Although it is generally believed that cellular necrosis is a random destructive process, we have found that during cellular necrosis, organelles undergo distinctive structural changes that appear to be sequentially ordered rather than random (7,26). Ribosomes disassociate from the rough endoplasmic reticulum and polyribosomes disaggregate, resulting in many monomeric ribosomes that are found 'free' in the cytoplasm, causing the cytoplasmic matrix to appear dense and granular. The cisterns of the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus dilate, fragment, and vesiculate, and the plasma membrane undergoes a process called blebbing.