly this way.<\/p>\n

Now, if you’ve gotten to this point and still haven’t gotten out, you should continue trying the above until you start to feel yourself asphyxiate.\u00a0 At this point, you have two choices.\u00a0 First, continue on as before and eventuality succumb to the lack of oxygen.\u00a0 This is pretty much universally thought of as a pretty horrible way to die as you’ve got plenty of air you’ll be breathing in filling your lungs, but little to no oxygen.\u00a0 It’s a very slow way to die and quite unpleasant from all accounts.\u00a0 Second, you could always try to end it a little quicker.\u00a0 If you’ve got a pen or something handy, feel free to stab yourself in the throat.\u00a0 One quick thrust to your carotid artery<\/a> (either on the left or right of your neck, pick one!) and you’ll be dead in no time.\u00a0 No pen or any other device to bleed yourself with?\u00a0 Well, you’ve probably got teeth at least…\u00a0 As this article has turned a bit morbid *ha morbid*, I’ll just say, “use your imagination”.\u00a0 Don’t have a good imagination?\u00a0 Think wrists.<\/p>\n

There is of course also always the chance of divine intervention.\u00a0 Even if you aren’t normally a “praying man”, might I suggest that in this case, you’ve got absolutely nothing to lose in becoming one, and who knows maybe even something to gain even if things don’t work out. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 I’d recommend avoiding offering God anything if he’ll get you out though.\u00a0 People do this all the time and it makes no sense.\u00a0 I mean really, if there is a God, what could you possibly offer him that he doesn’t already have or couldn’t get himself?\u00a0 It would be like trying to come up with gift ideas for Bill Gates, but times a bagillion.\u00a0 Better to just ask out of mercy or grace for help and possibly forgiveness of any wrongs you might have done in your lifetime (just in case).\u00a0 He might feel sorry for you and help it end quicker than normal asphyxiation or help you get out; either is win\/win \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Bottom line, what you want to try to do is some how some way make an opening in the coffin large enough for you to fit through.\u00a0 You do that and you have a good shot at making it out of this alive.\u00a0 Once you have an opening, unless you are a midget, getting out or at least getting your head above the surface, will literally be as easy as standing up.\u00a0 If it is raining hard around the time of your burial, things could be more difficult of course.\u00a0 But by trapping as much earth as possible in the coffin, you should still be able to stand up and break your head free of the surface at the least; from this point, if it’s sufficiently muddy, you may require someone’s aid to extradite yourself the rest of the way.\u00a0 But at least if you die this way, it won’t be of asphyxiation.\u00a0 So you’ve improved your situation at the least.\u00a0 Good luck!<\/p>\n

Now may I echo the sentiment that Lord Chesterfield made to his daughter-in-law in a letter on March 16, 1769:<\/p>\n