[DemolitionRed]

How about this: Sudden death which stops all activity in the brain immediately; followed by CPR (and I mean CPR within an emergency room), which still shows brain activity as flatlined even though small amounts of oxygen is now getting into the brain. CPR can go on for a long time, regardless of what it shows in films and during CPR the heart is being manually pumped and your cells are being kept alive with oxygen. As long as we can do this, the none living person isn't a corpse. It could be that there is a level of consciousness during this period, especially just prior to successful CPR.