[cjameskeller]

>Why would a body motivated to survive at all costs waste resources creating comforting hallucinations with some kind of internal coherence during catastrophic failure?

I am a religious person, but for someone in such a situation, a naturalistic explanation may be that, if what will increase their chance of survival from "effectively zero" to "slightly more" is the attention & care of others around them, such "narrative" hallucinations may make it more likely that they receive that care.