You Will Never Die

This is the core idea. It all began with the concept of parallel universes, proposed by American physicist Hugh Everett III back in 1957. He was attempting to resolve the famous measurement problem in quantum mechanics. At its heart lies the fact that microscopic particles—photons and electrons—can exist in a state called superposition: they can occupy multiple places or states simultaneously. This “magical” condition persists until the particle is measured. At the moment of measurement, the wave function collapses: the particle “chooses” one of its possible states and acquires a definite position. But what triggers the collapse? The observer? Or the process of measurement itself? To this day, no one knows.

There are, however, different interpretations. Everett suggested that, in fact, no collapse occurs at all. Every possible outcome of an experiment is realised, but in different universes. In one universe, the photon remains a wave; in another, it becomes a particle. And, explained in feline terms, Schrödinger’s famously paradoxical cat, according to this interpretation, always survives in at least one universe.

A Strange New World

It is here that the hypothesis of quantum immortality begins. If the universe branches with every decision we make, creating what is called a splitting of reality, then could the same happen at the moment of death? In one world, a car strikes a person; in another, a passing stranger saves them at the last moment.

The key question is, what happens to consciousness in that instant? Proponents of quantum immortality believe that subjective experience is, by its very nature, continuous, meaning we will always find ourselves in the world where we survive.

Quantum immortality has a flaw that makes the idea almost absurd. If, at every moment of death, our consciousness shifts to a new universe, then, repeatedly, those worlds will become increasingly bizarre and fantastical.

There Is No Escaping

Suppose you die under natural circumstances, on a hospital bed surrounded by loving relatives. What happens next? Everything with a non-zero probability.

For instance, doctors might miraculously revive you; you could awaken from a terrible dream, or remove a full-immersion helmet; perhaps future technology resurrects you five thousand years later; or even a giant caterpillar promises to stop showing those strange films about humans—anything, really. The rarer the chance of survival, the more reality will distort itself, trying every possible way not to let the observer vanish.

Incidentally, besides the monstrous entropy of meaning, quantum immortality has another problem that curiously no one discusses. No matter what you do, it never ends. You cannot escape. Until the multiverse exhausts every conceivable way to save you, it will continue to do so.

So, if quantum immortality does exist, it is hard to call it a gift. You will keep waking in new and ever more absurd worlds, each time becoming something increasingly less like the person you once were.