What makes him/her die? Is it loss of blood or loss of air? How deeply would you have to slit his/her throat? Where would you slit his/her neck?
How long would it take before s/he died from blood loss, and how much blood would they loose? From air loss?

If I were to stab someone in the heart, would s/he have any time to live?

I know it's gruesome, but I'm not a fan of sugarcoating my stories, especially those that involve topics with high consequences (such as world domination). I've asked my friends, but none of us can figure it out, and I've needed the information for multiple stories. If you could add anything, that would be great!

Thanks!

How did this end up in this forum? I meant to put it on the Realism Q&A. Could someone move this, please? Thanks!

lol when u slit someone throat u don't die by the loss of oxygen u die but the loss of blood. Reason: there is a main vain in your neck that connects to your brain and that blood carries a massive amount of blood. when you cut it the blood comes out. you have appox. less than a min i believe i might be wrong for that.

if you stab someone in the heart it depends on the angle and how deep you stab that person, if u stab it deep u have less than a min to live if it ain't deep, you can have your character speak a bit (in pain of course) and than die.

Yeah, that's what I thought, but everyone kept saying that it was air loss, too, so I stuck the air loss part in there.
Anyone else? (And I really am sorry about putting this on the wrong forum.)

Moving to the right forum for you. :)

Since you asked how long it takes to die from being stabbed in the heart I assumed you also be interested in this little tidbit.

A freind of mine put on this video the other day which we were horrified to learn, once it started to play, was of him slitting the throat of a goat. It was a good 7 or 8 minutes of the goat bleeding and wheezing and coughing blood all over before he finally died. The freind assured me that it's the same with people.

And while I would just say that's one of those things people accept in movies anyway, like chloroform working quickly, you did say you don't like sugar coating things.

Ask your "freind" if he's traumatized! :O

If you are trying to kill someone silently you don't actually slit the throat. What you do is drive your knife in through the side of the neck with the blade facing forward. You then cut forward cutting both the main arteries and veins to the brain as well as the windpipe making them unable to scream. Due to trauma the body injects adrenaline which causes the heart to speed up and pump blood more quickly causing unconsciousness and death a few minutes later.