Commotio Cordis, the silent killer.

[Hammer]

So ive been doing alot of googling lately trying to find a way to leave mostly painlessly and preferably so it isn't obviously a suicide, as it's just a thing that loved ones can be more effected by suicide than accidental death.

Anyhoo so I come across this amazing little fact of life called Commotio Cordis, well amazing to me, probably terrifying to people who don't want to die.

Essentially there is a way to stop the heart with a precisely timed blow to a certain area of the heart.

Now just to clarify, the precision of this cannot be done purposefully, so don't get your hopes up it's not a get out of life free button.


However, it does cause quite alot of deaths saddly, mainly to younger people in sports as they are more likely to get hit in th3 chest by a ball, puk etc

The idea behind it is that there is a window when your heart is vulnerable, on average it's about 6 milisseconds long, hence it being almost impossible to just do it once and die. The average person apprently has between a 1 - 3% chance of it happening when hit on the left side of the heart with a suitable blow. The force doesn't need to be that hard either, there is a story of a punch doing it from a boys sibbling and most cases will have 0 evidence of impact.

If by chance it hits the mark, the hearts electrical pulse stops and you just simply, die, no pain, no time to think. You can be saved with emergency cpr till paramedics arrive with a defib I believe but even then chances are small.

So anyway, it's deffinietly not a reliable way to kill yourself but I may be punching myself in the chest from now on just on the off chance I get lucky and die immediately and it not look like an obvious suicide.

It's crazy to think such a simple way of dying exists.

 

[SpottedPanda]

Very interesting, but like you pointed out, not very useful in practise.

I used to beat my heart all the time, as I heard nurses stimulated the sternum to cause the heart to beat faster, in the hopes it'd shock me awake, and give me an adrenaline rush. No negative consequences to date.

 

[Hammer]

Very interesting, but like you pointed out, not very useful in practise.

I used to beat my heart all the time, as I heard nurses stimulated the sternum to cause the heart to beat faster, in the hopes it'd shock me awake, and give me an adrenaline rush. No negative consequences to date.

I think it may need more than a beat, the documentation stated about 50 jules minimum, though I've no idea what that means.
but yeah I think it needs to be a solid thump with enough force to rattle the heart hiding behind your bone.

 

[KLUF]

Looks like suicidal people have a lottery of their own. Great post, thank you.
So monks killing people with 1 blow is not entirely a myth huh?

 

[Hammer]

Looks like suicidal people have a lottery of their own. Great post, thank you.
So monks killing people with 1 blow is not entirely a myth huh?

Haha apparently not, one punch man is entirely true. It just happens to be random instead of planned.

Honestly now I know its name and have looked into it it happens so often in sports I'm suprised it's not more of a known thing. Really kids involved in sports like baseball should have large solid plate over their chest.

 

[Werewolf]

Very interesting I didn't know this. I heard about a kid once and he died from a puck to the chest, he was keeper so it sure seemed strange with thick padding and the limited shooting speed potential of kids.

If I remember correctly cause of death was ruled congenital heart defect but it's seems odd that he would suffer sudden heart failure at the exact point the puck hit. I'm fairly certain he took many pucks to the chest before that.

Interesting. And sad.

 

[Hammer]

Very interesting I didn't know this. I heard about a kid once and he died from a puck to the chest, he was keeper so it sure seemed strange with thick padding and the limited shooting speed potential of kids.

If I remember correctly cause of death was ruled congenital heart defect but it's seems odd that he would suffer sudden heart failure at the exact point the puck hit. I'm fairly certain he took many pucks to the chest before that.

Interesting. And sad.

It's very sad it happens to people who want to live and yet for us it's a hugely rare chance.


And yeah alot of the things I read said that modern sports attire especially for kids isn't enough to stop it. Like a heavy padding that's ontop of your chest is still... on your chest...if the vibration goes through it's still enough to interrupt the hearts electrical pulse.

I'd guess the only way to completely prevent it is armour that protrudes away from the chest and is still strong enough to take an impact and keep going.

 

[SSlostallhope]

Surely it's just blunt force trauma to the heart if it's hard enough?

 

[Hammer]

Surely it's just blunt force trauma to the heart if it's hard enough?

Aye but it doesn't need to be a huge impact, if I understand correctly there's no damage to the heart, and can barely be any to the skin. It's just that in a certain timeframe if your heart receives a knock it I guess doesn't have chance to send out the surge it does that tells your brain to keep things going? So it just shuts down and the heart doesn't know what the fuck to do so also shuts down.

It would look like you just had a cardiac arrest I think unless the events leading up to it were known, then a death by Commotio Cordis would be the culprit. But without knowing you took a bang to the chest, just looks like your heart stopped.

 

[AnxietyAttack44]

6 milliseconds is a very short time frame. Evennif we could figure it out, when is it, timing would seem hard. Nice find tho. A little bit of hope for some of us

 

[Hammer]

Little more info, it is known the exact time the heart is vulnerable to it, it's hard to explain, but if you imagine it on a heart monitor, after the big blip there is a small blip, that small blip is the window, I assume that's your heart sending out the rhythm, and if you interupt it that's when it goes bad, or good...


These factors influence the chance of commotio cordis:

• Direction of impact over the precordium (precise area, angle of impact)
• Total applied energy (area of impact versus energy, i.e., the kinetic energy of the projectile E k = 1 2 m v 2 {\displaystyle E_{\text{k}}={\tfrac {1}{2}}mv^{2}}
  
  )
• Impact occurring within a specific 10– to 30-millisecond portion of the cardiac cycle. This period occurs in the ascending phase of the T wave, when the ventricular myocardium is repolarizing, moving from systole to diastole (relaxation).

The small window of vulnerability explains why it is a rare event. Considering that the total cardiac cycle has a duration of 1 second (for a base cardiac frequency of 60 beats per minute), the probability of a mechanical trauma within the window of vulnerability is 1 to 3 percent only. That also explains why the heart becomes more vulnerable when it is physically strained by sports activities:

1. The increase in heart rate (exercise tachycardia) may double the probability above (e.g., with 120 beats per minute the cardiac cycle shortens to 500 milliseconds without fundamentally altering the window-of-vulnerability's size)
2. Relative exercise-induced hypoxia and acceleration of the excitoconductive system of the heart make it more susceptible to stretch-induced ventricular fibrillation.

I'm not a smart man and certainly am not trained in biology, if anyone here can make sense of that information please do.

 

[Aap]

When you look at the number of cases, you'll realize how incredibly difficult it is to actually die from it, particularly without an underlying condition.

 

[SuiSqueeze92]

This reminds me of when I first started playing baseball and my mom made me wear this heart guard thing for this reason... I always took it off, didn't want to be "that kid". I was more worried about the ball hitting my throat or balls lol even with a cup on, shit hurts.

 

[lostangel]

I remember a thread where a guy said he wanted to build a contraption that will hit his left side of the chest in hopes it will cause cardiac arrest. But as the unpredictability of it, he avoided it. It was just a theory and your post reminds me of it.

 

[Hammer]

I remember a thread where a guy said he wanted to build a contraption that will hit his left side of the chest in hopes it will cause cardiac arrest. But as the unpredictability of it, he avoided it. It was just a theory and your post reminds me of it.

Yeah, saddly the randomness of it means you could end up being punched a thousand times and having a really sore chest or it could happen the first time.

Even if you had a machine that punched repeatable every second you are still likely to just have a really bruised pectoral.

Still though it's a little comforting to know when things are at their worst I could hit myself in the chest and as low as the probability is, there's always a chance I'll just die.

 

[👁️👃👁️]

You're better off tying a bowling ball to the ceiling from a rope above your head and putting the flame of a blowtorch to the rope.
That probably won't work either.