How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose

Death is the end of someone’s journey; while a person is alive, he or she takes good care of her body, especially skin; several cosmetics, ayurvedic or natural products are applied to make it appear radiant, glowing, and fair, but when death takes place it begins appearing pale and dull the body undergoes a long procedure of decomposition.

Death is the cause of human or animal working bodies to sit still and stiff. When the body is deprived of oxygen, the heart stops beating, cells do not get blood supply, the lungs stop breathing, and the body appears pale. It means the death process is taking place.

But have you ever wondered what happens to bodies naturally after death, especially when it’s buried or when the body is not cremated? Let us learn about body decomposition to soak more knowledge about the life of corpses.

What Is Body Decomposition

Body decomposition is a natural process of a dead body. It’s a continual process that goes long, from a week to several years; body decomposition also depends on the environment. Body decomposition begins after 24 minutes of death and follows the four stages of autolysis, bloat, active decay, and skeletonization.

In the first stage of autolysis, the blood circulation and respiration stops, the body begins to be deprived of oxygen, excess carbon dioxide accumulates in the body, causing an acidic environment causing cell membranes to rupture, and enzymes released from the membranes begin eating the cells from the Inside out. Rigor mortis causes muscle stiffness, and nutrient-rich fluid-filled small blisters appear on the internal organs and the skin surface. The body will appear to have a sheen, and the top skin begins to lose.

Bloating is the second stage of human body decomposition as the body organs leak, several gasses produced in the body that doubles up in size, giving a bloated look. The sulfur compound in the body releases bacteria, due to which the skin discoloration appears as soon as the body begins producing bacteria and microorganisms. An unpleasant odor is released that alerts others that the person has died, and the odor will linger long even after the corpse is removed.

Active decay is the third stage of body decomposition in which the fluids released through orifices indicate the beginning of active decay of organs, muscles, and skin liquefies when all the tissue decomposes hair, bone, cartilage and other by-products of decay remain.

Skeletonization is the fourth stage of body decomposition; it is the final stage where the body has completely decayed or dried to the point that the skeleton is exposed.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose

Death is a natural process; every human has to die one day. Similarly, body decomposition is a natural process. As soon as the heart stops beating and a person dies, the body cells are deprived of oxygen and begin losing their formation. After several minutes the dead body organs begin the process of autolysis.

Its natural process varies on the determining factors with pH and oxygen level; the cause of death, weather temperature, body position, and moisture level all matter in the process of body decomposition.

The human body decomposition begins within 24 hours of death, and the organs begin leaking, releasing toxic gasses and smell, slowly bloating, and doubling up in size.

You must be wondering what happens to the body if it’s already 10 days past. Well, the body turns red due to a lack of oxygen. After several weeks the nails, teeth, and hair fall out. After month liquefaction of the body begins, period of decomposition also depends on the predators and other bugs that slowly feed on it.

After the 24 to 72 hours of death, the internal organs decompose; three to five days after the death, the body begins to bloat, and blood containing foam leaks from the mouth and nose. 8 to 10 days after the death, the body turns green to red as the blood decomposes and organs in the abdomen accumulate gas.

A body takes approximately 50 years to decompose completely; the tissues liquefy and disappear, leaving behind mummified skin and tendons, which also disintegrate in 8 years. Lastly, bones that crackdown, leaving nothing but the brittle mineral frame structure.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose Without Embalming?

Embalming a deceased person’s body has been a practice since ancient times. It performs three functions for the dead body: preservation, restoration, and disinfection. This process allows the dead body to remain disinfected from harmful microbes.

Preservation of the dead body is to slow down the natural decomposition and restore the proper appearance.

Embalming cannot completely halt the decomposition; it’s a method applied to keep the body interacting with people. The embalming procedure is likable as it allows for the creation of a final memory picture of the deceased with positive memory bruises or signs of an illness that can be hidden behind the mortuary makeup. It also ensures that people are left behind or not left with traumatic memory.

The procedure is performed only when the family allows it to perform due to public open casket viewing embalming is sometimes followed deceased politicians, super movie stars, a public person is kept in an open casket for the public for the last visitation, which sometimes takes several hours or days that’s why embalming is considered.

Do you know what happens to human remains without embalming and how long it takes for a body to decompose? The progression of decomposition adequately largely relies on the cause of death age, weight, and other external factors such as environment, temperature, season, etc.

Timeline Of A Human Dead Body

Without embalming, when the body of a deceased was in a natural condition, not in a coffin and undisturbed, after 3 hours, the stiffening of muscles occurs, which is called rigor Mortis

During 24 to 72 hours, internal organs begin to decompose as the cell dies and emission of pungent order begins

3 to 5 days after death, the body organ leaks, and blood with foam comes out from the mouth and nose.

During  8 to 10 days, the skin of the dead person turns greenish, and the body color changes from green to red as blood decomposes and gasses accumulate

After many weeks of death, the teeth, nails, and hair fall out of the body of a person once who had a nice appearance and turns into a dark sludgy corpse.

After 1 month of death, the body starts to liquefy, and the final stage of the dead body is nothing but a hard skeleton frame that takes more than a year or several years to decompose, depending on the environment and the temperature.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose To A Skeleton?

Skeleton is the final stage of decomposition which means the tissue or the last vestiges of the body have dried completely, and the skeleton appears with a bony frame.

Climate plays a close factor in the process of skeletonization in the temperate climate. It needs 3 to several years to decompose into a skeleton relying on factors such as humidity and the presence of insects.

The temperature in tropical climates is high the body can turn into a skeleton in a few weeks as the body begins to decompose at the fastest rate in a hot and humid environment,  heat helps breakdown cells, liquefaction occurs in a short timeline, and bacteria generation is at a peak due to a high temperature which is why the body skeletonized in a few weeks only.

In hot climates, decomposition is fast. Think how long a body decomposes in the Tundra region takes. It is a type of biome where the temperature persists below zero degrees. The skeletonization may take years, or it may never occur; natural mummification or embalming in peat bogs or salt deserts can delay the decomposition process to skeletonization.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose In A Coffin?

The decomposition rate is slow when a body is buried in a coffin; the human body begins changing soon after death. Burying a body in a coffin has been practiced since 1860 and exists to date, but in recent years it gave rise to Green burials where the wooden coffin is used. It rots and collapses inside the soil, allowing the body to decompose with the natural assistance of soil and insects. How long it takes to decompose in a coffin also depends on the type of coffin. If it is a metal coffin,  it will slow down the decay, but the body still begins to rot. Sometimes the build-up of gasses may explode the corpse.

A dead body in a metal casket would decompose differently than a body in a wooden coffin. The body’s decomposition process begins soon after the person’s death. As soon as the heart stops, the blood supply halts the oxygen transportation to several organs and tissues. Cells that form those organs and tissues are 70% water, so without oxygen, they begin to liquefy organs, spilling all that fluid into the coffin floor. The microbes in the body reach various organs and start eating them, and the bile begins flooding the body, staining it yellow-green in 3 to 4 days. Microbes are all around the body producing toxic gasses like Ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, which expand the body and make it stink horrible after the period of 3 to 4 months, the iron oxidizes, causing the complexion to change to brown tissue of the body turns into a watery mush, after 1 year the clothes on the body begins to disintegrate due to acidic and toxic gases and body fluid, body decomposition in the coffin is slow by the decade. The wet and low oxygen environment sets off a chemical reaction, and the drier conditions cause natural mummification; by 50 years, tissues will liquefy and disappear, leaving tendon, which also dries off after 80 years in the coffin. The bone cracks down due to a lack of soft collagen, leaving the bone’s brittle structure, which also collapses in 100 years.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose In Water?

When the human body decomposes in water, the decomposition procedure is slow. When a body decomposes in water, the conditions are different from that of bodies found in dry environments. The depth of the water plays an important role as the body sinks downward where the water is cold, which causes slow decomposition; strong currents in seas and oceans cause the body to travel over long distances to which the body gets scrapped from the strong push of waves, tree Limbs, rocks and the sea animals feeding on the dead bodies in the water speeds up the decomposition process.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose In A Salty Sea

The decomposition of a body in a salty sea depends on the water’s temperature. The bacteria causes bloating with several toxic gasses that result in slow decomposition, which makes the body float on the sea bed. Skin absorbs water and spills away from the tissue in just one week inviting the sea animals such as fish, crabs, and sea lice to feed on the dead body. As the body decomposition proceeds, the cold water forms acid pores on the body’s fatty areas, a soapy substance that partially protects the body from decomposition.

In the tropical water of the Arabian Sea, the bulky bodies keep floating on the surface for 3 or 4 days which is why it’s an open buffet for seabirds and sea animals that dismember the dead body in a week or two. Bones begin to appear on the sea bed; they slowly get buried Into the Marine silt. People are adopting sea burial as the green burial practice. How long it takes for a body to decompose in a salty sea depends differently on the burial spot, such as depth, temperature, and abundance or lack of sea life. The deeper and the colder the water is, the decomposition is slower, whereas the body and the shroud on the sea floor must disintegrate within 3 to 6 months.

How Long Does It Take For A Body To Decompose In Freshwater?

The body breaks more slowly in fresh water than in the open air. Other factors that affect the decomposition rate are cold water, hot water, temperature, availability of life, etc. The body decomposes faster in warm water, fresh or stagnant water due to the presence of bacteria compared to cold, salty, and running water. The decomposition can take as long as 12 to 18 months to develop in cold water, whereas it decomposes a few months or more early in warm water.

Bodies recovered from freshwater below 7 degrees Celsius were completely intact after several weeks and as a recognizable skeletons after 5 years.

How Long Does It Take For An Unburied Body To Decompose?

If the body is not buried and is lying open, the scavenging animals, birds, and insects speed up the decay rate. They break the corpse into smaller pieces so that more area is exposed to bacteria. Far from life, a dead body teams up with life as the rotting corpse is a vast and complex ecosystem that emerges soon after death and lasts till its complete decomposition. This process is greatly affected by the location of the body, weather, temperature, and accessibility of the soft tissue. Due to outdoor exposure, the remains undergo a long period of dehydration of outer tissue, i.e., mummification and reduction to skeletonization or appearance of large portions of bones. The skeleton does not occur until 4 to 6 months after the death. The bleaching and exfoliation of the bone begin at about 9 months of exposure.

Anything that does not sustain life, whether it is humans, animals, birds, plants, food, or insects, undergoes the procedure of decomposition. It is a multiplex phenomenon in which complex organic compounds disintegrate into simple elements once in action. Decomposition is a continuous process from death to reducing to skeletonization. Suppose you have never encountered a dead body. In that case, you must have noticed decaying food, such as an apple that looks bright red and shiny, but as soon as it begins rotting, it loses its color and shape, and black patches slowly appear on its skin. It begins releasing a bad smell, turning green and black, inviting insects and bacteria to feed on it, and slowly decomposing. The human body also begins decomposing as soon as the heart stops beating.

Decomposition Facts Of A Dead Human

The human body begins to decompose soon after death; levels of carbon dioxide poison the cells, and the enzymes begin to spread all over the organs. There are five stages of decomposition: self-digestion, bloating, active decomposition, advanced decomposition, and skeletal; the decaying process of rigor mortis is for a short period the flexibility and rigidity go away in a period of 1 to 3.5 days.

The decomposition smell is not bad that much; yeah, during the bloating phase, it smells a lot but decreases as the decomposition progresses. The microbiome helps to determine the time of death.

The lack of bugs and bacteria causes very slow decomposition, and environmental factors also alter the decomposition rate.

A person dying from a severe disease can hold its virus for upto one week, such as the Ebola virus, which can hang around even after death; that’s why an infected body must be buried and cremated safely and quickly before anyone comes in contact with the infection.

Why Is Body Decomposition Important?

Rotting of the dead is obvious. All living things die, and all dead things rot, and what rots dissolves, becoming part of something else. Decomposition is important for the survival of new life on the dead, just as death is the end of life; the remains of the dead is a material for new life. The decomposition of the human body is important as it recycles that carbon. This chemical element is necessary for the physiological basis of all life on earth. After the decomposition of this element, carbon reacts in air, soil, and water; living things occupy this carbon dioxide for the survival of new life.

Is Decomposition Of Bodies Good For The Earth?

After death, when the bodies are buried deep inside the soil, it changes the soil. Several minerals and nutrients reach the soil from the human corpse, which mix into the soil. Sometimes the concentration is higher. Furthermore, human bodies also contain more baleful elements such as Mercury for dental fillings. Not only does life alter nature, but death also alters the chemistry of precious soil.

How Does The Decomposition Speed Up?

 Environmental factors greatly affect the body’s decomposition, including humidity, temperature, and oxygen. Body decomposition includes a multitude of factors other factors that conclude body decomposition are body size, height, clothing, and other causes of death. Temperature plays a major role in decomposition. The climate and temperature affect body decomposition substantially. The high temperature will increase the decomposition rate as it expedites the physiological reactions in the body after death. In contrast, body decomposition in a low temperature or cold climate slows the decay rate.

Death is universal, and one has to die some or the other day; it is the crucial moment of life when death is going to end. Your body begins all the procedures that would cause death. The heart stops beating, other vital organs stop functioning, and it’s no longer capable of carrying the ongoing process of living. As soon as you die, your body begins reacting to decomposition.

Decomposition is a continuous process until the bone shatters; it’s a universal process for all bodies; for some, it is a fast process, and for some, decomposition is slow depending on the environment and temperature. When the body is buried 6 feet under the ground, it won’t do or say anything; however, it would decompose to the skeleton and finally mixes in the soil. How long it takes for a body to decompose is a continual and Universal procedure; whether a body is left unattended or exposed to open air, buried down under the soil, under salty water, freshwater, or running water, it decomposes based on factors around it.