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@irishcelticredflowercrown

I’ll try not to repeat from our fellow contributors. Adrenaline is a massive component of pain sensation in severe injuries – people have taken dozens of rounds from handguns and not dropped till minutes later or until a fatal shot completely put them out of commission, and soldiers have sometimes fought on with missing limbs or innumerable injuries.

As to how long someone can survive an injury – location, location, location. Any damage directly to the heart will quickly result in cardiac tissue death, massive internal bleeding, and loss of consciousness within a minute or less depending on the severity of the damage.  Likewise damage to the spinal cord will cause paralysis below the level of the injury. Interestingly, brain damage does not always necessarily result in death. In the case of Phineas Gage, he had his entire frontal lobe explosively removed when a blasting charge went off and went a two foot long steel rod shooting through the floor of his his jaw and directly through his frontal lobe, exiting the top of his head. He survived the injury for many years afterwards, though he had difficulties in managing his personal life and finances, and suffered significant changes in personality; he no longer liked the company of other people, instead preferring to keep horses. Now, damage to the brainstem and general core of the brain will result in immediate loss of vital functions, but people can survive a remarkable amount of damage to the brain without necessarily suffering clinical death, although their quality of life post-trauma will vary wildly depending on the region of the brain injured and the extent of damage, as well as age; children under the age of 8 can adapt to as much as losing an entire hemisphere of their brain. There’s a famous case of a girl treated by Ben Carson (neurosurgeon) who had a total hemispherectomy, and went on to earn a master’s in speech pathology and raise a family of her own. With only half her brain still in her skull (I don’t know what they filled the other half with.)