What do you believe happens when we die

Hmmm, seems like romantic fantasy from where I'm sitting. The notion that Shakespeare has been globally redistributed such that every person on the planet has a constituent number of billions of the bards atoms would take some proving. Worth remembering that vast quantities of organic material goes nowhere and does not get recycled as more organisms, e.g. think of fossil fuels. If we take the notion that we each have a few billion atoms of Genghis Khan for example, firstly I'd be interested in seeing the statistic that suggests somebody buried in 13th century China would share matter of some kind with me and by extension every one else. Say that were the case, the direct implication is that I share matter with every other person that ever lived more than a certain time ago, and similarly every other reasonably large animal or plant. The same would need to hold true for everyone else alive today. Not convinced.

How long though would it take for one litre water to become evenly mixed throughout all the bodies of water on the planet, to the degree that any other litre would contains water molecules from that litre? On what basis are we assuming such an even redistribution would ever take place, not just in one instance but in every instance? Much like homoeopathy tablets, I would guess most litres of water don't contain any actual Shakespeare ;)

It's the 'assume uniform mixing' that I'd query there. You pour a litre of water into the Avon, how long roughly does it take for that liter to be evenly distributed across the planet's water supply, such that every liter likely to utilized in the formation of another person contains billions of atoms from the original source. How about an amount of water that Genghis peed into the Mongolian desert? Even then, we seem to be assuming that when talking about the atoms that Shakespeare or Genghis Khan possessed we're happy to include the sum total of their urination, feces and any other excretions over the course of their lives.

I suppose the big difference here is that we can tease any scientific assertion out with questions and refine our understanding as a result. What Bryson says may be reasonable on the basis of a number of broad assumptions and less so on others. I think the language he uses in this quote is misleading, so for example saying that we are "vigorously recycled at death" at an atomic level suggests to me he is talking about human remains specifically, as opposed say to various excretions over our life time. The other arguments here supporting Bryson's quote would suggest that if anything, we are more vigorously recycled during life. Either way, the notion of sharing atoms with Shakespeare or Genghis Khan to me seems very much like a romantic notion that isn't particularly meaningful, provable or of scientific value. I'd agree it does have that in common with a religious assertion.

The corona virus is an interesting analogy. Worth remembering that a virus is transmitted through organic self replication, using material from the infected cell for replication. It is not the same molecules of protein, nucleic acid etc... re-circulating, it is different new ones that are built from the host cells. Similarly in something like a fire or chain reaction you have a global configuration change across a large body of material over a short time frame but this doesn't involve the even redistribution of all the atoms in that material. In the case of MB's dinosaur pee, I have no issue with the notion that it has been re-ingested however many times by however many animals in most cases. My query is how we can we arrive at the conclusion that after a number of centuries we can be sure it has been re-ingested by every animal alive at that time and subsequently in all cases. As mentioned previously, this would involve each of us also ingesting the pee of every dinosaur and other animal that had predeceased Shakespeare in every litre of water we ingest. While our weather and tidal system may act as a great mixer, I'd still be keen to see the statistics (given this isn't something we can measure directly) that can provide confidence that this level of uniform mixing is achieved. We do know that some organic material doesn't get redistributed over this time frame (e.g. that which becomes fossil fuel), and we also speculate that some water is re-circulated more regularly than others. To my mind, this makes an assertion that demands uniform mixing at a global level over a period of a few centuries questionable. Given we're talking about atoms "vigorously recycled at death" we have a far bigger ask for Bryson's assertion to hold true. This isn't to say it is not true, I'm merely interested in understanding why we should accept that it is.

Bad wording on my part. By 'it', I'm specifically referring to the billion odd atoms that once were a constituent part of Shakespeare or Genghis Khan that were vigorously recycled following their deaths that are now part of you and I. By extension, I'm also referring to the similar samples from all other animal sources that would need to be present in every person for Bryson's assertion to hold true. My query relates to the vigorous post mortem recycling of atoms such that they have uniform redistribution across the entire animal kingdom to the degree required in the time frame required. The global even redistribution of water used over our life times may well be a thing, but I struggle to understand how we can put a time frame on it. The human remains of someone buried in Stratford on Avon in 1616 is more of a stretch, as are those of someone who died in Yinchuan in 1227. Again, it could well be the case, but at face value it seems like an extraordinary claim that seems reasonable to challenge as there appear to be some very large numbers in variables on both sides of the equation (and I doubt we even know what all of those variables are).

Personally, I think we derive more value from this type of pop science asking these types of questions than accepting everything at face value. I find Bryson questionable in this instance and hence am asking the questions.

I'd agree, though I'm not sure how we could go about measuring the time frame required by this mechanism to disperse Shakespeare's remains globally and uniformly to the level required. Also worth noting that Stratford up Avon sits on a large sandstone aquifer so the idea that the liquid part of Shakespeare's remains ended up in the Avon by a reasonably direct route is not necessarily a given.