The Chemistry of Death

Death is matter-of-fact. Chemistry and biology don't wait around for a while murmuring, "but he was so young." The inner world of human physiology is hardly some temple where the body's constituent parts and processes worship the supreme being responsible for what is really just some environment.

If some aspect of our bodies appears to be working for us it's only because that aspect happens to be working for them: cells and genetic material and tightly-wound rings of amino acids.

All we are is there—well-tuned and uniquely hospitable to all of our inner-junk, but hardly anything with a grand purpose or even much reason to pause.

And so chemistry goes to town on your corpse as soon as it registers that you're a corpse, turning you into a corrosive slurry as soon as it can. It's pretty amazing actually, as you can see in the most recent American Chemical Society video (part of its Reactions series). It's kind of a relief in a way, seeing chemistry and its microorganism partners utterly rejoice in our downfall. Maybe that's really when we become a temple, when we're finally just a squishy, fermenting blob.