Talk:Premature burial

Comment
Removed stub classification, this article could use more expansion, but is not likely to be found in torture-stubs. Xaosflux 05:23, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

2-4 minutes?
if buried without a coffeen ,death is imminant. are those 2-4 minutes of holding on'es breath?-- Procrastinating@ talk2me 08:00, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

 * Live burial → Being buried alive … Rationale: compromise between Live burial and Burial alive. Ewlyahoocom 09:10, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Add any additional comments

This page was originally located at Burial alive which sounded a little strange to me, I assumed it was the nounification of "buried alive". So I moved this page to Live burial. ("Living burial" was another option, but I felt there might be some ambiguity on "living" as an adjective or a noun.) However, this has generated a complaint. "Buried alive" is the most common phrase, but its nounifiction is not obvious. So perhaps the compromise solution is to move this page to Being buried alive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ewlyahoocom (talk • contribs) 09:16, 12 May 2006


 * The google count may suggest differently because it yields (probably in vast majority) sentence fragments rather then just relevant captions, but our readers most likely expect page names to conform to the tradition in lexicographical works to use substantives whenever possible. The less likely case anyone actually searchs for the verbal form is best catered for by a redirect- I just made one, 'problem' solved, let's work on content instead. Fastifex 12:20, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I like Live burial more than the proposed title, as it's smoother and more grammatical. If you want to move it to something else, Premature burial might be as good as anything. It corresponds to the title of a fairly famous story on the subject by Poe (The Premature Burial), and it's in pretty widespread usage. -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 21:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Pro Wrestling
Should the article mention the pro wrestling match type called "Buried Alive" match in the Pop Culture section? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.80.174.165 (talk) 11:51, 2 May 2006‎

moving this article
Let us vote the wiki way. I am for "being buried alive" or "premature burial". Procrastinating@ talk2me 23:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Since it has been about 2 weeks since the original request to no avail. I'm implementing it by moving it to-->Being buried alive.


 * I oppose the move to Being buried alive; we don't start articles with "Being". Ral315 (talk) 15:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

y'all can't be serious? article titles should be in noun (or adj + noun) form whenever possible, "live burial" is a perfectly good title. Appleby 19:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * "Live burial" seems like by far the best title, "being buried alive" is not an encyclopedic title. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I've now moved the article back to "live burial", as per naming conventions. As shown above, it's the most common noun phrase for this subject, and thus satisfies both the "use nouns" and "common usage" principles ("premature burial" would have won were it not inappropriate for some meanings of this term). voting is evil, but if we were to be holding a vote, I'd also note that it appears to be the single most popular option in the discussion above. -- The Anome 08:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Although "premature burial" may hold some inaccuracies, it is still best because those who chose to be buried prematurally still underwent a "premature burial". although voting is evil, I oppose the cuurent name nad opt for the premature one.
 * and because this article has beem moved and removed more than 6 times now...LET US VOTE.-- Procrastinating@ talk2me 10:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Premature burial
 * Procrastinating@ talk2me 10:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 13:06, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

'''The result of the last WP:RM was to move it to premature burial. I'll redo that move and then move-lock the page, full stop.' &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?)'' 13:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Survey

 * Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with  ~


 * This page currently named Burial Alive, which I'd vote to keep as Burial alive (capitalmove added above). Live burial suggests to me an article about "the live reporting of a burial"; Being buried alive is Burial alive in a passive voice...? Regards, David Kernow 19:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Move to Live burial. Dr Zak 19:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Google counts (uncorrected for WikiPedia linkbacks, band names, other uses, etc.)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Ewlyahoocom (talk • contribs) 09:16, 12 May 2006
 * about 13,500 for "burial alive"
 * about 23,400 for "live burial"
 * about 588 for "living burial" (cf. about 665,000 for "living sacrifice")
 * about 3,360,000 for "buried alive"
 * about 197,000 for "being buried alive"
 * about 114,000 for "be buried alive"
 * about 73,700 for "was buried alive"


 * Moved to "premature burial", which gets 180,000 hits, too. ;) &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 07:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Premature burial doesn't cover the method of execution, sorry! Dr Zak 19:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Live burial and being buried alive is proper English. Burial alive isn't. Move it where you want, preferably to "live burial", which is a noun, but get rid of what isn't English! Dr Zak 19:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Which "proper English" do you have in mind...? Curious, David Kernow 20:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * British English. Myself speaking American sounds just silly. (And I voted above for "live burial" if that is what you mean.) Dr Zak 01:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks... I'd certainly prefer "Live burial" to "Being buried alive". I suppose I prefer the emphasis given to "burial" by making it the first word. Yours, David 03:33, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Both [live burial and burial alive] seem to be correct. However, "Live burial", is somewhat ambiguous. What are we burying? Something that is alive? Something that has electrical current? Something that may explode? Or are we burying something as it happens (live)? Mikesc86 13:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Miscarriage of rename process
The discussion in the previous subsections of this section appears to have been decided based on several errors: --Jerzy•t 11:22, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Uses of "premature burial" were counted as if they were representative of all burials of living people. In fact they seem to apply to four subsets of that collection, but not to a fourth one:
 * 2) "Premature burial" presumably arose as a term for burials carried out as a result of mistaken diagnoses of death which, if they had stayed provisional diagnoses for longer periods would have led to recoveries (at least temporary ones) that could have delayed burial until definitive death, or to long-terms recoveries allowing the victim to live and function until felled by a truly fatal incident.
 * 3) In some role playing games, there are "premature burial" events (e.g. apparently drawing cards representing the revelation that a character had been deemed dead but can in fact be revived by the power or on the evidence of the premature burial situation.
 * 4) Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story or two where characters were torturously murderded by nemeses with ugly senses of revenge and irony: IIRC, "The Premature Burial" is ironic, with a thief entering a vault to steal a treasure, permitting its holder to brick the thief up inside the vault to perish similarly to a person accidentally buried alive.(I also have the feeling that Poe's "The Cask of Amantillado" analogously refers to a large barrel of fine Iberian Xeres (sherry) coveted by someone whom the owner feels contempt toward, and that the coveter's greed ends up with them drowning or suffocating inside the cask.)
 * 5) "Premature" carries some connotation of "a bit rushed", which evokes well the Monty Python "I'm not dead yet" skit, and with tongue in cheek applies to Poe's case or cases of enemies being tricked into lingeringly gruesome deaths.
 * 6) Executions, and most murders by "burial alive", "live burial" or "being buried alive" are a related category, sharing the horrific element of suffocation despite the clear differences from the accidents and one-off revenges overblown for literary ends.
 * 7) Despite the common cause of death, the bulking together of mass murder and accidental suffocation is an error as to the character and terminology of the respective categories. The failure to link Premature burial and "The Premature Burial" is a serious symptom of overfocusing on a narrow topic with a primary meaning, and attempting to overbroaden it in the face of insufficient imagination in place of phrases that are simply too terse to make meet the objections raised against them.

Summary of sample renaming
Burial of the living (disambiguation)
 * (Live burial, burial alive, burying the living and being buried alive should all redirct to this Dab)
 * Entries including:

--Jerzy•t 11:22, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Premature burial, a Dab giving rise to 3 topics:
 * 2) Perhaps the primary one: burial and other funerary practices applied by error to unresponsive living persons, and efforts to avoid equally premature death
 * 3) The Poe story, labelled as ironically applied
 * 4) The gaming concept of later declaring dead characters "prematurely buried", with the effect of reanimating them
 * 5) Killing by burial, a Dab:
 * 6) Murder by burial
 * 7) Execution by burial

The Law & Order Reference
The Law and Order reference is completely pointless. Since the series has been running so long and generated so many spin-offs, it's highly unlikely that anyone would reconize the criminal. Somebody needs to find that episode's name. BioTube 02:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Buried alive in the 1990s?
Patients in the 1990s have been documented as getting accidentally bagged, trapped in a steel box, or sent to the morgue.

Is that accurate? Or should that be the 1790s or 1890s? --Syonyk 2006 Oct 23 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.201.135.254 (talk) 18:38, 23 October 2006


 * The first sent of the colleague's talk contrib quotes content of the accompanying article that had been added 3 months earlier by a registered colleague who had footnoted it with a ref ("Just Dying to Get Out", snopes.com, 9 June 1999, which had previously been an external link for the article). At least one of the 1990's cases cited by snopes claims the NYT as authority, but our current revision seems not to cite any accidental cases in about the last hundred years. --Jerzy•t 02:25, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

David Blaine?
Is the information on David Blaine's 44-day suspended box performance necessary to the article? This does not seem to relate directly to being buried alive as all the other instances do. In the meantime I cited/edited the information about this performace so as to specify the size and material of the box. (Previous version referred to box as "small tumb size glass box".) Staplerlove 11:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Star Trek Reference
I think this Wrath of Khan reference isn't really needed. It's kind of a stretch to say that it should be in premature burial, which deals almost exclusively with pop culture references that involve actual premature burial, not situations where the characters just may die from lack of air. I plan on removing this reference as well as cleaning up the punctuation in this article within a week if no one objects. Clocktopus 03:35, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge
Discussions about merging this article and Fear of being buried alive and being held at Talk:Fear of being buried alive. Please voice your opinion. Thanks. -- Stbalbach 13:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose- Don't merge Superzohar [[Image:Star*.svg|13px]] Talk 21:23, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Suspended Animation
The subject of hibernation and suspended animation is brought up pretty abruptly in the article--can this be tied in somehow? Meganomics 18:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Picture request
Done. Kaaos 16:34, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

popular culture
this section is way too big; it's almost embarrasing. Can't we just delete some of the less important ones? Eica 15:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok I'm cleaning up the section by deleating less important ones, I'm pretty sure there are quality guidelines on how long certain sections of articles should be, especially when it's as unimportant as "references in popular culture". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eica (talk • contribs) 13:03, 1 August 2007

Another reference
The buried alive thing was the name of a song by the Dropkick Murphys on their album Blackout Gopher squisher007 03:37, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Texas funeral ?
"Texas funeral" redirects here. But there is no explanation of the term. The link from Kill Bill suggests it means deliberate live burial. Is this a tradition in Texas, or what? Dgwsoft (talk) 22:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Article contradicts itself
In unintentional: "As such, undertakers were hired to stay in the graveyard at night to watch out for such signals, hence the term "graveyard shift"."

But then, in Myths and legends: "Likewise, the term “dead ringer” has its origin in horse racing, and the unrelated phrase “graveyard shift” arose in the 20th century."

Eh? 72.66.120.214 (talk) 21:29, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of "In popular culture" section
I think the "In popular culture" section is unencyclopedic and ridiculously long. I think all of it should be deleted, except for maybe the Poe references and Antigone. I'll leave this here for a few days if anyone wants to object (please give reasons why, if you think it should be kept). If no one does, then I'll delete everything except what I mentioned above.--Witan (talk) 03:45, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * No objections have been raised, so I deleted most of the section.--Witan (talk) 03:57, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Why not creating another page "Premature burial in popular culture", some people may want informations on that for those who like the theme. Nancy.Gallant (talk) 00:12, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Burried for 10 months???
Say again... 10 months without water, food, whatsoever? Um... and where are the green dwarfs?

When following the link to the page of the actual "fakir", or magician, it turns out to be only 40 days. Also, the linked page that mentions a "...burried alive for nine months" bears the clear occultistic name of www.mysteriouspeople.com, while the source referring to the plausible 40-day-feat has the much more trustworthy name martialdevelopment.com. I think it's clear which is accurate, and which is not, based on the elementary-school knowledge, that human body can survive without nutrients for no more than 40 days (one week they said, without water, and up to 40 days without food). So, in short -- the burried-for-10-months part is sensationalist (and should be deleted/modified), and the burried-for-40-days -- the right one.

Please, correct me if I'm wrong. Diyan.boyanov (talk) 03:33, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Something curious
The introduction seems to imply that premature burial has been used a means of suicide. By whom, and when ? It's tough for me to believe that anyone with any idea about the torment of dying by suffocation wouldn't choose another way of offing themselves. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.126.36.158 (talk) 03:19, 21 August 2009

Massacre at Hue
Add the Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF to the "as means of execution" section? Seems notable as a more recent phenomenon than the Nainjing mention. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.44.25.204 (talk) 01:18, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Animal vivisepulture
2 issues:

1) The lead is mean to be a summary of the article.  The lead mentions animal live burial, but there is nothing else in tthe whole article.

2) "Premature" burial implies that burial is what would happen after death, but in these cases the order of events is reversed. The bodies of most animals are not buried: they become food, or decompose at the surface, or meet some other fate.  Kevin McE (talk) 11:17, 16 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I noticed the same thing. The part about animals should be deleted if it's not going to be further explained in the body of the article. I suppose it's possible to bury an animal alive, but when has this ever been done, by whom, and why? Boneyard90 (talk) 04:04, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Battle of Changping
It is claimed that 400 000 people were buried alive after this battle, and while such an act would not be strictly impossible, the sources for all such Chinese wars and battles are very scant and selective. I don't know much about this battle in particular, but I would assume that it is plausible that some (many) soldiers were buried alive (or possibly just executed in some other way), but that the actual number only comes from one source fifteen hundred years ago or so. Such numbers are often inflated in the extreme, and to just state it as a fact that 400 000 were buried alive after this battle seems ridiculous to me, when there is almost no evidence for the number, and hardly any evidence at all that people were actually buried alive instead of executed another way. (Again, I know little about this battle in particular, but I just assume that the evidence is extremely scant since there are almost no sources in the article on the battle on Wikipedia, and since evidence is almost always extremely scant in these ancient Chinese battles.) I don't know what the normal procedure would be here. 111.171.173.130 (talk) 11:52, 14 September 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't believe for one second that 400,000 people were buried alive after the battle. Most authors seem to recognise that the figure is very likely a gross exaggeration anyway, and that members of the losing army were massacred in some unknown way before being buried, not buried alive. I propose this material is removed from the article as unreliable speculation. Malleus Fatuorum 14:46, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Citing Iris Chang re: Nanking
See the page on Nanking, as well as the ongoing discussion on the internet as a whole, as to the validity of Iris Chang's book. Many of the figures and statements in the book have been debunked as either outright false or grossly exaggerated. I've no doubt that these incidents occurred during the second Sino-Japanese war, but certainly there must be better sources available than Chinese nationalists with an obvious bias? 114.156.170.162 (talk) 22:48, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Considering how a lot of Iris Chang's critics are Japanese nationalists/apolagists their claims are also suspect. 69.126.206.152 (talk) 22:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Have added german tradition on live burial
Arildnordby (talk) 23:03, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Should popular culture representations of premature burial be allowed??
''I have placed the following box around a single contribution, which could not otherwise be identified as such without consulting the edit history of this page. --Jerzy•t 22:54, 8 November 2013 (UTC)


 * If independent reliable sources were to discuss an instance of premature burial in a video game, then it certainly would be notable enough to include in the article. Do you believe that such a reference will ever be found? Dlabtot (talk) 13:46, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I would think such could be found in Game Review Magazines of some sort. They will be reliable, for their area of interest (why tell their readers something false about the actual content of a video game??)Arildnordby (talk) 14:42, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * It is obviously pointless to argue about the reliability of a citation that doesn't exist. Dlabtot (talk) 15:17, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * You were the one posing the question "Do you believe that such a reference will ever be found?" I answered it. Or, did you think it meaningless to pose the question?Arildnordby (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually no, you did not answer the question, you said such a reference COULD be found, not whether you thought it WOULD be found. It won't ever be found unless you find it. Do you intend to try?  If not we might as well just delete this irrelevant, unsourced trivia right now. Frankly I am 100% certain that no such citation exist in any reliable source - but you are welcome to try and find it. Dlabtot (talk) 21:00, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Modern Science
"According to current medical science, it is not possible for a human to survive for a period of ten months without food, water, and air." Current medical science? Has it taken humanity however many hundred thousand years to figure this out? I honestly don't think it takes MODERN science to realise that, yes, humans need air to survive. I haven't removed this quote, simply because it's the best thing I've ever seen on Wikipedia. 60.242.210.126 (talk) 07:45, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

First Iraq War
During the media coverage of the First Iraq War, during the early 1990s, I remember reading in a reputable paper (either the NYTimes or LATimes), that Iraqi troops fleeing the battle were buried alive by coalition forces by bulldozers moving sand on them. The memory of reading this is very vivid as it is an image that has haunted me for over 20 years. The method (bulldozers) might not be on the mark, but I definitely remember reading fleeing troops were buried and they were not corpses but living people. Is there any proof of this happening? 24.188.185.162 (talk) 21:45, 16 August 2014 (UTC)
 * No. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.57.102 (talk) 03:37, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Historical Accuracy
I think that some of the historical claims in this article are a bit misleading. The Burning of books and burying of scholars information is the worst offender — The article states this:
 * Modern scholars doubt the details of the story in the Records of the Grand Historian—the main source—since Sima Qian, the author, wrote a century or so after the events and was an official of the Han dynasty, which could be expected to portray the previous rulers unfavorably. .... It is now believed that there likely was an incident, but they were not Confucians and were not "buried alive".

However it's written in this article as if it's historical fact:
 * The Burning of books and burying of scholars .... refers to a suppression of intellectual thought carried out by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a unified China. Books and texts deemed to be subversive were burned and 460 Confucian scholars were buried alive in 212 BCE.

This could be because the source is a little outdated (from 1972). I've added some text and tweaked the wording so it doesn't appear to be a statement of fact

Cdpas (talk) 11:57, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

Inclusion of Sati (practice)
As mentioned solely in an image caption in the current article, Sati (practice) is also relevant. So, it would make sense to either mention it in the article or list it under "see also."

2600:1700:6A96:60:5963:540C:C57B:D746 (talk) 02:40, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

example of mass alive burial - may be worth adding to the entry Seanvosler (talk) 17:56, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
The following report of the ChGK from June 21, 1944 contains a description of the mass murder of the Jews in Dunayevtsy: … In April [sic] 1942 over 2,000 people of Jewish nationality (men, women, and children) were taken to a phosphorous mine and explosives were used to blow up the main entrance - Thus, the mine was blocked [with stones]; in such a way all of them were buried alive. Eyewitnesses testified that moaning and shouting were heard from the mine.…

Source:

Seanvosler (talk) 17:56, 31 March 2021 (UTC)