So, assuming you are healthy without any pre-underlying medical conditions can you actually be so scared that, just for example, your heart gives out? The only real situations I can think of is where someone is so scared they are glued to the spot or unable to think and that lack of reaction is what kills them. The other situations where someone dies always seems to be because of previous health issues or conditions.
shareNews Bulletin: Justin Bieber is running for President.
BREAKING NEWS: Billions commit suicide over hearing Bieber's candidacy for president.
That actually scared me almost to death. ;)
But to answer the "is it even possible" question. Can one be scared literally to death?
Yes, it's absolutely possible. There's a natural protective mechanism (fight-or-flight response, or FoF for short) that's triggered by unexpected and possibly life-threating impulses. The FoF was first described by Walter Cannon of Harvard University Physiology Dept.
If an animal is faced with a life-threatening situation, the body automatically responds by increasing air intake and increasing heart rate which serves to improve blood flow to the muscles (thus supplying high amounts of oxygen) and other physiological reactions such as dilating pupils to improve field of vision etc. All these responses increase chances of succeeding in a fight or in escaping from a predator.
The FoF response is an autonomic reaction and humans still have it. We do not need it as much as our ancestors once did, though.
How it can harm us? Well, one of the ways the body achieves all the effects described above is, it releases a hormone called adrenaline which activates the FoF response. We could say that adrenaline sharpens our reactions and speeds up the body. As with anything that messes the organism's balance up, there are downsides.
Adrenaline is toxic in large amounts. It damages internal organs such as the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. Even if it's not released in a deadly amount, it can still kill you. All it takes is for your heart to be weak, or maybe your blood vessels aren't in a good shape because of all the burgers and fat steaks and coke.. The rapid increase of blood flow can rupture an already damaged blood vessel, leading to a stroke. Or your heart gives out.
There's a lot more that could be said about this, from explaining how it is possible for the heart to start fibrillating due to excess amounts of adrenaline to all the gory details of sudden muscle spasms that can lead to tissue damage.. but this should already answer the original question.
So if you surprise someone from behind and they go "Ohmygod my heart just stopped", they're not exaggerating. It could've easily happened.
Also, even during a severe panic attack, the brain and body have coping mechanisms to mitigate the fear. I suppose that if the condition portrayed in the movie resulted in maximized fear without any way to keep it in check (like releasing endorphins or being able to focus on something else), it could turn deadly pretty quickly.
shareYes - you are absolutely right - it COULD happen, especially if the person has some other weakness. However, even in the most extreme cases of terror it would only happen in a very very small percentage of cases (and it certainly would not make you ears bleed). So essentially the basic premise of the film falls down but often you have to overlook such things to allow such a film to deliver the story which may have more meaning as a metaphor than as a literal interpretation.
shareJustin can't run for the same reason that Arnold can't. It's required that you're born in the States.
shareMost people who fall from great heights have heart attacks or at least pass out before they hit the ground.
So, is this the premise of this film? That they are scared to death?
shareThe premise of the film is there is a worldwide epidemic of agoraphobia (fear of open spaces). No logical explanation is given for this happening.
The being scared to death part comes into play when people are forced outside while they have this condition.
Possible? Yes. Likely? No. One out of a million maybe. For sure not 100%. My 87 year old grandmother had panic attacks most of her life. I had a panic attack where i literally thought for no reason that my heart had stopped beating and i remember thinking "i hope i can reach my phone before i die" (to call 911). I dont think its possible to be any more scared than that and it didnt even come close to killing me. I was perfectly fine.
shareThe problem with the film is that yes, people get panic attacks. But as it has been mentioned, those who are in good health will rarely if EVER die from them. They will just hyperventilate and pass out, at the worst case scenario our human hearts can take a lot, beat very fast and we have chemicals in our bodies that help us deal with the chemicals of stress that are released. Yes, we are prepared to run if necessary, with adrenaline pumping through our veins, but we can actually be under a great deal of stress for a long period of time and not show any permanent signs of damage. The one thing you DON'T SEE when people are having a panic attack is bleeding from their eyes or ears. Nope. Not unless they already have a pre-existing disorder of their eyes and/or ears (which is a separate health issue). You are correct that it may FEEL like you can't take the feeling of panic, but then it passes, and that is how it goes for us humans.
This movie had (at least) two downfalls. It never even tried to explain the etiology of what was causing the pandemic panic attacks and they were a cross of mental health and a physical ailment (with an onset of death unknown to mankind, also never seen before by humans or even tried to explain how this occurred). Why does panic cause you to bleed out? Why does panic cause you to have cranial bleeding/sudden onset of death?
To each their own...opinion
Not only does Children of Men, an acknowledged masterpiece of sf, not explain its epidemic of infertility, it goes out of its way to establish that it's inexplicable.
A lot of great sci-fi asks us to believe a nominally scientific but actually impossible premise, in order to explore human nature, and/or to craft a metaphor for human relationships.
The answer to your "why" questions is that it does. That's the premise. And if the movie had been as well executed as Children of Men, it's possible that more people would have realized what it was trying to do. Unfortunately, the movie's execution only rarely lived up to its premise.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
I thought they blamed it on the eruption of that volcano, it was something it unleashed... the thing I thought was dumb was how they would harvest rainwater. Rain absorbs all the crap in the air and cleans it, so then wouldn't the rainwater be very toxic? I used to live in Santa Monica, CA and never saw the mountains except after a good rain; because there was always so much smog in the air.
re: harvesting rainwater... I thought of that too. But then almost immediately realized that the first few minutes of rainfall cleans the air. Following that, good clean water.
And also, they were already exposed to whatever it was that was causing the situation. More of it, through drinking tainted rainwater, wouldn't necessarily do more damage.
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I think we have to assume there's a little more to it than just panic attacks and conventional agoraphobia. For one thing, no one is afraid of or injured by big open spaces, only by being outside in open air. The shopping mall and some of the underground spaces were huge, but there was no ill effect.
The syndrome, whatever it is, is activated specifically by being outside, presumably even in a small outside space (like a courtyard), although we don't actually see that. It causes more than just panic. It causes real physical damage that will lead to death very quickly (although not instantly, as some reviewers state). Exactly what damage the syndrome causes is not fully explained, but it's more than just fear and panic.
The story would have been more believable if victims had simply dropped dead with sudden cardiac death. Then, you could say that the syndrome provoked a fatal arrhythmia. That sort of makes sense, even if it is unlikely. Dressing up the deaths with seizures, bleeding from various orifices, disorientation, staggering around, etc., means that the cause of death was non-cardiac and therefore less believable.