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Dealing with your future corpse

Daald said:
How about using your body to create biodiesel?
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Lipo-suction on obese stiffs could supply some fuel, but composting the whole body and using the compost to fertilize a crop would make more sense.
 
AvalonXQ said:
Although I have a preference for cremation, I will most likely be buried out of respect for my family.

My family is very sentimental, and they like having a gravesite to visit, to remember and honor the dead. Annual visits on birthdays for beloved parents and siblings are not unusual.

It is important to remember that your funeral arrangements aren't for you; you're dead! They're for the loved ones you leave behind. That's why I think it's important to talk to them about what will help them deal with your loss, rather than just what you yourself would want.
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I agree.

My dad was cremated and I think my stepmother dumped the ashes at sea, but I wasn't invited (and wouldn't have come anyway). I've always wished there was a place I could visit. There's a part of me that seems to need that. Now, I'm a stone-cold (weak) atheist, so I wouldn't be harboring any delusions about whether visiting that gravesite would be 'visiting my dad', but the part of me that needs that doesn't seem to be so fussy about making distinctions between what constitutes delusion and what does not.

As for me, I have a chronic lung disease that makes me a good candidate for coming up missing at the spring head count every year. I also have a 15-year-old kid (my youngest; the others are grown, with kids of their own). So it's something I think about, mainly with him in mind. I don't know how carbon-neutral it is, but I've always thought the "Ashes to Diamonds" thing was a cool idea. (Not very carbon-neutral at all, is my guess, and about half a hustle to boot -- but still cool). Of course, that dang kid would lose his nose if it wasn't attached to his face, so I get this picture of him frantically rooting around in the bottom of the couch...
 
Donated it to science
My current JRF avatar is a redacted scan of my donation ID card
 
Green burial is another option.

No embalming, casket, vault, or permanent marker, so no lasting impact on the environment.
It's becoming fairly popular in the Pacific NW and California.
 
quarky said:
How does an atheist and an ecologist dispose of their body, in modern western cultures, in the most carbon neutral way?
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Have you looked into natural or green burial?


As for myself, what would I have to do to increase my chances of becoming a fossil?

(And if you're thinking of telling me I already am, you can get off of my lawn.)
 
Wolfman said:
Well, some Tibetans (and a few other Chinese ethnic minorities) practice sky burials. The body is simply carried to the top of a mountain, and left there to be consumed by animals. Just about the most environmentally friendly way to deal with the body that I can think of. There's not a great deal of religious significance to it, according to my understanding...they believe the soul has already left the body, and in an environment that is both rocky and lacking in a lot of firewood, both burial and cremation are not that practical.

In some cases, after the flesh has been consumed, the bones will be smashed and broken open, so that they too can be consumed.

Me...I think I'd go either for a sky burial, or as Wowbagger suggested, donating my entire body to science.
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"Towers of Silence" in India.
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Couple guys in the model airplane club had their ashes scattered at the flying field.
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I'd go for cremation. Don't care what happens to the ashes.
 
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quarky said:
AFAIK, 'science' is over-stocked with donated bodies, and it will become difficult to go with that option.
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Really? Most I could google up was that they were overstocked in Tennessee a couple years ago. I can hardly imagine that every med school everywhere has already got plenty of nice fresh cadavers for their students. Is there already some kind of matching service for donors and institutions that I don't know about? As far as I can tell it's more like people have to find places that accept donations and call around to try to find one that's interested.
 
GT/CS said:
Green burial is another option.

No embalming, casket, vault, or permanent marker, so no lasting impact on the environment.
It's becoming fairly popular in the Pacific NW and California.
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That's more or less how my mother-in-law was buried, except that she was buried in a wickerwork coffin - environmentally sustainable, being made from renewable materials that will eventually rot away. I expect that's what my family will do with whatever leftover bits of me the NHS doesn't want, because they're a very sensible bunch on the whole. But, as AvalonXQ rightly says, it's their feelings that matter, because I won't have any feelings by then, so I'll leave it up to them.

Dave
 
AvalonXQ said:
Although I have a preference for cremation, I will most likely be buried out of respect for my family.

My family is very sentimental, and they like having a gravesite to visit, to remember and honor the dead. Annual visits on birthdays for beloved parents and siblings are not unusual.
Click to expand...

I believe some cemeteries will bury cremated remains and put up a headstone, or just put up a headstone, or store cremated remains in an urn in a vault that people can visit.

My grandmother has a headstone next to her husband, but her remains aren't buried there. She donated her body to a medical school. They cremated it when they were finished, and her wishes were to have her ashes scattered in Vermont.
 
GreyArea said:
Have you looked into natural or green burial?


As for myself, what would I have to do to increase my chances of becoming a fossil?

(And if you're thinking of telling me I already am, you can get off of my lawn.)
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I think I started a thread on that subject a few years ago:
How would one go about becoming a fossil?
Primates are notoriously shy at becoming fossils, and the few that have been found are quite valuable to science.

I recently read (who knows where) that somewhere, there is a mummification option.

My dad, the anti-sentimental devout atheist and chemist, discussed with me the possibility of extracting the metals from his bio-mass, and making an ingot from them, to be worn as a pendant. Strange guy. He didn't mind talking about such stuff on his death bed, and we had lots of laughs over it, plus some last minute math.
 
I will look into the green options. Not sure yet if they are legal everywhere.
 
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