Resuscitation, How Dead is Dead? Options

[MaxMahem]

I think for the GM the answer is practically any NPC can be revived in some manner if the plot desires it. If the PCs did not dispatch the NPC in some appallingly permanent manner (burn the body to ashes, put it through a meat grinder or some such) cybertechnology and biotechnology holds the potential for that character to come back.

And even if the PCs HAVE killed the NPC in some appallingly permanent manner Magic still hold the potential to bring the NPC back in some fashion, possibly as a ghost/free spirit. Heck with a combination of technology and magic it might be possible for the dead NPCs ghost to inhabit a cloned body of the original!

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For PCs I think resurrection is more flavor text than anything else. There is no in game point where a character has died aside from reaching enough overflow boxes that they are permanently gone. (Unless of course the Hand of God is invoked). If it is important for some reason you could consider 'death' to happen when the player fills up his physical damage boxes. This could be your criteria for deciding if DocWagon charges them extra for example.

[kzt]

There is the interesting point that the brain cell death isn't caused directly by lack of O2, it's caused by a complex chain of events that seems like it could be interrupted. So a person could bleed out and get recovered 100% with treatment way past the point that you'd be a vegetable now.

[darthmord]

Per some recent articles I've read over the past several months, it's not so much oxygen deprivation that kills you (though it certainly doesn't help you). It's the sudden return of oxygen to the cells that causes them to up and die en masse when you return the body to "normal" operation.

Apparently in low oxygen states, the body will suspend many of its activities in an effort to stave off death. This has a nice medical effect of allowing really dangerous surgeries to be performed with a decent time window rather than just a couple of minutes. It's why some surgeries are done with the patient's body temp lowered a few degrees (which makes the body enter into suspended animation type state).

[hobgoblin]

so basically its kinda like a dehydrated man dying from to much water?
or maybe a druggie thats been trying to break, and ends up setting a to high dose as the body isnt used to it any more?

[The Red Menace]

In the game I run the dying character who is brought back to life is resuscitated do to burning a permanent edge. IE: If Oppie Longnose the Street Samurai gets blasted to the negatives and his overflow passes his body attribute...call a hearse. If however he burns a permanent edge, he is stabilized at that damage box until someone offers first aid of some sort.