How does it really happen?

Try as i might, across the internet, information on how one would die in a stomach is hard to come by. I have found two main hypothesis.

1.When the prey is swallowed it suffocates from lack of oxygen.

2.When the prey is swallowed it slowly dissolves to the point where vital organs are damaged, veins are opened up, or the victim faints from the agony.

I have also read some other, rather disputable things in stories, for example the victim swims out of the acid, when the stomach should be churning. Though i do know fiction will be fiction, i would like to use this topic to post the digestive process if we were describing it from a realistic point of view. For the sake of uniformity lets say that our predator is a neko, and our prey is a neera.

thank you for assisting.

Well, here's teh digestive process from waht I gather...

1. Chewing. If it happens, it's most likely where you're going to die.
2. Swallowing. Aside from maybe drowning in saliva, the fall might kill you if the fall is long enough.
3. Digestion. Acids and enzymes are probably the big culprits here. Once the skin is dissolved enough, you'll start bleeding to death. Also, as you mentioned, vital organ damage. Suffocation is also a possibility; since there's probably very little oxygen in the stomach, once your reserves are spent, you're breathing methane. Heck, you'll probably start choking upon entry. Stomach churning and drowning may also be factors.
4. Nutrition Extraction. If you somehow survive all that, then you'll almost assuredly drown in the small intestines.
5. Liquid Extraction. The large intestine will extract all the water and such out of you if you get this far. One again, no breathable air in here.
6. Pre-Excretion. The bacteria here would probably kill you via infection. Also, you'd probably get packed into a lump of feces.
7. Excretion. Freedom!... If you don't suffocate. And if the fall doesn't kill you.

Unless said neko belches up all the gas in its stomach and swallows a copious amount of air along with the unfortunate neera, asphyxiation will occur in minutes if not seconds depending on the exact mix of gases in the stomach.
It would vary somewhat from predator to predator, but the PH of gastric fluid is buffered with bicarbonate, which would lead to high levels of co2 which causes asphyxiation very quickly in concentrations over just 10% Also, unless the predator swallows a lot of air there will be nearly no oxygen in the stomach at all.
Speaking of gastric acid, it isn't as acidic as most people think, with a PH of between 2 and 3 in general. Not exactly pleasant to bathe in, but it wouldn't melt your face off in a few minutes either.

*Edit*
Of course, this contradicts what happens in many if not most of the stories set in Felarya, including the Mangas. So I guess in this case it isn't quite "canon."
Maybe predators in felarya suffer from a severe case of aerophagia?
Doesn't really matter, it's all just fantasy.
But you asked for what would REALLY happen, so there you have it.

You wouldn't make it to the stomach. I notice, few people remember that the esophagus is not a fall, it's a crushing, mangling experience. You know why you can swallow, lying down? Because what drives food down are powerful pushing, constricting muscles. You'd be mangled. Suffocated, squashed, broken. Maybe it's different in Felarya, but swallowing alone would kill.

Well I would assume that going down the esophagus, with the muscles constricting all around your body as they push you down would be where suffocation begins. Also, contrary to popular belief, it's not the acid that breaks down food. I'm pretty sure it's enzyme and the acid is just to make sure the stomach is at an adequate pH for the enzymes to do their job.

Thank you everyone for your input, i really appreciate it.

I agree with the general consensus here, death comes first by suffocation if you manage to make it through the esophagus, which I don't think is impossible. The esophageal muscles are strong, but the whole thing is rather squishy and given the content of most Felarya vore stories we can safely presume that those in Felaryan predators aren't so forceful as to crush a human. While one's skin and organs would dissolve after a time, in real life stomachs don't have nearly enough air in them for the prey to survive to that point. Later events like the trip through the intestines wouldn't start till around six hours in, and excretion after at least two days (that's in a human - in a giant predator you can count on it being longer), after which time the victim would be looooong dead.
Long story short: most likely cause of death IMO is suffocation.

FalconJudge wrote:

You wouldn't make it to the stomach. I notice, few people remember that the esophagus is not a fall, it's a crushing, mangling experience. You know why you can swallow, lying down? Because what drives food down are powerful pushing, constricting muscles. You'd be mangled. Suffocated, squashed, broken. Maybe it's different in Felarya, but swallowing alone would kill.

You know, I wonder about that. On the one hand, the muscles in a giant's esophagus are going to be large relative to a human, and thus quite strong. On the other hand, it is surprisingly hard to crush a liquid filled object (IE: a human) if you squeeze it more or less evenly from many sides. I'm sure many of you have tried to crush an egg by wrapping your hand around it and squeezing; same general idea.

Making through the esophagus isn't impossible, yet as it has been already noted - and those who know how the digestive system works will know - the muscles there are quite strong, enough for even eating when upside down without choking. So it can crush many things, right? It's unlikely you'd end up with some bruises, expect many broken bones instead.

For simplicity, many avoid getting into these details. I blame it to such simplicity rather than actual ignorance. I acknowledge how the human digestive system works - and therefore assume how a demi-human's could work - yet I prefer to skip such details and simplify the whole thing. I don't want to bore people with details on how the esophagus of a giant pred can crush your bones and nearly suffocate you if it doesn't directly kill you before you reach the stomach.

And there's something people tend to use: the 'one-two hours digestion'. We all know that the process actually takes longer, and those hours are more for the stomach section - though it isn't that accurate -, but it wouldn't be that stupid to think that something alive inside a stomach would be dead by then, because of the suffocation and the badly-injured body due to the esophagus' muscles plus the fall into the stomach and its juices. Those juices are still acid, though, and help the enzymes in the whole process. They might burn you quite badly - not desintegrate -, but by then, as I said, you'd probably be dead or nearly-dead to feel the pain.

Remember, kids: vore is lethal.

*Achivement unlocked: Captain Obvious*

Actually no. There is a part of the body that blocks out pain when something lethal happens, like a bite from a wild animal or a broken bone. If there is no treatment after a (pretty short time period, if I remember correctly) then that natural chemical that numbs pain will in fact be gone. So if you're still alive long enough to that point, you'd actually feel the "true" pain then, not before. When something hurts, and you feel it, its not the true level of pain you could be feeling because the pain is numned a bit.

While it is true that the muscles in the esophagus are quite strong (read up on the condition called "nutcracker esophagus", ouch...) normal peristalsis is designed to not compress food at all.
Compression equals friction and increases likelyhood of injury to the esophageal lining. Rather than compressing the actual item being swallowed, paristalsis causes rings of muscle to squeeze in sequence behind the swallowed object, forcing it to move towards the stomach but never actually compressing it unless it gets stuck. Ever swallow something only to have it get stuck in your throat? Not comfortable is it? That's the feeling of a peristaltic wave passing over the food you swallowed, compressing it, thankfully it's rather rare. (if you don't eat like a pig, that is )
So, unless you get stuck on the way down, at least THAT part of the experience should be rather comfortable, just take a deep breath beforehand... Not that it changes anything...

Yay anatomy facts! ....
.... Hey, don't judge me!

Good to read those points, didn't know some facts at all and others I didn't remember. Thanks, sometimes you discover that you don't know that much.