Waiting for the Coroner... A Really Long Time

Story time.  So seven years ago, while I was living in a dorm in college, my roommate decided to move out.  I was alone in the room for the remainder of the year, the other half of my room serving as an occasional closet for my roommate but otherwise it was as if I was in a single room.  I rarely talked to my parents, my professors didn't take attendance, and I didn't have much of a social life yet, so I suddenly had to ask myself the question... what would happen if I mysteriously died in my room?  Would anybody even notice?  Would my body just chillax until the stench alerted everyone on my floor of my untimely demise?

At that point I wrote on my Livejournal that if I ever went three days without writing, they should call my room phone to make sure nothing had happened to me, and if they couldn't get hold of me they should call my parents.  Yes, I was paranoid to an excessive degree.  But I mean, really, what would have happened?

Even worse, what would have happened if I were somewhere truly remote?  It's one thing to die in a dorm room... clearly people would know who I was.  What about those people who don't have any next of kin, don't have any friends, don't get out much, what happens when they die?

A Certain Kind of Death tackles those questions in a quite graphic but very educational way... the stories of decedents are pieced together from scraps of information found around their homes, paperwork is done, burial arrangements are made.  I do not recommend it to people with weak stomachs... but if you have that, I sort of wonder why you're reading a blog called "Stuff Dead People Like."