Suspended animation

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Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold is used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use of this process had led to the developing science of cryonics. Outside of science fiction, the technique as applied to humans is hypothetical.

Placing astronauts in suspended animation has been proposed as one way for an individual to reach the end of an interplanetary or interstellar journey, avoiding the necessity for a gigantic generation ship; occasionally the two concepts have been combined, with generations of "caretakers" supervising a large population of frozen passengers.

--Three of the Discovery One crew are in a state of hibernation, ostensibly to conserve resources for the voyage.

--Three of the Discovery One crew are in a state of hibernation, ostensibly to conserve resources for the voyage.

Since the 1970s hypothermia has been induced for some open-heart surgeries as an alternative to heart-lung machines. Hypothermia though only provides a limited amount of time to operate and there has been some evidence of risk of tissue and brain damage.

An article in the April 22, 2005 issue of the scientific journal Science, reports success towards inducing suspended animation in mice. The findings are significant, as mice do not hibernate in nature. The breakthrough was achieved when the laboratory of Mark Roth placed mice in a chamber containing 80 ppm hydrogen sulfide, and the test was conducted for 6 hours. The mice's core body temperature dropped to 13 degrees Celsius and metabolism, as assayed by carbon dioxide production and oxygen use, decreased 10-fold.

In July 2005 scientists at the University of Pittsburgh's Safar Center for Resuscitation Research announced they had managed to bring dogs back to life with no brain damage by draining the blood out of the dog's bodies and putting an ice cold solution into their circulatory systems, which in turn keeps the bodies alive in stasis. After 3 hours of being clinically dead, the dogs were revived by an electric shock to their hearts. The heart started pumping the blood around the frozen body, and the dogs were brought back to life. Scientists hope to begin human testing in 6 months and have already begun discussions with hospitals to use "suspended animation" if everything else fails. Safar Research also pioneered modern CPR techniques.

While most of the dogs were fine, a few of the revived dogs had severe nervous and movement coordination damage, causing them to be mentally disabled, and demonstrating behavior that was deemed "zombie" like. This has been pushed further by the media which named them ["Zombie Dogs"]. There is concern that this technique, if used on humans could result in brain damage similar to those suffered by some of the dogs in the experiment. Safar Research believes that the process is merely another way to give "more time" to the operation table, as vital repairs could be made when patients are in stasis: emergency operations fail frequently simply because the lack of time, not the lack of expertise.

On January 20, 2006, an article published in [The Sydney Morning Herald] claimed pigs had been placed in suspended animation, and revived with a 90 percent success rate.

Suspended animation in fiction

Lost in Space -- the passengers of the Jupiter II spacecraft are placed in a state of suspended animation for the interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri

Suspended animation is also a common device in fiction used to transport individuals from one time period to another, often by accident, to wait for a cure, or to offer a kind of immortality. Another common use is in space voyages, where the crew is put in cold sleep while the ship travels to its destination, saving food and water as well as the crew's lifespans. Among the characters or works that utilize suspended animation are:

In the pilot for the series Lost in Space, the passengers of the Jupiter II spacecraft are placed in a state of suspended animation or stasis.
Austin Powers and his arch nemesis, Dr. Evil, are suspended in the 1960s to be revived in the 1990s.
Edward Bellamy's 1887 novel Looking Backward
Robert A. Heinlein's 1957 novel The Door into Summer
Anne McCaffery's and Jody Lynn Nye's 1990 novel, The Death of Sleep
Terry Brooks' character Allanon (as well as other Druids) uses suspended animation to extend his life in Brooks' Shannara novels.
Woody Allen's movie Sleeper
, in which three scientists are placed in suspended animation for a spaceflight of a several months duration, the ship being tended by two living astronauts and an AI computer.
Alien, its sequels and related works set in the Alien universe, in which the characters enter "hypersleep" to survive the long months necessary to travel across interstellar distances.
In the Disney ride Mission: Space, the rider enters a "hypersleep" to survive long enough without food or water all the way to Mars.
The 1968 movie Planet of the Apes, in which three surviving astronauts are revived from suspended animation 2000 years in the future.
Red Dwarf, which had one character surviving a radioactive crisis by spending three million years in stasis
Futurama's main character Fry accidentally traps himself in a cryogenic state, and is released 1000 years later, where hilarity ensues.
The Larry Niven novel A World Out of Time, and the short story Rammer on which it is based, tell of a cryo patient who wakes up in a future ruled by a tyrannical government who assign only "useless" people as relativistic spacecraft pilots, since they won't return for centuries.
Han Solo was placed in this state when he was frozen in carbonite during .
episode "Space Seed", in which Kirk's crew comes across the S.S. Botany Bay, an old-style, pre-warp sleeper ship from Earth that contains more than 80 people in stasis.
episode "The Neutral Zone," The Enterprise-D finds and revives four people who were cryogenically frozen after death and then for some reason shot into space. In "The Emissary", the crew must intercept the T'Ong, an old, K't'inga-class Klingon battle cruiser, whose crew -- from over 75 years before -- awakened from cryogenic sleep, circa stardate 42901. Unaware that the Federation and Klingons were now allies, they awake ready to attack undefended Federation outposts.
*episode "The 37's", in which individuals from the 20th century are revived four centuries later, respectively**
*episode "The Thaw", in which Voyager picks up an automated message from the Kohl settlement, whose members survived an environmental catastrophe by going into Suspended animation
*episode "Resolutions", in which Janeway and Chakotay are bitten by an insect that infects them with an incurable virus. They are put into suspended animation for a month while the ship’s Doctor attempted to find a cure.
*episode "One", in which The Voyager crew comes across a vast new nebula, and everyone except the Doctor and Seven of Nine are severely affected by its radiation. Since it will take a year to go around it, but only a month to go through it, Janeway decides the best course of action will be to put the crew in stasis chambers, which will provide independent life support as they sleep and go through.
Stargate SG-1, various episodes, including a dying man waiting for a young person to come along, a subterfuge, hypersleep like Alien, and waiting for a cure.
Stargate Atlantis in which, the crew of an Ancient Ship, a human in Atlantis and two humans in escape pods survive for 10,000 years in suspended animation
Captain America, who survived the end of World War II and was revived by The Avengers in the 1960s (2006 in the updated movie)
Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes games' opening stories include Shadow the Hedgehog being released from suspended animation.
, The young hero Aang is trapped in an iceberg for a century.
Buck Rogers (Gil Gerard), who blasted off into space in 1987, and was trapped into suspended animation only to be revived in 2491.
Twilight Zone, one episode The Rip Van Winkle Caper where four thieves "sleep" for 100 years with a bag of gold.
Daniel Holtz, a vampire hunter in the TV series Angel, is placed in suspended animation for more than two centuries via magic and is reawakened in the present.
On Babylon 5 in the episode The Long Dark, a ship sent from Earth in the 21st century before contact with alien races arrives at the station. The crew consisted of a married couple, both put in cryogenic tubes, although only the wife survives the nearly 100 year journey to Babylon 5.
InuYasha'' is placed in suspended animation when he is sealed to the tree of ages by Kikyo
Suspended Animation is also the name of the first solo album by Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci.
Laurence Manning’s novel The Man Who Awoke, in which a 1930’s scientist puts himself to sleep for 5,000 years at a time and has ensuing adventures as he tries to make sense of the world he finds each time he wakes.
In the ongoing science fiction series Perry Rhodan, Atlan da Gonozal has been - in different stages of his life - in suspended animation for totally over 20000 years, many of these years on Earth, starting from 8000 B.C. and finally awaking(after awaking at different times) in 2040 A.D. during the rise of the Solar Empire, literally oversleeping humanity's discovery of FTL technology he had wait for so long.
, The last few members of the Luminoth were placed in suspended animation until Samus Aran extermined the Ing.
In the 1997 sci-fi/horror movie Event Horizon, the characters used liquid filled chambers called "gravity couches" for suspended animation. The system protected them from the lethal gravity forces caused by the rapid acceleration of their ship during a 56 day trip to Neptune.
In the 2000 film Supernova, the characters must enter a kind of suspension chamber during faster than light travel, or risk damage to their molecular structure. The time spent in the chambers is short, just long enough for the ship to build up energy and jump through space.
The 1991 made for TV movie sequel of the Knight Rider series, Knight Rider 2000, begins in a "cryoprison" where inmates are placed in suspended animation while they serve their time. The system was criticised because inmates slept away their sentences and emerged from stasis the same person as they entered. Supporters believed it was more humane, eliminated escape attempts, and cut the cost of running prisons dramatically.
In the 1993 movie Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone, and Wesley Snipes, prisoners were placed in suspended animation while serving their sentences. In the meantime, their minds are reprogrammed to eliminate their evil and criminal compulsions. The system also uploaded new skills into their minds so that they can become productive citizens after release. What skills that were uploaded were based on the subject's genetic profile.
In the Belgian graphic novel Yoko Tsuno, an alien race called Vineans employ a magnetically induced form of suspended animation, easily allowing them to survive for at least 2.5 million years.
In season 2 of SeaQuest DSV, "When We Dead Awaken", Lt. Brody's mother was placed in cryo-suspension. She was given a virus as a means of keeping a murder committed by a military officer under wraps, and she went under until a cure could be found. Whether or not she is eventually cured remains unanswered.

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Suspended animation

Suspended animation in fiction

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