As show the stories below, the probability to be buried alive exist. Some people get obsessed in such a way as to specify in their wills they wanted special tests performed on their bodies to make sure they were actually dead. Surgical incisions, the application of boiling hot liquids, touching red-hot irons to their flesh, stabbing them through the heart, or even decapitating them were all specified at different times as a way of making sure they didn't wake up six feet under. Some opted for being buried with the means to do themselves in, and guns, knives, and poison were packed into coffins along with the deceased. Later came the special coffins ...

Premature Burial

To die is natural; but the living death
Of those who waken into consciousness,
Though for a moment only, ay, or less,
To find a coffin stifling their last breath,
Surpasses every horror underneath
The sun of Heaven, and should surely check
Haste in the living to remove the wreck
Of what was just before, the soul's fair sheath,
How many have been smothered in their shroud!
How many have sustained this awful woe!
Humanity would shudder could we know
How many have cried to God in anguish loud,
Accusing those whose haste a wrong had wrought
Beyond the worst that ever devil thought.

Percy Russell, 1906

"All I desire for my own burial is not to be buried alive".

Lord Chesterfield - Letter to his daughter-in-law, March 16, 1769.

"Have me decently buried, but do not let my body be put into a vault in less than two days after I am dead".

Dying request of George Washington.

"The earth is suffocating .... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive".

Last words of composer, Frédéric Chopin.