221–230 of 240 posts
I wonder what is the risk of prions diseases. > A 68 kg (150 lbs) body which contains 65% water will require 100 MJ of thermal energy before any combustion will take place. 100 MJ is approximately equivalent to 3 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 liters of fuel oil (0.8 US gallons). Additional energy is necessary to make up for the heat capacity ("preheating") of the furnace, fuel burned for emissions control, and he…
I actually find anti-decay measures applied to corpses disgusting. I feel like corpses should be buried raw right into soil or in plain wood coffins at max, not marinated in formaldehyde and put in non-compostable coffins.
I have a hard time with this too. For a long time my preferred burial would be wrapping me in a blanket and burying me somewhere in the woods. I know it's not practical, but certainly a nicer thought than pumping me full of preservatives and locking me into a $10K sarcophagus. Let the earth eat me when I die.
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Interesting how jews have this too. I wonder where this practice came from.
That's interesting, I didn't know we had that in common. Islam takes a lot from Judaism so I guess it shouldn't be surprising. If I had to guess about why it needs to be so fast though, it is probably not a good idea to not bury someone very very quickly in the middle east. As for the very simple caskets, in Islam it is because we are supposed to be all equal in death so going with expensive tombstones or caskets wou…
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Treating our dead with respect is probably one of the oldest signs of human culture. People care a lot about the bodies of their deceased loved ones. See Antigone by Sophocles. You're welcome to your views, but most people have strong, deeply felt emotions and opinions on how dead bodies should be properly handled.
If this seems disrespectful, then I encourage you to look into what the embalming process actually entails, as (IMO) it's worse: https://youtu.be/B5-NtLmKUDE?t=201
These comments are so depressing. I really hope that we'll figure out a way to reverse aging in the coming decades so death becomes optional.
I’m totally with you on that one! I’m getting old though, I don’t expect those technologies to arrive soon enough for me to take advantage of them. Some sort of green burial is my likely future.
Why can't people just opt to be buried without embalming or a casket? Sounds like a nice way to go buried whole and maybe with some sort of tree seed that grows over where you are laid. Not going to lie on a personal level, the composting process sounds terrible.
Personally I'd opt for a Mongolian style sky burial. They just take you out onto a mountainside, cut you up a little bit, and the carrion birds and other animals come to eat you up. Seems like the quickest way to return your elements to the earth.
Or a ensure a Ralphs is nearby.
My mother passed away a few weeks ago. It was her wish to go with Recompose. She was a master gardener, and to her, the idea of returning to the ecosystem was so much better than cremation or a cemetery. Through Recompose, her 'soil' will be donated to a reforesting project. As you can imagine, I've ruminated a lot on this lately. What's the purpose of a tombstone, or a plaque, or an urn full of ashes? To memorialize…
With respect to graves especially, they are an archeological treasure trove. If in the far far future we develop a means of resurrecting the dead, the epitaphs on tombstones may be used to determine who deserves resurrection. But of course this is extremely fanciful speculation.
That's unlikely unless the dead person is exceptionally well-preserved (or you're just creating Generic Human Body #42 and giving it the dead person's name). Brain structure doesn't really survive current burial/embalming techniques and I imagine that any sort of "immortal soul" may have long left by then. Cryonics aims for this sort of far-future resurrection, but even it has problems about viability.
The royal colony of Oregon among the imperial nation of the United States allows for human beings to return to the Earth when they die.
In all seriousness... I'm going to dig a whole in the ground and my friends and family can literally drag me in there.
This ridiculousness goes the way back to the "embalming industry" circa civil war.
edit: typo
My mother passed away a few weeks ago. It was her wish to go with Recompose. She was a master gardener, and to her, the idea of returning to the ecosystem was so much better than cremation or a cemetery. Through Recompose, her 'soil' will be donated to a reforesting project. As you can imagine, I've ruminated a lot on this lately. What's the purpose of a tombstone, or a plaque, or an urn full of ashes? To memorialize…
Some religions take a similar tact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence
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I'd like a sky burial in Tibet, but that ain't gonna happen (at least not legally) unless things change.
It can be done in India in some places if you convert toa Zoroastrian.