You are buried in a coffin 6ft deep, with no light or cell phone. There is only a small tube connected to the coffin from outside that allows you to breathe (edit: you can breathe with no difficulty). After 48 hours, you are dug up and given 1 million dollars. Do you do it?
Edit: No food and water, no diaper, and no contact with the outside world. Once buried, they leave for 48hr and come back to dig you up. The coffin is only wide enough for you to lay on your back (no rolling around), and the inside is wood and not particularly comfortable. The only items you’re allowed to bring with you are life sustaining medication (e.g. an asthma inhaler). No knocking yourself out with pills or anxiety meds. The money is a briefcase full of cash.
Is the air tube mechanically assisted? I’m not sure I could handle the effort of basically pumping air 6ft back and forth with my lungs for 48 hours.
It allows enough air into the coffin to keep you alive and breathing without any difficulty.
Then absolutely. Is this even a hard question for any rationale person?
I think you are trivializing it a bit. Just try lying in your bed on your back for 24 hours without turning and you would realize this is not going to be comfortable at all. Add to that the complete inability to tell how much time has passed and you may start to lose your shit. I would probably start to believe that I had been forgotten because my sense of time would be way off.
Yep. I get it. It’s going to be really fucking uncomfortable. I’ll be hungry, thirsty, sore, and will lose my concept of time. And then I’ll have a million dollars. How long will it take you to earn a million dollars in any other fashion? Unless your Jeff Bezos you’ll have much more accumulated discomfort and assorted bullshit over that period of time than just dealing with it all at once. This is a easy decision.
I think it’s more than that. Was an EMT for a long time and had to scoop up many an old timer who’d fallen and been unable to get up. Unfortunately it’s been a while and I’ve been bumped on the head once or twice, but I recall there being concern of issues like compartment syndrome that came from basically spending 10 or 12 hours on a floor unable to get up. I’m sure age and position have something to do with it, but I just don’t know if your body will come out the same on the other side. And now you’re spending that million on medical care if you’re like me and from America.
Well remember a good 50-100k is going to be gone right off the bat for the hospital stay afterwards.
And there’s always the chance of a blood clot. Very dangerous when immobile that long.
Still worth it tho.
Decades of work will do just as much damage to my psyche as 48 hours in a coffin, and it’s going to do a lot more damage to my body
Yeah, there would really be no way to know how much time has passed.
Just count your heartbeat, like 230.000 and you’re good :-p
Do it like Senku (Dr stone) and his multi processor brain. He calculated his entombment to the second for 3,500 years. True he’s a anime badass, but I could pull off 2 days using my internal clock. I hope.
Well yeah? 48hrs without being able to move, stuck underground without food or water would be terrible, I would go insane
I think it would be particularly awful for people who are claustrophobic.
A million dollars will buy you the best anti psychotic drugs you can buy ( and the legal ones will be less)
I’m not sure you know how much a million dollars actually is or how effective drugs are on your mental well-being. They’re not magic, it’s still probably going to be years of problems and while a million dollars is enough to make you live very comfortably, it’s not enough to actually make you rich rich.
I personally don’t think you can put a price on your health, mental or physical, and being immobile for 48 hours in a wooden box is going to be very hard on your physical health as well.
The sheer thought if this makes me slightly panicky. Which I guess isn’t rational but yeah I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.
People have turned to suicide under shorter time periods. I don’t trust my mental health (or bodily health, water etc) in such a situation, and it might permanently damage me for the rest of my life for a mere 1m. 1B before I even consider, and still probably no unless I think I’m making a sacrifice for others or something and don’t expect to be alive.
I think it would be interesting to compare answers alongside things like our jobs, income, and location, because there’s very little I wouldn’t do for a “mere” million dollars
I would have 100% done this in my 20s when I was borderline homeless and dumpster diving to live. But now I’m older and a million dollars is less life changing than it would have been then. Sure more financial comfort would be nice but my basic needs are taken care of. Plus my body is in way worse shape now. I’m old and lame now and less likely to do ridiculous shit for the experience. I don’t think I would do it.
A million dollars is only about 15 years of wages for me, and I’d still do it (assuming competence on part of the people making the offer).
I’m not claustrophobic and I’m very lazy. I’d do it. I got pretty annoyed when I tried a “sensory deprivation tank” and there was light and sound leaking in. 48 hours is a long time, but not dangerously so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation
Those people were allowed to eat, drink and eliminate (and presumably get up and stretch while they did), but this doesn’t seem terribly far off from your question.