Miridium wrote:This is an idea I've had every once in a while. Suppose your pred eats you and then for whatever reason dies. Yet you're still trapped inside.
...What do you think? Something that could work or something that goes too far even here?
This is something I have mentioned before, and why I think that struggling inside a stomach is a really, utterly terrible idea. Not all animals are even capable of puking, and even if the pred is capable, it doesn't mean that attacking their stomach won't seriously injure them without causing them to regurgitate. It's better to accept you fate, IMO, than risk killing the predator, because...
Being inside a predator when they die would be a really terrible fate - and make no mistake, it would be a
fate - because there's very little chance you would survive. Being swallowed would almost certainly injure you, so you would be bruised and probably have a few broken bones and then you would have to deal with painful digestive fluids. If the predator suddenly died, you will still be digested; it wouldn't suddenly stop the way you might think, the chemicals already in the stomach would still be reactive and still effect your tissues.
The difference would be that it would be a slower, and nastier process; slower because no - new - fluids would be secreted. You would mostly be stewing in chyme, which could still cause serious, fatal chemical burns - it would just take longer. It would be nastier because the digestive tract is one of the first places decay starts; as soon as something dies, the bacteria in the gut start to decompose it from the inside out. You would smell it quite literally minutes after the predator died, and it would only get worse and worse, with foul smelling - and toxic - gasses and fluids surrounding you. That alone could be fatal.
You would be stuck in a tight space; to get out you would have to tear through bone, muscles, and skin, as well as the stomach lining - without a blade of some kind, that would be a nigh-impossible task. You would be dead from the toxic and caustic conditions inside the stomach long before you could actually escape. Tearing through flesh like that is really hard to do using just human hands and fingers, and you would be doing it A) In the dark B) In a wet, damp space, C) While your whole body was being burned by caustic chemichals, and D) While dealing with horrible fumes.
So the predator dying isn't a ticket to freedom - rather it just makes your own experience that much worse. That's not even accounting for the potential psychological factors involved with being trapped inside a rotting dead body.
Anyway, that's my take on it - don't try to kill the predator if you get eaten; it might look like poetic revenge on paper, but the reality would be pretty damn nasty and you would still probably die anyway. You're much better off trying to reason, bribe, or otherwise talk your way out, or even just accepting digestion.
If the pred just randomly dies on their own without you actually doing it, that's rather terrible luck for you. You're guaranteed that you won't be let out - dead things can't be reasoned with, and can't vomit you up involuntarily - and you're gonna have an even slower and nastier death.