What causes rigor mortis?

and welcome to our podcast. We call it Stuff you Should Know with your host Josh Clark and Charles W. Bryant. I'm Josh Clark. We were told to call it stuff you should Know. Yeah, what did you think about that opening? That was good? I still have to keep China, Okay, well, we'll try it next time. A hundred plus episodes in, we're still working out the first twenty seves, still working

out the kinks. And it's just not not just the first twenty seconds, Chuck, You're right, I mean from beginning to end, it's her key and Jerky, the whole she bang. It's a it's evolving, Josh, So Chuck, I'll tell you who wasn't evolving for about seventeen hours. Back in May of two thousand and eight, you want to hear about a woman named Val Thomas, and that was awesome by the way that set up, Thank you. Val was a fifty nine year old uh West Virginia woman, and in

May of two thousand and eight, she died. Died, okay, seventeen hours, no brain activity, her heart was stopped. Um. They had her own ventilator. Even during this time she was dead. Um. And worst of all, rigor mortis set in right right, which is a surefire sign I would think that you're dead. Yeah, because it's not even like part of the process of death. It's you've been dead for several hours now, and here's this new process that

happens to a corpse. The weird thing is, I mean, this is not wouldn't necessarily be significant under any other circumstances, but this because we all go through rigor mortists. Um. But Val Thomas woke up, she came back. You're it and I am not kidding. After after rigor mortis set in and everything, she's dead for seventeen hours, she woke up, started talking and she popped the breath mant and cracked

your knuckles. I suppose, yeah, And I was wondering what would it feel like, you know, what would your muscles feel like after after rigor mortis set in. I can't imagine it feel very good. You probably feel really sore, right, I would imagine so, because I mean, what is rigor mortis except for like a contraction of the muscles? Right? Well? Is it? It is? Chuck, let's talk about rigor mortis today? You want to? And that's the rigor mortis set up.

You have it very nice. Chuck and I have had fun all afternoon sending each other gross pictures of corpses in rigor mortis. Stiff's exactly, and that's where the term comes from. Have you ever heard of that book Stiff by Mary Roach? I think so? Is that the pictures of dead people? No? No, no, no, no. Um. It's a it's a book about what happens to the body afterwards and basically what it's like to be a cadaver, all the uses for cadavers. I was, I haven't read it.

I was reading the introduction today and it was all listening to the thrash metal band rigor Mortis. Yeah, were you listening to him? I wasn't but I was surprised they were able to get the domain name. It seems, I don't know, like some sort of mortuary where they've been around for a while. They released their debut album in yeah, so I mean they were probably on top of it back in the nineties. But I was listening to him on last FM and I was like, Rigor

Mortis isn't as good as I remembered. So I went over to the Children of Bodom channel and they were all right, you ever heard of them? They're pretty serious. You check them out. Um. But anyway, so, yeah, I was prepping for this podcast reading Stiff and um miss roach mentions that she was talking about all the ways could ever have been used to help you know, further humanity,

and one of them was um. There was this French scientist back in the late nineteenth century who was trying to find out whether or not the Shroud of Turin was real or not, and he actually got his hands on cadavers and he was the first one to estay ablished that Christ could not have been crucified through his palms because this guy determined that that would only hold about a ninety pound man or body to a crucifix, and you know how we found out by nailing cadaverage

to a crucifix, so it was through the wrist is the rist Apparently there's like some joint. I can't remember what it's called, but um, what I think the place where you're to be a fibula. Oh, I hope that's right. I don't want viewer or listener mail. Is it tivy and fibula? I doubt it? Well? Humorous, humorous and um, well anyway, we can't put it in there. Well anyway, I am. I assume going to get some listener mail

for that one. But the two bones where they come together at your wrist um to connect to your meditarsal or metacarpal metacarpal because it's carpal tunnel syndrome anyway, Um, there is a hole there that you could drive a stake through and it will hold up a substantial adult sized male. Interesting, But this guy, this French physician, figured it out by nailing cadavers to across. And I guess the other option was that Jesus was a ninety pound weakling,

which doesn't seem likely to me. I don't know, I can't imagine they were all that well nourished back then. Yeah, but ninety pounds, come on, yeah, it is kind of tiny slight, so could avers Yes, rigor mortis, yes, rigor mortis josh. Uh what does it mean Latin? Well, Josh is not so important what it stands for in Latin, because we know Latin is a dead language. Latin is suffering from rigor mortis. What is important is how it works, because that's what we're here to educate folks on. Do

you want to talk about that or you want me to? Uh, well, we'll we'll both get into it. One thing that was interesting is that, uh, three hours or so after a human or animal dies, it starts to happen, and then it happens from head to toe, Yeah, which I thought was pretty interesting. Whose law is that? That would be Euston and he discovered the Frenchman way back in Eve. But the reason why it's it starts from head to toe, basically, they think, is because, um, you have smaller um or

delicate muscle tissue around the face. So usually it's the eyes and the mouth um that require very delicate, precise movements that rigger up first, which is why every movie in history, every death scene with the guy's eyes wide open. A friend will come by and gently shut them, maybe put a couple of half dollars over him. Oh yeah, if it was a Western So um okay, So rigor mortis chuck is nothing but the stiffening of the muscles, right, Um okay, let's talk physiology here for a second, buddy.

So we have two different kinds of muscle fibers. Right, We've got skeletal muscle, skeletal muscles, and we have um, smooth muscle tissue. Smooth muscles. Issue is like your heart. It's what your heart's made out this microscopic dude, Sure it is. And then when you bundle them together, you have you know, a muscle. What we see is a muscle, right, But yeah, they're all made up of individual fibers, um. And all of these are connected or or commanded by neurons. Right.

So you have motor neurons that commands skeletal muscles, and you have fast twitch muscles, which are the ones that that require precise movements, So you're fast twitch neurons are the ones controlling like your eye movement, your tongue, that kind of thing. And then you have kind of the big o fish neurons of of the physiology world. Those are slow twitch neurons. That was a good oath imitation,

by the way, Thank you very much. Video chuck. Yeah, okay, Um, So anyway, when when the brain says, hey, man, raise your left arm, it transmits an electrical impulse to the neuron which says, okay, we gotta get this going. Why happens is when when this transmission takes place, Um, there's

a biochemical process that happens. You've got these calcium ions, right, and they exist outside of the cell, but they like to go into the cell whenever they get a chance, right, So they'll go into the cells that make up our muscle tissue and they kind of throw everything off balance. What what they allow to happen that these two proteins to connect. And we have two different kinds of skeletal muscle fibers. I know what they're called. Let's hear it.

Myosin and actin. Okay, and myosin makes up thick filament fibers, right, and then actin makes up thin filament fibers. And when you connect the two, When myosin and actin connect to one another, their molecules right, Um, then you have a contraction. So calcium ions allow myosin and actin to connect, which makes your muscle contract. So to get a muscle to relax, you have to uncouple myosin and actin and through um

through oxygen through aerobic an aerobic process. We when we breathe in oxygen, some of it goes to produce the stuff called a dinoscene triphosphate, and that stuff actually decouples myos and in acting causing the muscles to relax. When we're dead, though, we have no two problems. Well, yeah, number one, we're not breathing anymore, so there's no oxygen, which means we're not producing a t P any longer.

But secondly, the apparently those calcium ions their natural state is trying to get into the cell, so there's a build of calcium ions, which means your muscles all start to contract. Hence rigor mortis. There you have it. That's it, Dr Clark, thank you, That is not it, though, Josh, oh, it's not okay, I stand corrected. Well, what's important about rigor mortis is what we should talk about next. And we know how it happens, and you can become stiff, and it's it's you know, funny to play with a

stiff dead body, put them in like still physicians. It's a good time. But it can actually be used at things like crime scenes. Oh it can, yes, oh yes, yes, do we need to talk about that? Well? Yeah, Well how about this. You said that it sets in after three hours? Yes, well not always? How well, okay, about how long does it last? Uh? Well, at last up to eighteen hours? Twelve eighteen hours and then it fades away again. I've heard up the thirty six seventy two.

Just do inside research on this. It seems like nobody can say definitively how long it lasts. Well, it depends on a lot of things. Okay, well what do they depend on? Uh well, temperature is one obvious thing. Temperature, Josh is one thing, right, It's pretty obvious. Uh. If it's warmer, it'll speed up Riga mortis, and it will also go uh at a at a slower pace or

I'm sorry, faster pace. Right, So it sets in faster, but it lasts a shorter amount of time, right, right, Because basically it creates a good environment for bacteria for the decay process, which starts after rigor mortis, right, and ultimately that's what gets rid of rigor mortis right. This process called autolysis, and that is basically where the cells kill themselves. The cells basically break down the cellular structure, and this is the case for the cells that make

up muscle tissue. Right. So then as these cells decomposed, the muscles can no longer hold an erection and you're no longer um in a state of rigor mortis. Very nice, John, thank you, I'm proud of you. Uh, when it's cold, on the other flip side of the coin, it'll slow the process down. So if you die outside in the freezing cold, like Jack Nicholson in the Shining Love that he was the stuff, he probably wasn't just frozen in

that scene. He probably riga mortis probably and it was frozen at the same and it would have lasted a long time. I've I've heard that it can last up to like twenty eight days under the right conditions if you're freezing out there for sure. Uh So physical exertion just prior to death, that's another thing that can affect because your muscles are already cant acted, or if you're

drowning or something. You're already um, you're you're already starved of oxygen, so you're not producing a t P anyway, so it consider immediately right, which is called the cadaveric spasm. Right,

I actually saw a beaver undergo a cadaveric spasm. Woods. Yeah, when I was in Tennessee, I saw a beaver get hit by a car and it went and um just immediately died because like the next day I was driving down the same stretch abroad and the beaver is in the same position making the same face that it was the moment it died. It was crazy. I saw something

you undergo a cadaveric spasm. Wow. So uh, you know, police are investigating a crime scene and someone is still you know, like got their finch clifs clinched on their purse or something that then that means they might have died while in a struggle against an attacker. So that can that can help out the cops. Uh. And then fat distribution is another one. Uh. Fat as an insulator, as we both know, because we're very warm guys. So what would that mean? Would I would I? Would you?

And I undergo rigor mortis more quickly or less quickly, more slowly, more fat. And then age is another thing. If you have low muscle mass, like if you're a little kid, if you're really old, um, I guess I should say elderly rigorist, that will happen a lot faster too. So those are some things that can affect that, the

speed of the onset and the pace. But because of that all those different um uh circumstances surrounding rigor mortis and prolonging it or you know, shortening it, it's not quite that precise, right, So there's a bunch of other stuff that that forensic crime scene investigators use or prefer to use over rigor mortis to establish time with death, correct. Yeah,

And it's not just time of death too. You can also tell if a body has been moved postmortem, which is usually a big clue towards finding out kind of there was foul play probably or if there were teenagers around afterward. Yeah, I guess, so playing with the body. Are you talking about liver mortists? That's one thing. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that one. Yeah. Liver mortis is when um all the blood cells basically and all the blood go to the place where it's lowest.

So like, if you're lying on your back, the blood's gonna pull in your back, or if you're if you're on your side and your face is faced down on the concrete, your face is going to be flesh with blood exactly. It was pretty gross, also known as lividity, exactly. And there's another one too, right, Uh, there is you're talk about algor al gore mortis. Algor mortis. Yeah, it

has to do with power point presentations, right. Um. Actually, that's just the cooling off of the body until it matches the room temperature, right, And that happens at a predictable rate too, right, it's like one and a half to two degrees ferret hype per hour. So that's a pretty good way of calculating time of death usually unless

the person had a fever. True, Yeah, because you're generally assuming that the that the the person is starting out at point six and I mean if they were sick and they had a fever, that's going to set it off by a couple of hours, right. I think the official body temperature changed though, didn't it, did it? I'm pretty sure I read that a few years ago. It changed by a point oh one degree or something to look at it and we will determine this and follow

up on that. Son. Another thing the cops can do is look at the contents of your stomach, just like they did in Jaws when they cut the shark open or in Um seven. How do they do that in seven? The gluttony guy, right, Gary, Uh? And that can obviously you can see how much your food is digested the last thing you ate, and that can gauge you know,

how long you've been dead. And then my favorite insect insects. Yeah, I think as we all know, uh, dead things uh tend to attract flies and other insects, and that is because they are feeding on your fluids. They're not just there because of the smell. And boy, this is interesting.

They're feeding on your fluids. Josh. Well, what's fascinating is is somebody who's lover enough to figure out, Hey, we know so much about like in in the US, the blue bottle fly and every stage of its development and it develops so quickly and it's it's lifespan happens over such a short period of time. We can walk up and say, oh, there's maggots and they're blue bottlefly maggots, So we know that this body is only X number of hours dead um or if they've hitting the hit

the pupa stage or the adult stage, you know. Um, we can use these stages of these flies and maggots burrowing around in somebody's dead corpse to determine how long ago they died. That fascinates me. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah, I think we should talk about body farms sometime soon. I think we do a podcast on body farms. Should and then forensic pathology period. I know John Flood a good article on that. Let's do it. We'll do a whole suite of just just you know, corpse stuff. Sweet

sounds good. All right, so, Chuck, I think with that promise, we've pretty much reached the end of briger Mortis. Right. Well, let's hope not auto lie. This is it starting to say that we're starting to decompose. I'm a little Jamie. I can tell you that I can't agree with that. So does that mean that it's a listener mail time? I believe. So let's do listener mail then, And I think all of you friends out there listening should make note we plugged nothing today Yeah, that's right. Producer Jerry's

gave us the thumbs up. Baby. In fact, we refuse to plug anything because we don't want you to read our blog or to buy our spoken word eltments. Reverse psychology to refuse to plug. Very nice, the anti plug. So it's listener mail time. It is so Josh. This comes to us from David in Atlanta right here. Hey, I don't know why Atlanta and David is commenting on our PUNC podcast. Wait wait, wait, Chuch, you can't just say it like that. I don't know what you're talking about.

You know what I'm talking about. Okay, wait, Chuck, We're not proceeding until you say it correctly. Let me just let me read. Um. This is from David. I was listening to your podcast about the punts scheme Happy, and it reminded me of a company quote unquote that I did some work for a few years back in Atlanta. Uh. He names a company, but I won't name it. Uh. They were running a real estate based ponce scheme and they hired his company to come in and work on

their computers like an I T deal. And he said he knew something fishy was going on. He saw a few red flags in just a couple of days that he was there. Uh, there was a high level of security for a small company. The owner of the company had a personal bodyguard and there were several security guards in the little, tiny office. Second, the pitch that the sales staff were giving promise typical ponce Ponts scheme, results,

high return, that kind of thing. And this is to me the big red flag is he said that they would not let anyone from Georgia invest in their company. You're based out of Atlanta, and they wouldn't let anyone in Georgia investment you count. So he suspected this is a big cover up in a big scheme, and it turns out that it was. It only lasted about a month. And you heard that they had been operating before that though, clearly because they built people out of about seventy million.

But holy cow, and his company did not even get paid. And uh, that's see David's story. Well thanks a lot, David, first account, hope, But things have come around again since then for your company. Um, if you have any fascinating stories about Ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes or any kind of scheme whatsoever, or you just want to say, what up, It's a chuck and I chucking me Uh. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of

other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out this Stuff you Should Know blog on the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you