Hey, guys! Guess what?
Science can freeze you into suspended animation state! When I heard this, I got really excited about settling into a windowed capsule and waiting for enough time to pass that I could come out the other end minus one family and plus one Sapphic relationship with a purple haired Cyclops.
But, my dog’s totally coming with.
(Paid too much money for your surgery to let you just die here in 2014.)
Unfortunately, I had to halt my bag-packing halfway through the 30 second news clip – when I learned that this isn’t for sci-fi funsies and fastforwarding Futurama style after all. The technology’s actually meant to bring people back from permanent death. I realize that thing I just said may sound like a tautology – but it’s kind of not. With the research they’ve done, people declared dead sometimes still have enough cellular stuff going on that they could be saved, given the right means and enough time. Among those means would include – you guessed it – suspended animation. What it does is cool down – and in effect – slow down the body’s processes enough for doctors to get in and do what they need to do. And that involves replacing your blood with a saline solution that gets pumped to the to the top priority organs first – like your heart. And brain.
And courage.
And Toto.
During this time, what’s going on? You’re dead, dude. They do the damn thang, pump blood back into your body, and jump start your heart if it doesn’t wake up on its own. So, if your parachute fails and you end up in the E.R. with a head cavity you didn’t have when you woke up – the surgeon would have up to two extra life-saving hours to fiddle around in your viscera village unvexed . Then they can patch you back up and send you home in the cone of shame so that you don’t lick your wounds as you tell everyone else what the “other side” is like.
Dude! Can we at least use this to induce near death experiences?!
Me first!
Pssh. Nevermind. What a rip off.