Death

Epic card · No. 12203

Death is the end of an organism's life. It is the irreversible cessation of biological functions that sustain a living organism. Entropy, nature's tendency toward disorder, can contribute to the breakdown of living systems over time. Upon death, organisms stop exhibiting behavior and generally begin to decompose through various physical and chemical processes. Death can occur at any stage of development, including in infancy. A person may experience clinical death that is reversible, resulting in some cases in a near-death experience. In humans, establishing death of the brain determines that an individual has irreversibly died. Natural selection of organisms which successfully pass on their genes to the next generation drives life to engage in a struggle for existence against death. Because of this, living things, including humans, normally fear death and have strong instincts to avoid it. Some organisms may kill other organisms, causing them to die through herbivory, predation, or parasitism...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Hendrick Andriessen, Public domain