No.9091
The term "instantaneous" in the context of death must be defined with scientific precision. It does not refer to the cessation of all cellular metabolism, but to the immediate and irreversible termination of integrated organismal function.
The impact from a 45+ meter fall delivers over 35,000 Joules of kinetic energy, which, upon contact with a non-deformable surface, generates forces that cause simultaneous, catastrophic failure of the body's most critical systems. The key event is the complete destruction of the central nervous system, particularly the brainstem, which controls all vital functions. This injury, whether from direct impact, shear forces, or axial loading, results in immediate brain death. This is compounded by the simultaneous traumatic transection of the aorta, which causes an immediate cessation of cerebral perfusion. The convergence of these independent, unsurvivable injuries means that the moment of impact and the onset of medico-legal death are, for all practical and scientific purposes, the same. The classic trimodal distribution of trauma deaths, immediate, early, and late, is rendered moot; this event falls squarely and entirely within the "immediate" category, occurring within seconds of the traumatic event.
The question of suffering is answered by the same mechanism. Suffering requires consciousness, and consciousness requires a functioning brain. The distinction between nociception (the signal) and pain (the perception) is paramount. The pathological evidence shows that the very structures required to perceive pain: the thalamus, the cortex, the entire integrated network of the brain are obliterated by the impact forces on a timescale that is faster than the speed of neural transmission and processing. The brain is destroyed before it can register that the body has been injured.
While the fall itself from this height is a conscious event, the impact is not.