You are buried in a coffin 6ft deep, with no light or cell phone. There is only a small tube connected to the coffin from outside that allows you to breathe (edit: you can breathe with no difficulty). After 48 hours, you are dug up and given 1 million dollars. Do you do it?
Edit: No food and water, no diaper, and no contact with the outside world. Once buried, they leave for 48hr and come back to dig you up. The coffin is only wide enough for you to lay on your back (no rolling around), and the inside is wood and not particularly comfortable. The only items you’re allowed to bring with you are life sustaining medication (e.g. an asthma inhaler). No knocking yourself out with pills or anxiety meds. The money is a briefcase full of cash.
You mean 48 hours of peace and quite AND I get a million‽ sigh me the fuck up.
That’s what I was thinking. Like, I have kids and a high stress job. This sounds like a vacation.
48 hours without water? Absolutely not. There is a high probability of exiting a cripple or dead, at least for me. Not to mention my medicine.
Just drink a lot before and you’d be good to go IMO
Edit: at a normal temperature of course.
Then you’d drown in your own urine.
If you are producing enough urine to drown in a coffin in 48 hours you should see a urologist
Wait they didn’t make the rest of you guys lay face down in the coffin? What the heck!
You definitely couldn’t produce enough urine to fill the coffin. You would definitely end up lying in piss but that’s not too bad for a million, plus it may drain out the bottom.
Just drink it!!
OP said no diaper, which means you are pissing and shitting yourself, and you’ll be soaking in it at ground temperature, around 55f. Might be a tad uncomfortable, lol.
Unless you are God-tier at holding it…
I’ve spent that much time without water without knowing it lol. It’s not a long period of time without water.
You probably ate or drank other stuff with water. The other person didn’t mean “water” specifically, just some means of hydration.
48 hours without water is a no go.
You can go 3 days, especially with no physical exertion
Maybe you can. But the thing about statistics like that it’s that they avoid saying “the average person”, and problems with averages is that half of the people are under it.
If it’s not just made up data in the first place.
The thing is, the average person can survive about 4 days without water under normal circumstances. It would be even longer with no physical exertion, assuming it isn’t too hot and the humidity is right. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the vast majority of healthy adults could survive not drinking for 48 hours if they’re spending that entire 48 hours lying down. The things to worry about here are mental health and infection from waste, not dehydration.
The rule of thumb is “three days without water” because that’s how long most people can go. It’s not the ld50. It wouldn’t be a very popular rule of thumb if it got half of the people who followed it killed.
I’ve lived through severe dehydration. It’s nothing to fuck with.
I mean you lived through it. I can’t afford to get this weird patch of skin on my arm or the bump above my knee checked out, so I might legitimately not live through severe not having money
Risk analysis is different. I was dehydrated thanks to less than 24 hours without hydration and my body was fucked. I’m pretty sure forty eight would kill me. You are pretty sure that shit on your body ain’t right and that you can’t afford to get it checked out, much less treated. You’re risking your life if you do or if you don’t, so might as well go for the money. That said, if it’s serious, a million bucks might not be enough in this glorious healthcare system we’ve got.
Id fuck with it for a million dollars
The rule of three (human male, optimum health)
3 min sans air before brain damage/death 3 hrs in hostile environments before body succumbing 3 days without water before severe damage/death 3 weeks without food before death
You may not die immediately but your chances of kidney damage are pretty high in this situation.
Could I hire a guy and pay him 48 hours of minimum wage to lay in the coffin for me and then collect the million dollars at the end? I think I just invented capitalism.
What makes you think OP hasn’t just been offered 10 million dollars to lay in a coffin for 48 hours?
Trickle down economics.
Guaranteed not to die?
It’s certainly uncomfortable, but a million bucks for a weekend of laying in a box is a pretty good deal.
I’d be more worried about the dehydration and bodily functions than about being underground, assuming I am guaranteed to live.
They bury you and come back 48hr later, so no guarantee.
If there’s no guarantee you won’t die, I’m not too keen on it. The breathing tube scenario and no water situation is highly sus. And laying immobile for that long of a time frame puts you at a crazy high risk of blood clots and a resulting fatal stroke, heart attack, or pulmonary embolism. It’s why people who are relatively immobilized in a hospital for any length of time are often given blood thinners. I’m pretty sure there have been cases of people dying playing video games too long without moving because of the resulting blood clots.
Happened to the girlfriend of the author of one of my skyrim mods. He created a character in her memory and posts a disclaimer to everyone warning about the danger of blood clots.
So sad to hear. Good that he spread awareness.
Yeah blood clots, rhabdomyolysis, kidney damage from dehydration, etc. You’re guaranteed to sustain some amount of damage from this
I’m pretty sure there have been cases of people dying playing video games too long without moving because of the resulting blood clots.
Wow, that’s awful. Not something I would have thought about happening.
I was in the hospital recently and had my legs attached to some automatic massagers (I forget the name) to help avoid blood clots. And I was only in bed for a day.
if I can sneak in some sleepy pills I’d do it. fall asleep and wake up two days later really hungry, stinky, sore, and rich as fuck.
if i can’t I wouldn’t. many people don’t realize how dangerous sensory deprivation can be on larger scales than a couple hours. many people try to kill themselves to escape lighter/easier situations than you e described here
Nope, no sleepy pills.
A million dollars isn’t rich as fuck, not in this economy
Is the air tube mechanically assisted? I’m not sure I could handle the effort of basically pumping air 6ft back and forth with my lungs for 48 hours.
It allows enough air into the coffin to keep you alive and breathing without any difficulty.
Then absolutely. Is this even a hard question for any rationale person?
I think you are trivializing it a bit. Just try lying in your bed on your back for 24 hours without turning and you would realize this is not going to be comfortable at all. Add to that the complete inability to tell how much time has passed and you may start to lose your shit. I would probably start to believe that I had been forgotten because my sense of time would be way off.
Yep. I get it. It’s going to be really fucking uncomfortable. I’ll be hungry, thirsty, sore, and will lose my concept of time. And then I’ll have a million dollars. How long will it take you to earn a million dollars in any other fashion? Unless your Jeff Bezos you’ll have much more accumulated discomfort and assorted bullshit over that period of time than just dealing with it all at once. This is a easy decision.
I think it’s more than that. Was an EMT for a long time and had to scoop up many an old timer who’d fallen and been unable to get up. Unfortunately it’s been a while and I’ve been bumped on the head once or twice, but I recall there being concern of issues like compartment syndrome that came from basically spending 10 or 12 hours on a floor unable to get up. I’m sure age and position have something to do with it, but I just don’t know if your body will come out the same on the other side. And now you’re spending that million on medical care if you’re like me and from America.
Well remember a good 50-100k is going to be gone right off the bat for the hospital stay afterwards.
And there’s always the chance of a blood clot. Very dangerous when immobile that long.
Still worth it tho.
Decades of work will do just as much damage to my psyche as 48 hours in a coffin, and it’s going to do a lot more damage to my body
Yeah, there would really be no way to know how much time has passed.
Just count your heartbeat, like 230.000 and you’re good :-p
Do it like Senku (Dr stone) and his multi processor brain. He calculated his entombment to the second for 3,500 years. True he’s a anime badass, but I could pull off 2 days using my internal clock. I hope.
Well yeah? 48hrs without being able to move, stuck underground without food or water would be terrible, I would go insane
I think it would be particularly awful for people who are claustrophobic.
A million dollars will buy you the best anti psychotic drugs you can buy ( and the legal ones will be less)
I’m not sure you know how much a million dollars actually is or how effective drugs are on your mental well-being. They’re not magic, it’s still probably going to be years of problems and while a million dollars is enough to make you live very comfortably, it’s not enough to actually make you rich rich.
I personally don’t think you can put a price on your health, mental or physical, and being immobile for 48 hours in a wooden box is going to be very hard on your physical health as well.
The sheer thought if this makes me slightly panicky. Which I guess isn’t rational but yeah I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.
People have turned to suicide under shorter time periods. I don’t trust my mental health (or bodily health, water etc) in such a situation, and it might permanently damage me for the rest of my life for a mere 1m. 1B before I even consider, and still probably no unless I think I’m making a sacrifice for others or something and don’t expect to be alive.
I’m not claustrophobic and I’m very lazy. I’d do it. I got pretty annoyed when I tried a “sensory deprivation tank” and there was light and sound leaking in. 48 hours is a long time, but not dangerously so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation
In chamber REST, the subject lies on a bed in a completely dark and sound-reducing (on average, 80 dB) room for up to 24 hours. Their movement is restricted by the experimental instructions, but not by any mechanical restraints. Food, drink, and toilet facilities are provided in the room and are at the discretion of the tester, who can communicate with the participants using an open intercom. Subjects are allowed to leave the room before the 24 hours are complete; however, fewer than 10% actually do because they find the chamber so relaxing.[8] Chamber REST affects psychological functioning (thinking, perception, memory, motivation, and mood) and psychophysiological processes.
Those people were allowed to eat, drink and eliminate (and presumably get up and stretch while they did), but this doesn’t seem terribly far off from your question.
I think it would be interesting to compare answers alongside things like our jobs, income, and location, because there’s very little I wouldn’t do for a “mere” million dollars
I would have 100% done this in my 20s when I was borderline homeless and dumpster diving to live. But now I’m older and a million dollars is less life changing than it would have been then. Sure more financial comfort would be nice but my basic needs are taken care of. Plus my body is in way worse shape now. I’m old and lame now and less likely to do ridiculous shit for the experience. I don’t think I would do it.
A million dollars is only about 15 years of wages for me, and I’d still do it (assuming competence on part of the people making the offer).
As a parent, you had me at “no room to roll around”. As long as I have a 100% guarantee that none of my kids will find me in there to ask for something, I’m in. I’m gonna get so much sleep.
So what you’re saying is, would I lie in my own waste in the dark for 2 days tops for
maths
60+ years worth of my current wage? I’ll go in right now
I’m visualizing the experience, sitting in a 10’x12’ room, and totally unconstrained. Just that makes me feel anxious.
I think that I’d have a mental break in less than a day. Probably in less than a few hours.
I couldn’t do it.
3 days poopless 2.0?
Ever been to a multi-day music festival?
48/24 =/= 3
I know how this one went…
Think I’ll pass!
I don’t understand Sadam’s strategy with that hole. Was he planning on living there the rest of his life, or was he thinking the USA would get tired of looking for him and move on?
I have no idea, but I assume it was a last-ditch effort to avoid getting capped. Excellent meme though.
Spider hole!
I think I’ll either be on the brink of death or mentally disabled by the time I get that money, so no.
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I currently don’t have a problem with small spaces but I think this would give it to me. I was okay up until the part where I can’t roll around. I was imagining it and that would be so uncomfortable to stay in the same position for 48 hours. I think I’ll pass. I don’t need a million that badly and I don’t want PTSD.
This is what I alway told myself. “I have no problem with small spaces”
Until I went a day of cave exploring in the Ardennes. You are sent through a cave, without any light. At some points there are small beams of sun poking through holes, or at some there is a small ledlight indicating a step down/up Halfway you’re going to reach an intersection, left for ‘normal’ right for adventure, we picked adventure … This entailed a narrow pasthrough, barely wide enough for me, and a few climbs up and down. Your track is monitored, and you have max. 20 minutes before they come and get you, but still at some point I felt real anxiety of being stuck.
Since I KNOW I’m getting older, and admitting fear is nothing to be ashamed for ;)
Nope. I’d freak out before the first shovelful of dirt hit the coffin lid.
I’m not generally claustrophobic, but that level of confinement would be unbearable.
