Premature burial
Animals and humans may be buried alive intentionally (as a form of torture, murder or execution), voluntarily (as a stunt, with the intention to escape), accidentally (e.g. under rubble due to a disaster or collapse of a building or cave), or unintentionally (in the mistaken belief that the living person is in fact dead).
Physics and biology
If interment (burial) is not reversed within a short period, it rapidly leads to death, usually through one or more of the following: asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation, or (in cold climates) exposure. Although human survival may be briefly extended in some environments as body metabolism slows, in the absence of air, loss of consciousness will take place within 2 to 4 minutes and death by asphyxia within 5 to 15 minutes. Permanent brain damage through oxygen starvation is likely after a few minutes, even if the person is rescued before death. If fresh air is accessible in some way, survival is more likely to be on the order of days (in the absence of serious injury).
A person trapped with air to breathe can thus last a considerable time, and burial has been used as a very cruel method of execution, lasting sufficiently long for the victim to comprehend and imagine every stage of what is happening (being trapped in total darkness with very limited or no movement) and to experience great psychological and physical torment including panic and extreme claustrophobia.
Unintentional
At least one report of accidental burial goes back to the 13th century. Revivals have been triggered by dropped coffins, grave robbers, embalming, and attempted dissections. Fearing premature burial, George Washington, on his deathbed, made his servants promise not to bury him until three days after his death.[citation needed] Patients in the 1990s have been documented as accidentally being bagged, trapped in a steel box, or sent to the morgue.[1]
Count Karnice-Karnicki of Belgium patented a rescue device in 1897, which mechanically detected chest movement to trigger a flag, lamp, bell, and fresh air. Along similar lines, in Great Britain various systems were developed to save those buried alive, including breakable glass panels in the coffin lid and pulley systems which would raise flags on the surface (without air supply, as in the Italian model, this naturally would be useless without vigilant guards above ground). In 1995, an Italian coffin manufacturer introduced a model with a beeper and intercom system. These are all examples of Safety coffins.
As a means of execution
In ancient Rome a Vestal Virgin convicted of violating her vows of celibacy was "buried alive" by being sealed in a cave with a small amount of bread and water, ostensibly so that the goddess Vesta could save her should she have been truly innocent.
According to Christian tradition, a number of saints were martyred this way, including Saint Castulus[2] and Saint Vitalis of Milan.[3]
The two younger sons of Guru Gobind Singh (last Guru of the Sikhs), aged between seven and nine years, were buried alive in a brick-mortar masonry by the Muslim kings of India as a punishment for refusing to embrace Islam.
In medieval Italy, unrepentant murderers were buried alive. This practice is referred to in passing in canto XIX of Dante's Inferno.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries in feudal Russia, the same mode of execution was known as "the pit" and used against women who were condemned for killing their husbands [1]. The last known case of this occurred in 1740.
Japanese soldiers buried alive Chinese civilians and captured prisoners of war during the Nanking Massacre.[4]
Voluntary burial
On rare occasions some people actually voluntarily arranged to be buried alive, reportedly as a demonstration of their controversial ability to survive such an event. In one story taking place around 1840, an Indian fakir is said to have been buried in the presence of an British military officer and under the supervision of the local maharajah, by being placed in a sealed bag in a wooden box in a vault. The vault was then interred, earth was flattened over the site, and crops were sown over the place for a very long time. The whole location was guarded day and night to prevent fraud, and the site was dug up twice in a ten-month period to verify the burial, before the fakir was finally dug out and slowly revived in the presence of another officer. The fakir said that his only fear during his "wonderful sleep" was to be eaten by underground worms. This event is highly suspicious as, according to current medical science, it is not possible for a human to survive for a period of ten months without food, water, and air. [2]
Since many who have tried this feat died as a result, being voluntarily buried alive is not legal in India.
In 2003, performer David Blaine underwent a burial within a tank of water, which allowed for above-ground viewing, for a duration of seven days. [3] Later on Blaine underwent a 44-day isolation, hanging in midair in a 7ft by 7ft by 3ft Perspex box in front of a live random street audience without food.[4]
Being Buried Alive (2005, 2007): A performance staged several times by art group monochrom. People in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto had the opportunity to be buried alive in a real coffin for fifteen minutes. As a framework program monochrom members held lectures about the history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history of "buried alive".
Myths and legends
In an urban legend circulated by e-mail, The Bad Old Days claims that the English idiom “saved by the bell” originated in medieval rope systems to alert surface dwellers in the case of accidental burial. In fact, the phrase originated in the sport of boxing, and there is no evidence of a widespread fear of live burial in the Middle Ages.[citation needed] Likewise, the term “dead ringer” has its origin in horse racing, and the unrelated phrase “graveyard shift” arose in the 20th century.[5]
The popular TV show, MythBusters, tested the myth to see if someone could survive being buried alive for two hours before being rescued. One host, Jamie Hynneman, tried it. However, due to the coffin bending under the stress of the dirt used to cover it, the experiment was prematurely aborted because of the danger of testing the myth.
In popular culture
- Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story by this name
- The film The Candy Snatchers deals with a trio of criminals who kidnap an heiress and bury her alive as a means of holding her for ransom.
- In the film Sling Blade, the character Karl tells the story of his newborn brother’s premature burial.
- In Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill Vol. 2, Bill's brother, Budd gives Uma Thurman’s character, The Bride a “Texas Funeral”. She survives and escapes using her training from the great kung-fu master, Pai Mei.
- In the Coen Brothers’ film Blood Simple, the character Ray (John Getz) begins to bury his boss Marty (Dan Hedaya) under the pretense that Marty is, in fact, dead. However, after a startling physical confrontation, Ray continues to bury him alive, with success.
- Featured in multiple episodes of the television show CSI (most notably those directed by Quentin Tarantino).
- In the TV show Smallville, Chloe Sullivan is buried alive in the field, but is found by Clark Kent before suffocating to death.
- In one of the episodes in the fourth season of "Alias", Sydney Bristow is buried alive due to her mission of working with a double agent being compromised. She eventually loses consciousness due to lack of air, but is fortunately rescued when Marshall Flinkman shows up at the cemetery and digs her up in time.
- In a second-season episode of "Bones", Bones and Hodgins are buried alive by a serial kidnapper and are able to extend their survival time through scientific tricks and quick thinking.
- In the film Casino, Nicky Santoro and his brother Dominick are severely beaten and buried alive in a cornfield in Indiana.
- The movie Oxygen is based upon a rich businessman’s wife being buried alive by a man who demands a ransom in exchange for telling the location of the burial to the husband.
- In the daytime soap opera All My Children Greg Madden is buried alive in a coffin in a public park with an air tube & an ample supply of bottled water and energy bars for food, as he was meant simply to be tortured until revealing a secret. He does not die of asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation, or exposure (despite the fact that the coffin began to fill with water after a heavy rain) but rather is killed when an earthquake causes his coffin to cave in and crush him to death.
- In the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives, Vivian Alamain buried Carly Manning alive, and would taunt her via a speaker system.
- In the daytime soap opera Passions, Sheridan Crane was voluntarily buried alive as part of an effort to draw out the members of a French drug cartel that tried to have her killed. Her coffin had a power source, lighting, and oxygen, but her survival was imperiled when everyone else involved in the plan was held prisoner by the cartel. She was ultimately rescued, even though her coffin had been filled in with concrete, and her recovery was heralded as a Christmas miracle.
- On Law & Order April Troost buries her deformed baby alive.
- In one episode of Monk entitled "Mr. Monk vs. the Cobra," Monk was buried alive in a coffin, but he's found before he actually suffocates.
- The Hungarian movie Simon Mágus features a duel between Simon and a French magician, consisting of both being buried alive for three days.
- In a Tales from the Crypt comic, the narrator is buried alive, despite the fact that twice before he had arisen during previous funerals. He has a phone installed, but it is to no avail since all lines are cut during World War II.
- The 1990 film '83 Hours 'Til Dawn' is based on the 1968 true crime in which Barbara Jane Mackle was kidnapped and buried alive.
- A two hour episode of the television series Las Vegas featured Delinda Deline being buried alive to convince her father Ed to rob his own casino.
- In the Israeli show HaShir Shelanu (Our Song), the last episode of season 2 has Zohar buried alive by his murderers; they think they have killed him and attempt to dispose of the body but he wakes up after they leave.
- In the Black Sabbath song "Buried Alive".
- Otep's song Buried Alive is on the House of Secrets album
- At the end of the 1988 film The Vanishing, the male protagonist Rex Hofman is buried alive; however, in the 1993 remake, he escapes.
- In the Lost episode "Exposé", the characters Nikki and Paulo are buried alive. They were merely paralyzed from Medusa Spider bites, but were presumed dead.
- In the CSI episodes "Grave Danger Part 1 and Part 2" <5x23 and 5x24>, the character Nick Stokes is buried alive in the two-part season five finale, directed by Quentin Tarantino. After being eaten alive by fire ants, he puts his gun to his chin. The CSI team locate him, but find that the perspex box is on top of C4 explosive charges connected to pressure switches. This is overcome by the team, and Nick is rescued.
- In Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” the enemy of Montrésor, Fortunato, is walled up in his catacombs.
- A major plot point in The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe.
- In Sophocles' Antigone, the character of Antigone is sentenced to execution by being placed in a cave and having the doors covered with stones.
- Siouxsie and the Banshees' song Premature Burial from their 1979 album Join Hands
- In the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game and anime/manga, there is a Spell Card named Premature Burial. The artwork on the card depicts an un-dead man with his arm outstretched out of the ground (The Japanese art also depicts a red cross looming over the man, the English art depicting a magical circle with a flash of light in the middle)
- In the 1980s series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," one story involves a woman sent to prison for murder. While there, she befriends the prison morgue worker, and they concoct a plan to hide her in the coffin of the next inmate who dies, with the morgue worker digging her up later so she could escape. The night that happens, the woman sneaks into the coffin and is buried, and after waiting a long time strikes a match to see the body with her, and sees that it's the morgue worker.
- In "Jack in the Box", an episode of British crime drama Jonathan Creek, a man takes an overdose of sleeping pills and then seals himself up behind a wall in a locked bomb-shelter.
- In the TV series Heroes, the immortal Adam Monroe was buried alive in an unmarked grave, doomed to spend the rest of eternity trapped there.
- In the opera and succeeding play/musical Aida, both Aida and her lover, Radames, were buried alive together in a tomb under Egypt, their conviction being treason.
- In the anime/manga Inuyasha, a holy man named Hakushin is buried alive to save his people. However, he longs for life in this last moments; the villain Naraku uses this to sway Hakushin to his side.
- In the TV series Mission Impossible, Cinnamon Carter played by Barabara Bain, one of the regular nearly invincible regulars was subjected to confinement by one of the enemy as the chink in the armor of the Impossible Mission group.
- In the popular British soap opera Eastenders, Tanya Branning buried her husband Max Branning because he commited adultery with another woman.