Re: castaway
by -1- on January 17th, 2019, 9:18 pm
There is actually an experiential (by my own experience) explanation, but it covers only a dozen or so minutes, not days face down in the water.
My cousin once drowned. He was at the bottom of the lake for about five-ten minutes, when someone spotted him in the crowd in the water or on the shore. He was pulled out, his vital signs were gone. His uncle, my cousin, gave him CPR, and the guy coughed up some water, and lived for at least another 20 years after he was out of the deep water.
I went on a trip with the entire school, to hike in the mountains. We were on a clearing, eating lunch, when two boys started to play-wrestle. They were rolling on the grass. I screamed, "Little pile into a big one", and threw myself on top of them. About ten to twenty boys also threw themselves on the pile. (This was a well-known folklore game back then... not long after WWII ended, in poverty-stricken Eastern Europe, there were not many toys to play with.) I clearly remember how I became quickly the bottom boy in the pile, and I remember not being able to breathe in... then everything going blank in a blackness.
Next I remember I was face up on the grass, with nobody on top, boys just a little distance away, not being concerened about me.
!!!
I learned then that it's a survival tactic in mammals. Lose consciousness, and go into a deep metabolically lowered state, when the brain is deprived of oxygen. Then come back to life again, just to try and see if the conditions improved at all. If conditions improved, brain restarts functioning. If conditions didn't improve, it goes out of commission for good.