You have a heart attack right now, sitting at your computer, and die right on the spot. Let's say your corpse doesn't start to smell or anything, and you don't give any other outward signs as to there being a dead person in your room, so you have to rely on the people that you know to call the cops and figure out why you've been missing. How long does it take before the cops bust down your door and find your body lying there?

Been thinking about this, and it could be a while for me. Don't have a girlfriend or a roommate or anyone else I pretty much HAVE to talk to on a regular basis. Here's the places in my life where I guess I could possibly be missed.

1. My Parents. I talked to my parents on the phone today and we don't have any immediate plans to talk again, so it could be at least a week before they call again, and then two or three days after that before they start worrying that I haven't called back. So that's maybe ten days before they start asking questions, maybe twelve days before the cops knock down my door.

2. My College/Trivia Friends. I'm supposed to show up for a bar trivia thing on Monday Night, then a College Bowl team practice the next night. One guy from the bar trivia also goes to team practices, and if I'm not at either (I haven't missed a meeting all year), people might start to wonder why. I dunno if it'd be enough to worry them, but maybe it's enough for one or two of them to IM me and ask me why I haven't been around. If by the next week I'm still not there, people might get worried, but I dunno if it's enough to start asking questions. If I'm not there the next week, which is now the week before Nationals, I think people would have to know something was weird, especially since I haven't talked to any of them on AIM or phone or anything. I'd like to think SOMEONE would start asking questions. So that's maybe sixteen days before they start asking questions, maybe twenty days before the cops knock down my door.

3. My Friends from Home: This is a little more variable, since it depends on when one of them gets the whim to call me. I didn't hang out with either of my home friends that go to NYU this weekend, so it's possible that one of them would call me sometime next weekend, especially if I'm not on IM. When I don't answer, I dunno how worried they could get though--they might jump to the conclusion that I'm avoiding them, instead of dead. In all possibility, it could be longer than a month before they get the cops to knock down my door.

4. NYU: I can't see them getting too worried if I don't go to classes--I've skipped classes before, and there are too many kids that do that to worry about tracking all of us down. However, every couple weeks or so, NYU people come around to check our Air Conditioning, or our smoke detectors, or something like that. In fact, I also have an obligatory floor meeting tomorrow night, and assuming they take roll there, it might be my best chance at getting discovered within a week--my asbence at that meeting's gonna send someone knocking at, if not knocking down my door.

5. You guys? / Other internetors: If I die before I finish the SOMB '65 - '74 poll, I imagine people would notice my absence--not to mention the fact that I'm barely away from this board for more than a day or two--but would it be enough of a shock for you guys to start worrying that I'm dead? The threads would start after three or four days I imagine (it would take a lot longer in the non-poll season, obv.) but at first they'd probably be jokey--people saying I'd pulled a Hickman, or comparing me to Sausage taking a week off or something. Would they ever get serious enough for someone to say "hey, maybe he's in trouble"? If so, would anyone act on it? Probably not, since barely any of you even live in the same city. More realistically, when I miss my Sunday deadline on my next Stylus piece, my editor would probably call me to ask where it is--but once again, if I don't call him back, he might think I'm avoiding him rather than in trouble. But that, combined with my internent absence, maybe he starts checking the SOMB and sees a thread or two about my not being there...it's possible that within three or four weeks, SOMEONE gets worried and within four to five weeks, the cops knock down my door.

Freaky.

Heavy topic Bill...
fortunately I'm married...with kid...so it's a moot point for me....
...but seriously...don't dwell on things like this.....I can sense you're good people (hokey sounding I know)....meaning there's loved ones around...

Nick Lowe- Marie Provost

Marie Provost did not look her best
The day the cops bust into her lonely nest
in the cheap hotel up on Hollywood west
July 29

She'd been lyin' there for two or three weeks
The neighbors said they never heard a squeak
While hungry eyes that could not speak
said even little doggies have got to eat

chorus:
She was a winner that became a doggie's dinner
She never meant that much to me
Whoa oh poor Marie

Marie Provost was a movie queen
mysterious angel of the silent screen
And run like the wind the nation's young men steamed
When Marie crossed the silent screen

Whoa she came out west from New York
but when the talkies came Marie just couldn't cope
The public said Marie take a walk
All the way back to New York

-repeat chorus-

Those quaalude bombs didn't help her sleep
As her nights grew long and her days grew bleak
It's all downhill once you've passed your peak
Marie got ready for that last big sleep

The cops came in and they looked around
Throwin' up everywhere over what they found
The handiwork of Marie's little dachshund
That hungry little dachshund

-repeat chorus-

poor Marie

I would end up being found rather quickly because I have a roommate here at school and at home I'm with my parents, so I'll look at it as a worst case scenario with me having my heart attack while laying in bed.

Even with my roommate, I think I could probably go close to a full day. Yes, even with him in the room with dead me. My reasoning for this is the few days that he has a reason to be awake before me (like if my first class had been cancelled), he doesn't really think about why I would still be sleeping. Along with that, he isn't around much anways, so if he came back at night and I was still in a sleep like position, he probably wouldn't think much of it either. Same thing as you said about your school, I really don't think mine would notice very quickly. The aren't many other people on my floor who I ever hang out with and the ones that I do never seem to notice when I'm not really around, so it would probably take a while for them. Since I'm writing this right now, probably the soonest someone would notice would be my parents because I'm supposed to call them tomorrow.

same with both of the roommates I've had in college--both were pretty heavy sleepers and would sometimes stay in bed close to all day, if I was out for a few hours that day (or for the night), it's entirely possible that I wouldn't think anything of it until a second or third day.

edit: And I'm not really dwelling on this, I was just watching Law & Order: SVU when a similar situation happened, and it got me thinking somewhat.

haha, shit. I'd have to say my one friend who I'm really close with would find out sooner or later. If I didn't answer my phone for a couple days, he'd come by, or call my parents. Then my parents would freak out and call the police. All my other friends though wouldn't bother, because I've been known to go in and out of hermit phases.

Same thing crossed my mind when that guy in Denmark (Greenland?) died in his apartment and wasn't discovered for two years. This is my irrational basis for not setting up automatic mortgage payments--my bank account would last for several months.

My door is currently closed and my roommate is away for the weekend. But even when she comes back, she won't knock on my door or open it for anything. That's just our unspoken policy. The only indicator that I might actually be in here is the fact that the light is on. She might notice that, she might not.

My parents don't worry if I don't call. I mean, if they don't hear from me for another 3 weeks or so, they might start to worry. They'd call and call and call, but it would be at least 2 months or so before they'd come out here to actually check on me. I'm not even sure they remember how to get here.

I just quit my job and my last day was yesterday. I'm currently unemployed. There will be no angry bosses calling to want to know where I am.

I haven't seen any of my friends from back home in about six months. They call occasionally but won't think anything out of the ordinary if I don't return their call.

My landlord will probably be pissed if next month comes around and he still hasn't received a check yet. He doesn't actually live here so he'd have to drive a half hour or so to get here, and I'm sure he'd call my roommate first instead of me. Actually, once the end of the month comes along and I haven't left a check out on the table for my roommate to mail, maybe then she'd knock on my door, and possibly even open it to check on me. But that's a long time from now.

I say three weeks without any posts by me on the board here might inspire a "where's undo?" thread, but let's face it. There's nothing you guys can do. God bless you, but you don't know where I live or how else to contact me or anything.

So then, the grim responsibility of realizing that something is wrong lies with my girlfriend. No calls or IMs from me after two days would probably be a good sign that maybe I am not well. But a week or so of no contact whatsoever might be enough to cause her to drive all the way up here (40 minutes or so, it's not an easy trip) to check on me. Unfortunately she doesn't have keys to the building, so she'll buzz and buzz and buzz but won't get any answer. My roommate certainly won't be home when she chooses to do this. Maybe she'll come back later, and hopefully it won't be a night that my roommate is staying late at work or partying with friends. Anyway, she doesn't know any of my other friends or how to contact my parents so there's not much else she can do about it, unfortunately.

Probably after a week and a half, she finally buzzes the apartment when my roommate is home, they put two and two together, and open my bedroom door to find my corpse. Case closed!

I find it hard to believe that your roommate, regardless of how distant your relationship with her may be, could go that long without ascertaining whether or not you were in the apartment. Do you really ever go ten days without talking? How big a place do the two of you have?

lol @ undo's response.


Tomorrow when my parents try to wake me up for school and notice I'm dead.

With our work schedules staggered for most of the time, I will often go a week or so without seeing her. Plus she has a tv in her room and i have my computer in mine, so we usually don't spend our time in the living room. Plus she's been away on a lot of short business trips lately, most of which require longer days spent at the office in the week afterwards upon returning.

She's a really nice and considerate person and we get along great. We just don't talk much. I've given her a lot more space over the past year and a half or so and don't really try to instigate much unnecessary contact between us. That's seemed to work out just fine so far.

I think we need a thread in which we all post every three days to say "I'm not dead" If someone misses out the authorities are called.

my cellmate would figure it out...eventually.

I carpool with my landlady every weekday morning. If I didn't come out of my room one day, she's probably go on without me. But I bet she'd push open the door to my room within a day or so of not seeing me. I don't lock it. She gives me my privacy, but she's also nice enough to collect and stack my New York Times on my nightstand when I'm out of town. That's probably when it would happend. Or the dog. The dog might find me.

right now? it'd be about 8 hours until someone found me. one of my friends who i watch "the sopranos" with has a spare key to my apartment and would let themselves in.

I'd probably found between the 24-48 hour time frame. I don't always pick up my phone so no one would notice for at least one day. My parents live 5 minutes away and my brother and his wife live in the same building, but are not key buddies because they would use them for the lamest reasons: Our A/C broke, we have no ice, I had to use the bathroom, etc. I snatched those keys back a week after I moved in.

I feel like I should leave emergency contact information with the SOMB just in case I go AWOL for like a week during poll time.

I feel like Paves should y'all send the thing you "We Gotta Get You A Woman".

What happened to your roommate?

The chances of a average 19 year old hipster college student dying are pretty fucking low dude.


Dude, fuck bitches man. They don't understand the billboard charts.

roommate moved out like month-and-a-half ago. And I dunno, I could die from eating too much chinese food at once or something. I'm pretty sure I've gotten close a couple times.

I just ate an entire jar of peanuts, you're fine.

I wonder how long it would take for Todd Rundgren if he died?

Yeah, I've wondered this too. Luckily, I am involved in enough here at school that if I should be noticed as missing. Especially as editor in chief of a paper. I kind of am always in the office, so if I started missing, then yeah, I'm pretty sure that someone would take note.

It's one of the best selling points of this school. It's so small that someone is bound to notice if you are dead. I think it's one of the admission's people told me when I registered here.

And yeah, also if I died, my roommate might not notice for like three days. He would probably come into the room, see me in bed, think I am sleeping, go watch Price is Right in the hallway and go to class and disappear off to his girlfriend's for like a day. Then he'd come back the next day, see me in bed still, nudge me and say "Derek...can I play Guitar Hero." when I wouldn't respond, he would pretend he heard me say "Yes" and put it on regardless. After three or so days of this happening, the smell of my body would start stinking up the room, but by this time, roommate would probably have eatten about 15 White Castles, and assume the smell is from him, so it wouldn't phase him. After a few more days, he'd probably tell his girlfriend I'd been "acting weird" lately and not coming out of bed. She would in turn say "who gives a fuck, it's only Derek. He's an asshole to me, anyway."

Eventually my newspaper advisor would realize something was afoot, come over to my room, enter and yell "Derek, are you with a hooker?" only to see my lifeless, smelly body. Then noone would know what to do.

does this topic in any way stem from the french woman whose face was recently eaten by her house pet?


i'm being melodramatic today. i might die tomorrow. death-illness is still holding strong on my immune system. send in the troops to check on me tomorrow.




(plus, i live alone, and have a cat who's going thru heat, so it could be a pretty nasty picture if my corpse isn't removed in a timely fashion.)

what's sad is I think the first to notice would be my workplace. "where is that asshole? He should have been here an hour ago!"

I too have thought about this scenario before mainly because I've lived alone for the past 5 years. I think timing is the issue with me. If I died on say a Friday evening I don't think anyone would notice until I didn't show up for work on Monday. Even then I think my boss would just wonder and not really take any action. Probably by the second "no call no show" day then she'd call to see what's going on.

My family wouldn't notice for awhile because I don't really talk to them every day. Although if my sister has watched some report on Dateline about the dangers of living alone, she might get paranoid and send the cops to check on me if I didn't return her calls immediately.

I'd say 48 to 72 hours before my lifeless body is found.

Actually, last night I ate some bad sushi for dinner (buying it at the end of the day so long after it's been prepared probably isn't a good idea) and woke up at 5:00 in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep. My head was pounding and my stomach felt awful. I vomited continuously from about 8:00 am to 11:00 am, long after my stomach was empty. I finally called my parents and my mom told me she'd bring me some things, so they got here about two hours later with popsicles and gatorade and chicken soup.

I did think, for a few minutes, that I was going to die, and the irony that this would have been the last thread I'd have posted in was not lost on me.

So yeah, I'm sicker than I've been in a couple years now, and on such a nice day. Ugh.

sorry to hear, Rap, but if this doesn't demonstrate why we need a SOMB Emergency Assistance Program I don't know what will.

Me too. Actually they panic after about 15 minutes if someone's inexplicably late. And if they didn't reach me by phone, they'd unleash the hounds in an hour or two.

don't kid yourself. hickman's got the personal info of anyone who'se ever logged in on file

I had an astounding amount of contact information for various people here stored on my notepad on the board before it crashed last time around. It's all gone now.

Why did you change yr name, dice?

My Gran'Daughter's sitting on my lap, my Daughter's outside having a cigarette, and my wife's expected back from Ralphs any minute. 5 minutes, tops.

I suppose there's no way to say this without sounding disrespectful...but dude- you need to get out more. Let someone else take on the next list...at least for the sake of your young hormones.




You and me both.

yeah, seriously, GDB. shake it up some. we'll hold down the fort; no worries.

on a whim. thought someone would call out the reference and then i'd change it back. hasn't happened, so now i'm in jail

I'm in a room with three co-workers, so prolly 6-7 hours

Assuming i died right now, while at my work computer, someone would notice within 10-15 seconds, max. Lots of foot traffic by my desk.

But lets stretch this out, and see what the longest my body could go without being discovered would be.
Parents -- i call them every Sunday. On rare occassions i forget to make the call or don't have time to, so i'll call Monday after work. If i didn't call them Sunday or Monday, or email one of them either, they would start to wonder why i haven't called. My older brother calls home only 1x a month or so, so i don't think they'd worry too much. Maybe, after 5 days of not hearing from me, they might start to investigate. However, they live 3 hours away, so they probably wouldn't make the trip up here immediately. I don't think they have phone numbers for any of my roommates, so that's not an option. By Friday they'd have contacted my office to see if they knew anything.

Office -- if I didn't show up for work without calling in, my boss would call my cell phone by 9:30am. If i didn't answer, they'd try every 30-40 minutes until 11am before letting HR know. HR would contact my parents, who probably wouldn't know what is up. They'd try to contact me as well and get nothing.

Family friends -- live about 45 minutes away, so my parents would then contact them on the 2nd day and see if one of them can head to my apartment and see if I'm alive. They don't have a key, so they'd just keep trying to buzz in. If someone from one of the other units was around, they'd ask them if they can call the landlord to get into my apartment.

Roommates -- i have 3 of them, but we're all busy people. If i died in my sleep, they'd check my room by the second evening after they didn't see me around and my door was shut. They'd probably assume i was either out running, working out, staying late at work, or going to a show somewhere, and i was just getting home after they were asleep. Although, one of my roommates & his girlfriend are my 2 best friends, so if neither of them had any contact from me after 24 hours they'd start wondering, and check my room. He and i usually know where each other is 95% of the time, so i can't see my body rotting for very long.

Runners -- the guys i run with 2x or 3x a week would send me an email if i didn't show up 2 consecutive nights without explanation. They'd call my roomates, and i'd be discovered.

The somb -- would probably not notice my absence. It's possible in october someone might mention the chicago marathon and my name would come up.

Worst case scenario, i'm undiscovered for 24-36 hours max.

I might say this is the best thread I've read in a long time. I have a wife and kids, so I would be missed pretty quickly but I liked reading everyone elses.

Life Imitates SOMB Department:

One of the guys from out Revision Control Department died at his desk yesterday. He left a meeting at break time and went back to cube to sit at his desk during the break (checking email, looking at the interweb, returning phone messages, that sort of thing). When he didn't show back up at the meeting afterwards the group sent someone to tell him break was over and to come back to the meeting room, and they found him slumped over his desk.

Two people from our Tech Support department performed CPR until the Paramedics arrived, and the Paramedics then worked on him for almost 20 minutes before admitting he was gone. He had been suffering from advanced adult onset diabetes and was on a waiting list for a new kidney. He was about 3 years younger than me and leaves a wife & toddler, now a widow & orphan.

So the answer to the original question for my work is "20 minutes tops."

I guess the real reason people have jobs is so they'll be missed if they suddenly keel over dead.

we need to address bleachthesheep's abscense. that kid lived day-to-day, i wouldn't be surprised if he ran away with the circus and was eaten by a tiger.

i have his number from a le tigre ticket. should call him.

That bites hard.

or maybe he grew increasingly disenchanted by his 0-2 reply threads.

but i liked his posts a lot.

at least we can rule out him getting eaten by a tigre, he doesn't fit the diet.

the tought of a dead sombie's list is somewhat frightening.

Bleachthesheep was a dude?

I think if I died, my room mate would think Im sleeping, my girlfriend would think I'm out cheating and not answering her calls and my friends back home dont care I'm gone til' I'm back. I'll go with 2-3 days.

and the SOMB wouldn't notice I was gone at all...

he was this chill latin hipster that talked like a thug and was always looking to score a hit.

he was pretty feminist- supporting. though, i don't see how his posts could be confused as female.

female avatar probably has a lot to do with it. And I doubt I read too many of his etc. posts.

aww, come on he was moreso in music. i'm surprised you don't recall much of him, his style of speech was...er... different. he was pretty funny too.

by female-supporting, i mean in his explanations of why he liked a lot of the albums he liked.

anyway, blah... don't die guys.

I remember his different style of speech but can't say that I miss it too much. Plus, if I remember correctly, he was a big S-K fan, which...I can't exactly relate to.