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Dealing with your future corpse

quarky

Banned
Q
Joined
Oct 15, 2007
Messages
20,121
There has to be a better way. As it is, the disposal of your corpse will be the final insult to the planet. It will be expensive, but the kids will foot the bill.
If buried, you'll not only deprive the worms of a reasonable meal, you'll likely be flush with formaldehyde. A very fancy box; expensive and well done, will be sacrificed to the gods in your name. It may be the finest peace of furniture you ever had. Such an insult to the craftsmen and the trees. And its on you.

Cremation is a step up, yet your last gift to the eco-system is a pointless release of CO2 from the burners and your body. And its not cheap.

The technology of corpse disposal might be the most primitive technology that we embrace, or tolerate. A conveyer belt powered by woo pulls our corpse into an absurd and wasteful relationship with the planet.

Our dead bodies should give a net gain, biologically, to the world.
There seems to be no sane exit plan for the body.
Yet the problem isn't lack of technology; its a no-brainer.
Its religion and superstition.

How does an atheist and an ecologist dispose of their body, in modern western cultures, in the most carbon neutral way?

I've heard that Sweden allows a composting type of cemetery.
Yet, why should we pay anything at all for our corpse disposal?
Our kids should inherit 10 cents/lb when its sold to the guy that runs the worm farm.

Shouldn't we demand better options?
 
I've planted a tree seedling in my chest so I can get a head start.

(I'd like to be cremated when I die)
 
I don't care. And I don't have any off-spring.

You'll just have to figure it out for yourselves.
 
I swallowed watermelon seeds.


I'm sort of hoping that some of my intestinal flora will survive after my death. Its possible, if done right. Life after death!

We torched my dad. He was a devout atheist and resented the cost of the burn-job. We tried to get permission to bury him in our yard, but there was a mile of red tape we couldn't get through in time.

Complexity, I'd like to have some of your ashes, when I shift to those bacterium in my rotting gut.
That would be cool.
 
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I'm pretty sure my cats will eat some of me before someone else finds my body.

Does that count as 'green'?
 
Wowbagger said:
Why not donate your mortal bodies to science? It might be expensive, too. But, at least some benefit could come out of it.
Click to expand...

My mom went to science, as did my partner's father. Her mom is still with us and she'd like to do the same, but there's a glut of available bodies for science.

A 'gator farm has some potential. Would you eschew gator tail if you knew they'd been fattened by human corpses?
Would any of our pathogens survive that transition?

If so, the process could be abstracted. Feed us to the fish that we feed to the gators. Something like that. As if something, or someone, somewhere, will be gifted by our very bio-mass...instead of being taxed absurdly...as is mostly the case today.
 
Who cares? I'll be dead, so screw the earth!

...and believe you me, my dead eyes will be staring glassily out from the door of my huge granite & marble mausoleum, surmounted by a life-sized equestrian statueof my self in bronze; and from the comfort of my hermetically sealed and gold-encrusted glass coffin, in which I have been buried sitting upright on a throne of walrus ivory and condor feathers, my perfectly preserved corpse will grin with a ferocious rictus as the world and its miserable infestation of living things spins to its inevitable demise.
 
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quarky said:
There has to be a better way. As it is, the disposal of your corpse will be the final insult to the planet. It will be expensive, but the kids will foot the bill.
Click to expand...
Hopefully there will be enough money left in your estate that in the end it will be you who foots the bill. Your kids (or whoever handles the estate) will have to pay the cost up front, but hopefully they will be reimbursed from the estate.

One of my brothers died back in January. He wasn't living hand-to-mouth, but neither did he have an impressive bank account. What was there was enough to pay his income tax for the previous year. But fortunately the Canada Pension Plan has a death benefit. Being employed for most of his life meant he made contributions to the CPP, and they paid the benefit. It was more than enough to cover the expenses associated with his cremation.

ETA: I think I totally misinterpreted what quarky meant when he talked about the kids footing the bill. From the context it's strongly implied the following generation or two will foot the environmental bill.

As to the primary topic, I'm not sure of the environmental effects of formaldehyde from a decomposing body in a coffin. Cremation might release a fair amount of CO2, but an internet search indicates there are alternatives available.
 
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I went to my uncle's funeral. He was a great guy, and we always liked each other. Three other people were there, and we saw the casket for a minute or two. It was a fine piece of work. During the burial, i recall feeling sad about that brand new piece of woodwork getting buried.

i'd heard rumors of caskets being re-used. Despicable. Yet, i sort of hope its true. Not the deception; the common sense of doing that.

After science took my mom's brain, her body was torched, and we had to pay to get the ashes. This really steamed my dad. He had zero tolerance for religion and sentiment.
We went to the creamy place to get her ashes, and they wanted to sell him an urn.
He yelled at the post-mortem salesperson "That's not my wife! She's gone! I know that. Why would i want those ashes!"

"Because it will cost $500 dollars if you don't.
We will dump them at sea. Its the law here in Florida."

It was an awkward moment, if you knew my dad.
As we took the $10 cardboard box with the ashes, I turned to the salesman and said "Where's the titanium?"

My dad got a kick out of that.
Mom had two titanium hip joints; barely used; $10,000 each.

There was a very awkward silence.

Yet, it would be sane to recycle these parts.
My partner's 88 year old mom has four expensive parts; 2 knees; two hips.

Her body ought to be worth some money.
These parts are re-usable, as far as I know.
 
Blue Mountain said:
Hopefully there will be enough money left in your estate that in the end it will be you who foots the bill. Your kids (or whoever handles the estate) will have to pay the cost up front, but hopefully they will be reimbursed from the estate.

One of my brothers died back in January. He wasn't living hand-to-mouth, but neither did he have an impressive bank account. What was there was enough to pay his income tax for the previous year. But fortunately the Canada Pension Plan has a death benefit. Being employed for most of his life meant he made contributions to the CPP, and they paid the benefit. It was more than enough to cover the expenses associated with his cremation.

ETA: I think I totally misinterpreted what quarky meant when he talked about the kids footing the bill. From the context it's strongly implied the following generation or two will foot the environmental bill.

As to the primary topic, I'm not sure of the environmental effects of formaldehyde from a decomposing body in a coffin. Cremation might release a fair amount of CO2, but an internet search indicates there are alternatives available.
Click to expand...

Thanks for understanding. I must google up the alternatives. Last I looked, they all sucked.
 
Cool link!

Yet, even that method, which is still mostly illegal (legal in 7 states), is energy intensive.
As mentioned, there should be a net gain in the disposal method...not a heated and pressurized cauldron of Sodium Hydroxide and cadaver.

Interesting that as twisted as that method is, its a jump ahead of cremation.
Which is a jump ahead of conventional burial.

There remains a barrier of woo, and a morbid desire to have a tangible memory of our departed loved ones.
 
Is it possible to get buried at sea? Plenty of life will appreciate you down there.

There was a NYT article a few years ago about people handbuilding their own coffins. A nice gesture, I think, and I would think of that time in the woodshop as an appropriate mental space for coming-to-terms. Plus: pick your own wood and finish. Minus: spending eternity staring at my own amateurish joinery, from the inside. "That tenon isn't flush AT ALL." :)
 
i'm an organ donor, so there should be some recycling happening. The leftovers can be made into a lampshade, for all I care...
 
Kid Eager said:
i'm an organ donor, so there should be some recycling happening. The leftovers can be made into a lampshade, for all I care...
Click to expand...

But why not care? That's what I'm getting at...our last chance to care.

otherwise, we should be fined for littering, so to speak.

My venting on this issue is more than an assault on superstition and bad husbandry...its a quest for a rational sort of spirituality or ethics.

If i don't intervene on my body's behalf, the rest of you will be mildly polluted from its disposal.

Sure, not much...

Yet this issue has symbolic ramifications. It needs a logical outlet.

Its the damn principle of the thing!
 
I expect I will be dripping through the Floor Boards before I am missed. The Dog (trevor) will probably clear up some of the bulk. Suits me.

I hadn't thought of an exit plan for Trev. Can yu put Dog flaps in a Door?
 
Easy enough. Set up corpse starch processing plants in major cities. Ave Imperator!
 
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