Yet another blow-to-the-head query

It doesn't take much to kill someone via a blow to the head - Natasha Richardson being a case in point.

Rather than them being hit on the head with something, could they be hit (as per your whacked from behind with a marble statue), fall and hit their head? That way you set up the plausibility because there's no way to know how hard their head has hit the floor.

I know there isn't any way to know how hard they were hit by someone else, but the image of a very angry man hitting someone from behind with a marble statue suggests they'd put all the force they could muster behind it, so I'd feel a bit cheated if the implication was the MC died and then they didn't.

With respect to the sound it makes, youtube is your friend

I agree with the bat counter. In addition, marble is a good substance, because it is not as hard and solid as many other things. Even with a large angry man doing the hitting, there is relatively little chance that it would kill, but it would make noise and look impressive.

As for the sound, you might smack a chunk of marble with a stick of wood. It wouldn't be exactly the same, but it would give you some idea.

BTW, there are many kinds of marble.

In my time in A&E I saw people survive the most outrageous injuries, and people die from the most seemingly insignificant. Assuming the blow itself does not cause serious physical damage (open fractures of the skull and such like) then what tends to kill is either gross swelling of the brain itself, or a ruptured blood vessel in the cranial cavity. If you avoid both of these scenarios then you will likely have a blinding headache for a while but survive.

So basically you can get away with pretty much anything you want. I'd avoid having piles of brains landing on the floor, but to be hit hard enough to knock you unconscious for a while without actually killing you is perfectly believable to someone who has experience of dealing with trauma. Whether that is true of people who don't have that experience is another matter, but it is amazing what people survive IRL.

Head wounds bleed - a lot. If you want something that looks fatal, but isn't, then you're going to want to emphasize the blood aspect. Seriously, it looks like a bucket load with even a minor injury, if the skin is broken.

As for the sound, I don't know about a statue hitting the head, but slipping and hitting your head on a garage floor sounds like a loud clap or a door slamming.

Who do you need to fool?

But a nice whack to the head, lots of blood, unconsciousness is the start. Then have him/her be somewhere very, very cold. The cold will start to depress the breathing and heart rate, and stop the bleeding. Color will become pale.

There's a reason why medical people say that if you're found dead and cold, you're only really dead when you're warm and dead. Cold can fool a lot of trained people.

Have him transported to the hospital, doctor (who is an idiot) looks quickly, calls him, and then he's left in a room waiting for the morgue pickup. During that wait, he warms up enough to become conscious and walks out.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

jclarkdawe said:

Who do you need to fool?

But a nice whack to the head, lots of blood, unconsciousness is the start. Then have him/her be somewhere very, very cold. The cold will start to depress the breathing and heart rate, and stop the bleeding. Color will become pale.

There's a reason why medical people say that if you're found dead and cold, you're only really dead when you're warm and dead. Cold can fool a lot of trained people.

Have him transported to the hospital, doctor (who is an idiot) looks quickly, calls him, and then he's left in a room waiting for the morgue pickup. During that wait, he warms up enough to become conscious and walks out.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

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You'd be hard pressed to find an idiot doctor who pronounces the patient dead without checking for breathing or pulses. It's true the patient isn't dead until he's warm and dead. Has nothing to do with the heart rate or respirations, just that the brain can tolerate and survive anoxia for long time during hypothermia. The bleeding is worse, not better with the hypothermia. Regardless, the facetious trick will never work on anyone, but the dumbest of the dumb. The whole scenario of MC faking death strikes me as highly implausible.

Victorian England relied on smell to make sure. No putrification, not dead. Any extended unconsciousness with depressed breathing and heart rate and you're good to go. Head injury with some internal swelling can cause this.

Extreme hypothermia (body temperatures in the 60 and 70 degree range) can cause ventricular tachycardia, but are just as likely to depress blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. With depressed heart rate, bleeding slows down drastically, combined with freezing/cold causing fluid sluggishness, makes clotting a bit easier. Survival chances are this point are very poor, but not unknown.

I said idiot doctor because these cases are hard to call without really checking. Had a drowning victim with hypothermia that had no vitals we could find when we pulled him out. About halfway to the hospital got faint signs of life, that the hospital couldn't keep going as the patient warmed.

Death is called wrong every so often, maybe once every five years. Improbable, but it has happened.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

msforster said:

*coughs gently*

I did say this before, but this is a pre-industrial society. They have healers, but the really skilled ones are in a special order and aren't present for this "death." My MC is a witness, but not a trained healer.

Basically, I just need to fool my MC and the reader. (I'm mostly worried about the reader, tbh.) The character has already arranged to be declared officially dead and buried. They also have a way of faking a deathlike state, all they need is a convenient excuse. Like getting hit on the head.

Click to expand...

When you bleed enough your blood pressure begins to drop. One of your body's responses to this is to shut down peripheral vessels. It's perfectly feasible to not have a pulse in your wrist, but still have a heart beat if you've bled a lot.

It would take a long time to recover from though as you'll be needing to replace all that blood with something.

Interestingly though when I was an ALS (Advanced Life Support) instructor everyone was very keen to quote a study that showed a terrifying percentage of skilled clinicians were often unable to find even the most central of pulses. I forget the exact figures, but it was something like 50%. SO basically if your healer doesn't have a EC(K?)G or even a stethoscope then they can be forgiven for not finding evidence of a heartbeat when it was faint.

You still need an idiot healer to pass for dead. Even if the character is in shock with no detectable peripheral pulses and shallow respiration. Unlikely he'll walk out from the unresuscitated shock, but the question is about intentionally passing for dead. To be dead you have to be brain dead, regardless of the vital signs. Not in shock, not cold, not playing possum. Even before the monitors, or the stethoscopes, all a person needed to do is to hold a mirror to check for breathing and feel the carotids. If in doubt check the eyes for reflexes, cause no one can fake these.

Yogi in India can slow down the heart and respirations to barely detectable vitals through years of vigorous training. They still can't pass for dead. Every one I've heard of faking their death had disappeared under mysterious circumstances with no dead body found. And the reason is simple IMO: once you have a body to examine the ruse is blown.
Alternatively, your character can conspire with a pronouncing physician, or the healer, which also had been done to death (sorry for the pun), but allows some credibility to the whole scenario.

Hope it helps.

Perhaps the healer just starts to check the "body" - feels for a pulse and doesn't find one - then just as he/she is pulling out a mirror to check for breathing, they are called away or there is some other emergency and everyone runs (or is lured) away, leaving the "dead body" behind.

I'd imagine the sound could vary between the door being slammed sound mentioned above, to watermelon vs baseball bat.

Does anyone trained need to see the character? that might be the easiest way to have him pass for dead.