How do you lose air if you're 6 ft under in a coffin?

Question

- There's air in the coffin but how does the air run out? You breathe air in and it comes right back out so how do you suffocate? I just need an explanation...

Answer 1

Just adding a comment to the correct explanations most of the other answerers have already given you about carbon dioxide replacing the oxygen in your breathing space. It wouldn't feel like you were suffocating per se, like being drowned or smothered. It would be more like sitting in a car with the engine running in a closed garage. Eventually your bloodstream would contain insufficient oxygen to keep your brain awake, then you'd lose consciousness and die in your "sleep," so to speak. The more frightening thing about being buried alive in a coffin is probably the feeling of being trapped in a very small space.

Answer 2

when you breathe in you take oxygen in, when you breathe out you breathe out a combination of leftover oxygen and carbon dioxide. a coffin is airtight and only has a certain amount of air inside. eventually, the space starts filling with the toxic carbon dioxide and runs out of oxygen. fortunately for the person buried alive, the body will pass out from too much carbon dioxide in the air well before all the oxygen is completely gone and if suffocation is imminent, they really won't feel it. they might get a little delirious before they pass out, but thats about the worst of it (unless you're claustrophobic...then that would really suck). basically, the air doesn't really "run out" or go anywhere, the person inside the coffin just breathes all of it up. hope that helps

Answer 3

The problem isn't an absence of air, it's the oxygen in the air. As you continue to breathe, you deplete the oxygen and replace it with carbon dioxide. Pretty soon there isn't enough oxygen to keep you going, and you suffocate, just like if you ran your car in a closed garage. Suffocation doesn't always mean that no air can get to you, it's really that not enough oxygen can get to you. Fresh air can't get through the dirt and coffin fast enough to replace your used oxygen.

Answer 4

Your 6 feet under the ground. No air can get in. Now your in the coffin, with the little bit of air you have. Ok, you need to breath, so you breath in the little bit of air you have. Your body takes out oxygen, and out comes carbon monoxide. Ok, you can't live on carbon monoxide. After you use up all the oxygen, and there is only carbon monoxide, you can't breath. Thus running out of air.

Answer 5

Air is 21% oxygen and 79% notrogen.
When you inhale, the air goes into your lungs. Blood circulates through the lungs and grabs onto the oxygen molecules. Then it circulates through your body and each of your cells grabs onto the oxygen and gives back carbon dioxide (O2 in, CO2 out - we're "carbon based" so this makes sense to me but it's as much as I know about metabolism). When your blood gets back to your lungs, it gives up the carbon dioxide it has and takes back more oxygen, so when you exhale, out comes a lot of that carbon dioxide. Your exhale is about 16% oxygen, not 21% oxygen. So, it takes a while to deplete all of the oxygen in the air, and you won't die right away, but you will eventually.
(By the way, I always wondered why rescue breathing works in CPR. That is, how can we help someone if we are breathing carbon dioxide into his/her lungs. This answers it: the air we exhale still has 16% oxygen!)

Answer 6

You need fresh air.
Not to be in a coffin or anything.
The oxygen is still within inside you and the coffin, you air cant go out and thats why you can die.
Oxygen and air need to be breath freshly and outside

Answer 7

You breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Since your body needs oxgen to function, once you use all of the oxygen in the coffin you will die.

Answer 8

when you breath in air you take in oxygen. when you exhale you breath out carbon dioxide. you cannot breath in anything else than oxygen. so if you breath in all of the oxygen and leave only carbon dioxide you suffocate due to the fact that you cannot breath in carbon dioxide.

Answer 9

well you wouldn't exactly suffocate. You breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide (plants do the opposite) so you would get poisoned by the carbon dioxide and would have no oxygen in your bloodstream

Answer 10

You don't really lose air, you use up all the oxygen that your body needs to stay alive and replacing it with carbon dioxide when you exhale.