Non Political, I didn’t reply to your multiple choice question for a very simple reason (aside from the fact that it wasn’t addressed to me).
As I, a physically-bound human, cannot understand what it means to be alive and buried, I don’t want to choose as to what is the exact explanation.
Btw in Bava Basra 58a, which we learned a few months ago in Daf Yomi, it is clear from the story there that the Avos are alive in Me’aras Hamachpelah. OK it’s aggadata, and there are various opinions about how literal one is to take aggadata, but it does say that there.