actually your hair and finger nails don't keep growing. But the skin on your scalp and fingers shrink giving it the appearance there of.
Sure about that? I think it's a combination of the two. It takes several days for the effects of death to fully work it's way down the structures of the body. And, the bacterial hitchhikers of our digestive tract actually thrive upon our death. They eat us.
no its stasis, like putting someone on pause.
If you call ice crystals destroying your cell membranes stasis, then... I don't think they've come up with a decent cryoprotectant yet anyway. Have they? I think they're still banking on the future coming up with the means to restore the damaged cells of those frozen today. Like the future would really want to ressurect all the losers from our time.
Maybe a couple for research purposes, but I doubt they'd want all of them.
yeah, i wonder what would happen if you were concsious during cryo, like all the old science fiction novels. probably be really boring.
Quite painful, I'd imagine. The nazi's did freezing experiments.
To answer the main question (in my limited fashion as I'm not a medical examiner) I think it's brain death that is the operative factor. I saw a show on Discovery a long time ago about death. It said how the body actually lives a few days after "death" (here and there). It's the brain that's important. Specifically the autonomic functions, I should think. Heart beating, lungs breathing, etc... When the body cannot do these things on their own then you're dead. You can be kept "alive" artificially sometimes, and sometimes these people actually snap out of it eventually.
Basically, there is no standard definition of dead. It's a judgement call made by a doctor. Nothing more.
By the way, did you know that if you die and no one finds you for a long time, you liquify and can even soak through the floor until the downstairs neighbors actually see you dripping into their apartment. Gross stuff. Costly to repair the damage too.