
An alternative to burial and cremation gains popularity - eric-hu
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/business/flameless-cremation.html
======
astura
While we are on the topic I'd like to remind everyone that the absolute _best_
thing that you can do for your family, friends, and loved ones in the event of
your death is plan for it ahead of time. If you're sick or elderly consider
_prepaying_ for whatever services you'd like. The death industry is shady as
fuck and it's easy to take advantage of the bereaved, who are in a fragile
emotional state, just to make a quick buck. You have the ability to properly
do your research, comparison shop, and plan rationally beforehand so use it.

When she reached 90 my great grandma prepaid for all her funeral services and
had everything all set, including the dress she wanted to be buried in. Nobody
had to worry about a thing. Of course, you risk some places going out of
business, so this should be done only if your life expectancy is around, say,
5 years or so.

~~~
Fnoord
I suppose it might differ per country.

Here in The Netherlands you can insure yourself for a lot of things. Life
insurance is one of the insurances to consider; it is generally good idea. If
you start with it from your youth you pay less per year than if you start
paying on from say your mid 30s.

Its also interesting how the elder go to retirement homes here, while in the
USA it is normal to have your (grand)parents live with you if they're old age.
Basically unheard of here in NL.

~~~
dpark
> _Life insurance is one of the insurances to consider;_

Cost is only one factor. The bigger thing is taking the need to make a bunch
of decisions (and fight over a bunch of decisions) away.

> _while in the USA it is normal to have your (grand)parents live with you if
> they 're old age_

This is really not that common here. Retirement homes and nursing homes are
huge industries in the US.

Having elderly parents live with you in the US is probably more common among
low income people, because nursing and retirement homes are both quite
expensive.

~~~
charlesdm
Regardless of income, having elderly parents live with you definitely is the
more humane thing to do. Say what you want, but nearly all nursing and
retirement homes are horrible places to live -- even the 'top notch' ones.

My grandfather is getting older, has plenty of money, and we've visited a
decent amount of retirement homes. It's seriously depressing to even consider
he might have to live there.

------
Asdfbla
Although I don't like the thought of my body rotting somewhere, I do think
it's probably just fair if my available biomass is turned after something
useful after I'm dead, considering how much I will have consumed during my
life. It's still only a symbolic gesture, but in that sense I'd prefer being
liquefied and used as fertilizer to just being burned to relatively useless
ash.

I wonder what the most ecologically useful way of disposing of a body is.

~~~
signal11
Zoroastrian funerals[1] are pretty eco-friendly:

> Instead of burying the corpse, Zoroastrians traditionally laid it out on a
> purpose built tower (dokhma or 'Tower of Silence') to be exposed to the sun
> and eaten by birds of prey such as vultures.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrit...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrituals/funerals.shtml)

~~~
tonmoy
That sounds like a receptor for spereading disease maybe even something like
Kuru

~~~
matt_wulfeck
And I don’t actually think it’s very eco friendly. They only do that because
the altitude doesn’t allow for enough microbial activity to break it down.

~~~
pacaro
What altitude? This is a tradition that started in Persia and still exists in
parts of India. I don’t think altitude has much to do with it. There are
social issues when the Towers of Silence that used to be away from the
population centers become surrounded by the growing cities, carrion eaters
aren’t always the tiniest of creatures

~~~
astura
I recall reading there is a problem with doing this in India because the birds
of pray population has decreased by like 99% so there's often not enough birds
to pick the body clean.

EDIT: there's another comment down thread saying the same.

------
spodek
I still plan to donate my body to science.

A girlfriend in medical school said she wish she had a cadaver like my body
for anatomy class. She said that she and nearly everyone in the class had to
cut through inches of fat to get to the organs, also covered in fat. Such
bodies may represent today's population better, but she said you could learn
better without it.

~~~
dorfsmay
Once they're done using your body, they still need to dispose of the remains.
By "giving your body to science" you are avoiding having to make a decision at
a personal level, but it doesn't answer the question of the best way to
dispose of our deads at a societal level.

~~~
caio1982
At societal level I think medical research should benefit first, and then we
can discuss what to do with the actual [socially] useless waste.

~~~
dorfsmay
Not denying that, just pointing out that it doesn't address the question of
disposal, which is what is debated here.

------
Ice_cream_suit
The Zoroastrian way of disposal is rather exotic:

"The bodies are not placed on the ground because their presence would corrupt
the earth. For the same reason, Zoroastrians do not cremate their dead, as it
would corrupt the fire.

The dakhma is a wide tower with a platform open to the sky. Corpses are left
on the platform to be picked clean by vultures, a process which only takes a
few hours. This allows a body to be consumed before dangerous corruption sets
in."

[http://www.avesta.org/ritual/funeral.htm](http://www.avesta.org/ritual/funeral.htm)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrit...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrituals/funerals.shtml)

[https://www.thoughtco.com/zoroastrian-
funerals-95949](https://www.thoughtco.com/zoroastrian-funerals-95949)

~~~
fapjacks
Yes but the problem with sky burials are the environmental contamination of
leaving hundreds of bodies (or whatever remains after the vultures have their
supper) to slowly decompose in one single spot. You can easily google for
images of typical Zoroastrian "Towers of Silence" and see that quite a lot of
stuff is left over, which the villagers just sweep off the ledge into the
center hole. The idea that the corpse is "picked clean" is really debatable
and demonstrably false in many cases, as you can clearly see in the images of
Towers of Silence. I don't pretend to be privy to the facts -- and perhaps
someone will correct me with a citation -- but from my understanding,
"environmental contamination" is often one of the arguments against allowing
the construction of Towers of Silence.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
This is the result of the use of Diclofenac, a non-steroid anti-inflammatory
drug, to care for livestock. The vultures eat the livestock carcasses, and die
of the diclofenac... in great numbers. 99.9% (yes) of Indian vultures are
gone- which, among other things, makes Parsi sky burials ineffective:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diclofenac#Ecological_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diclofenac#Ecological_effects)

In the past, the vultures would have picked the bones clean. Now there's just
not enough vultures- hence the image you describe.

------
wybiral
> The machine produces sterile brown effluent made up of minerals, salts,
> amino acids, soap and water ...

Don't tell Soylent about this.

~~~
nate_meurer
Say, that gives me an idea... What if there was a way to turn the effluent
into food?

~~~
wybiral
Well it does have minerals, salts, and amino acids!

Joke aside, if it went into being fertilizer which then feeds plants which we
eat... The plants are just playing the role of the processing mechanism for
recycling those chemicals...

------
mythrwy
I'd like to undergo taxidermy stretched over a robotic skeleton. With a bank
of Li-ion batteries and a charging port on the belly button. And of course a
few hard drives and a board or three and lots of sensors.

That way I can pre-program a bunch of activities for myself after death and
finally catch up on all the stuff I meant to do but never got around to.

------
eth0up
I wonder if this "alkaline hydrolysis" effectively destroys prions. With 1/9
people over 65 afflicted with Alzheimer's - and that's diagnosed - I am of the
unconventional suspicion that prions are a culprit[1], though I am aware it is
not a well-received suspicion. We've known for years that plants can uptake
prions. We've verified that in cases of chronic-wasting-disease (etiology =
prions) animal droppings from infected wildlife contain prions, which implies
that humans may also pass prions through fecal matter and are perhaps more
easily spread than popularly accepted. With the common application of Sludge
(municipally treated and redistributed sewage) and the primarily bacterial
means of processing it, it too seems a source of spreading prions. I wonder if
more caution is due regarding the spreading of such a persistently virulent
thing, and if the risk of prions isn't underestimated in many respects.

[1] James Ironside on prions
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlIYGYA5q0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlIYGYA5q0s)

~~~
arkades
Protein staining in the study of Alzheimer’s disease is a common (and old)
element of its analysis. This is part of how we identified tau protein plaque
formation as part of the disease.

Prions are not part of the disease. They would stain, and be visible on
microscopy. They are exactly the (type of) substance that has been stained
for, and are more than large enough to show up on the various types of
microscopy regularly performed on these tissue samples.

I’m trying to find a more explicit way of saying: these are easy to eee in
exactly the ways that we examine these brains, so no, it’s not a prion
disease.

~~~
eth0up
Any insight on the possibility of transmissible amyloid pathology?
[http://www.nature.com/news/the-red-hot-debate-about-
transmis...](http://www.nature.com/news/the-red-hot-debate-about-
transmissible-alzheimer-s-1.19554)

~~~
dnautics
It's super unlikely. Having worked in the field, I am almost certain that
amyloids are a consequence of, not a cause of the disease. Otherwise,
valeant's drug would not have failed so spectacularly a few weeks ago.

------
KGIII
It makes sense. Some comedian used to joke about the best land being taken up
by golf courses and cemeteries. So, that has always stuck with me and I've
long since planned on getting cremated.

I'd prefer a sky burial but that's difficult, or so I am told.

~~~
amelius
I prefer the land in my neighborhood being used for cemeteries rather than for
industry.

~~~
anonytrary
Human death is an industry and cemeteries are some of the players. Cemeteries
would be obsolete if all humans had evolved the habit of cremation instead of
isolated burial. Cremation costs zero units of space, isolated burial costs a
finite amount of space in a world with scarce space.

If the market prefers isolated burial, then there's a market for space-
consuming cemeteries. This probably costs a lot in government regulations, so
cemeteries have to be big enough to absorb the initial costs.

Cemeteries are kind of a dumb idea and part of a backwards industry, driven by
some silly need to bury people in quaint suburbs of death.

That sentiment is my bias showing, but it's kind of a no brainer: cemeteries
are superfluous and are basically societal debt at this point. Let's hope we
can count on people to move towards more economically friendly means of
disposable:

1\. Dump your dead friend in the woods. 2\. Dump your dead friend in the
ocean. 3\. Dump your dead friend's ashes somewhere.

These are all better options than hogging some space, digging a hole, dumping
your dead friend into the hole, then telling everyone that this land forever
belongs to someone who can no longer use it.

~~~
Brendinooo
I like cemeteries.

They're a neat mix of history, nature, and art. They're often isolated,
beautiful, and quiet. Important people get monuments in public squares; all
but the most poor throughout US history get a small plot and a little
headstone. It's fun to think about people who otherwise have been completely
forgotten: the eras they lived in, the family members they're buried with, the
countries where they came from, their accomplishments in life, and sometimes
the sacrifices they made for me. They're no dumber than any other monument you
see to anyone anywhere else, except these are the monuments for the 99%,
figuratively speaking.

Visiting a cemetery also reminds me that I'm mortal and one day my fate will
be the same.

There's an extremely fair case to be made against cemeteries from
environmental and/or space concerns, and you can accomplish a lot of the above
goals in other ways. However, the dismissal of a very human desire to remember
and/or be remembered deserved a response.

~~~
anonytrary
Yeah the aesthetic argument is one I can't really argue against. I also like
cemeteries for aesthetic reasons, but there's no reason why we couldn't
preserve a forest and then plant monuments there, followed by cremation.

Are physical monuments getting more or less popular? I mean, my whole history
and life is basically on Facebook, which acts as a more thorough monument than
any limited gravestone ever could. Remembering people through electronics
seems like a complete eco-friendly replacement for altars and other space
consuming habits.

------
JoeDaDude
My goal is to become a fossil - literally - and take a message to the future
with me. I'd need to be buried in soil likely to become sedimentary rock,
something like a bog, or maybe a muddy river delta. For my message, I'd take
something like a wooden abacus or astrolabe, something that will petrify like
my mortal remains. I know, the chances are missions to one my fossil will ever
be found, and we can only imagine by whom or what. But what a story that
fossil will tell!

~~~
adrianN
You might be interested in that self-mummification process that some Zen monks
in Japan used to do.

~~~
mcguire
Here's a plug for Barry Hughart's _Master Li and Number Ten Ox_ books, where
in a character collects mummified holy men who died while meditating, with the
rumour that some didn't die of natural causes.

------
lwansbrough
There's something decidedly less wholesome about having a jug of your great
aunt on the mantle, as opposed to an urn.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You get an urn full of powdered bone. The liquid is flushed, or used as
fertilizer.

~~~
vixen99
Save your toe and finger nail clippings and other detritus and you can prepare
the urn before you go and on death your entire collection of molecules can do
something more immediately useful as in fertilizer. True reincarnation albeit
in a different pattern.

------
alex_dev
> "Not everyone feels this way. Some critics recoil, in part because the
> effluent is released into local sewage systems."

Don't people know what happens to the body's blood during embalming? Goes down
the drain.

I've already told my family that this is my preferred burial method.

------
odammit
I’d be down for this if my current plans are still too expensive to be an
option when I die.

I’d like to be flung out of a mass driver towards interstellar space, naked,
in the “starfish position.”

Starfish position for the uninformed is arms out, legs out. You know, the
position you take when you drop onto your bed exhausted at the end of a long
day.

Except my final bed would be emptiness, forever cartwheeling into the abyss...

Until I hit an asteroid or something.

~~~
CydeWeys
Your body won't survive the acceleration of a mass driver intact. Nor would it
survive the rapid deceleration, if launched through an atmosphere.

~~~
odammit
This would obviously be done off the surface of the moon.

I would also accept being launched out of a trebuchet.

I won’t budge on the cartwheeling starfish. In case I pass by intelligent life
in a few billion years I definelty want them to have a WTF moment.

~~~
yellowapple
I'm personally more fond of the "thinking man" pose myself.

------
stult
I keep telling people I want a Viking funeral. And not one of those silly,
historically accurate ship burials. I want to be pushed out to sea in a
longship with a sword laid across my chest, with an expert longbowman to set
me on fire with flaming arrows.

Is it anachronistic? Yes. Am I a badass Scandanavian warrior? Not even a
little. Do I actually worship Thor? Only on census forms. But it makes me
laugh about my death so I'll keep telling people that's what I want.

In my actual will, I'm an organ donor and donate anything left over to
science, but no one needs to know that just yet.

~~~
KboPAacDA3
For the Viking funeral, would you also include the drugged slave girl in the
rite?

~~~
yellowapple
How _else_ would one have a Viking funeral?

------
ilaksh
Well, if its less expensive and more sustainable, then sounds great.

The only thing to get past is the way the idea reminds me of an episode of
Breaking Bad.

------
ajnin
Is that technique really "greener" than cremation ? Maybe you're not
generating as much CO2 on-site but sodium hydroxide is made by electrolysing
salt so it consumes a lot of energy.

~~~
astura
It says so. I assume someone's done this math?

>The environmental benefits of alkaline hydrolysis are significant. Its carbon
footprint is about a tenth of that caused by burning bodies. Mr. Wilson said
liquefaction uses a fraction of the energy of a standard cremator and releases
no fumes.... the [effluent] is sterile and contains nutrients, so much so that
it can be and is used as a fertilizer. Rick Vonderwell, who manages Tails
Remembered, a pet crematory in Delphos, Ohio, uses the effluent at his farm,
as do several large universities.

~~~
mcguire
How is the 'effluent' not toxic?

("Effluent? That's Grandma!")

~~~
thisisdave
It’s basically drain cleaner (which becomes salty water as soon as it gets
mixed with an acid), plus digested meat juice.

------
Ileca
I thought you were completely dissolved to the core making some kind of
primordial soup, it was beautiful, until I read there are still bones at the
end they can put in an urn. Could be better. The device is still worth it.
Maybe the 500k model can do it? I like the fact you go into the sewage system
or be used as fertilizer (if you are a pet). At the end, you can be drunk or
eaten by other people.

Only beaten by: A/space burial to the sun or frozen in the middle of total
vacuum B/cryo C/science.

Btw, it's the mobile version of the page. Here is the full one:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/business/flameless-
cremat...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/business/flameless-
cremation.html)

~~~
dorfsmay
Space/sun burial depletes the earth of water and minerals.

I'm not a pet, but would love to be used as fertilizer.

------
kozikow
Cryonics + post enough incentive for someone to wake you up. The best
incentive for someone to wake you up I came up with is putting lots of money
in cryptocurrency and remembering the private key and writing "Will pay X BTC
to anyone who wakes me up"

~~~
oldboyFX
Or just put some gold in a safe so you don't have to worry about your crypto's
value going straight to zero.

~~~
repsilat
What are the chances a will like this could be successfully challenged in
court by your descendants? I'm not a lawyer, but I wouldn't trust that purpose
to stay protected. (No idea about blockchain contracts either, though, much
less the price future of cryptocurrencies...)

------
ada1981
I started a beach Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Erie, PA 17 years ago called
Don't Give Up The Disc. It's become many people's favorite weekend of the year
and though I no longer run it I've made it back all but 1 year.

My plan is to be cremated and to have my ashes scattered on Beach 11 at
Presque Isle State Park at the opening of the tournament following my death.

Bonus points if they can get some custom 175g frisbee made with my ashes mixed
in the plastic, as they did with Ed Hedrick.

~~~
mcguire
" _[Damon] Runyon died in New York City from throat cancer in late 1946, at
age 66. His body was cremated, and his ashes were illegally scattered from a
DC-3 airplane over Broadway in Manhattan by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker on
December 18, 1946._ "

I heard it was a B-17, but Wikipedia says that.

------
listic
I wonder why do the alternatives to burial pick up, while cryonics doesn't
after all these years?

------
mavhc
How does it compare to the mushroom suit?

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jae_rhim_lee](https://www.ted.com/talks/jae_rhim_lee)

Does cost a lot though, $1500 [http://coeio.com/](http://coeio.com/)

------
visarga
So, after liquefying the dead, are they recouping their water and returning it
to the tribal reservoir?

~~~
alexfisher
Was wondering if anyone else was having flashbacks to Fremen tribal practices
in the Dune universe!

------
fapjacks
Honestly I've been planning for a good old-fashioned Roman funeral pyre after
I'm gone. Complete with some kind of monument with an inscription imploring
passersby not to shit on my grave.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> imploring passersby not to shit on my grave

This is oddly specific, it feels like a dare.

~~~
fapjacks
Yes it does seem like that, doesn't it? But Romans were particularly concerned
about people shitting on their graves. If you start reading Roman epitaphs,
they all universally seem to follow one particular format:

 _To the spirits of the departed, here is the grave of Publius Maximus, served
in the Legions, who drank heartily every day of his life. Passersby, consider
a moment this grave, but go on before too long, lest you shit here. This
monument was put up by his dear brother Julius Maximus and measures ten feet
at the front and twenty into the field._

They are literally _all_ like that.

~~~
JetSpiegel
From this day forward I will try to decipher the Roman monuments I visit with
extra attention for epitaphs.

~~~
fapjacks
If you're interested in the whole concept of Roman epitaphs, I can't recommend
enough Death in Ancient Rome by Valerie Hope [0]. It is a fascinating
perspective on the culture of the Roman Empire which demonstrates ideas that
were important to them in a way that couldn't be known otherwise. I read loads
of books on the Roman Empire, but I could not put this book down. I read it in
a very short amount of time. If you only buy three books on the Roman Empire,
this should be one of them! Also, you can click on this link confident that
it's not a stupid referral.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Death-Ancient-Rome-Sourcebook-
Sourceb...](https://www.amazon.com/Death-Ancient-Rome-Sourcebook-
Sourcebooks/dp/0415331587/)

------
Cyranix
Along the lines of "alternatives to burials" — and probably of interest to the
people here discussing leaving bodies in open air — the Criminal episode on
the TSU body farm is absolutely fascinating. I haven't set up anything
official yet, but I'm seriously leaning towards donating here.

[http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-68-all-the-time-in-the-
wor...](http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-68-all-the-time-in-the-world/)

------
perpetualcrayon
I don't know if it's an "option", but my preference is hovering around the
idea that I just want my body (as is) to be buried in the ground.

Does this exist?

~~~
joliv
Yep:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_burial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_burial)

------
acheron
“It is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all
the people.”

—Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Ethics for Tomorrow”

------
perpetualcrayon
There's at least one thing that really fascinate me about death.

That is that there's no way (as far as I can tell) for natural selection to
"improve" how we die. My guess is death is the most diverse experience amongst
all living things.

EDIT: Even without factoring in the idea that there are so many experiences
that cause death.

~~~
duckwheat
If the way a creature died reduced the fitness of relatives, it could
definitely be selected against.

~~~
perpetualcrayon
That's true. I'm talking about that moment (or period of time) while your body
is no longer your own and it's "transitioning" to death. That experience that
a person has I am thinking could possibly be the most diverse of all
experiences among living creatures. I wonder how could your DNA know how to
alter that part of your life experience? And how could any of us really
compare and contrast to know whether that is or isn't true, and / or select
our partner according to how past relatives experienced death? There are "near
death experiences", but how similar is their experience to the actual
experience of dying?

------
jostylr
Here is a composting attempt for dealing with the dead (grain of salt needed:
TED talk ahead)

[https://www.ted.com/talks/katrina_spade_when_i_die_recompose...](https://www.ted.com/talks/katrina_spade_when_i_die_recompose_me)

------
driverdan
> When it’s a family that has just lost Mom or Dad, they’re in a more
> emotional state and they look at it and say it seems more gentle...

How does that make sense? They're dead. The way you treat their body has no
effect on them.

~~~
mcguire
Emotions aren't supposed to make sense.

But how is chemical liquification more gentle?

------
DanAndersen
Burial/funerary practices are really fascinating, as it's so intertwined with
our ideas of morals and aesthetics (which have always themselves been part of
the same thing). Ceremonial/ritualistic treatment of the dead is something
that's been part of humanity for so long, and it's made us what we are.

For this reason, it's good to examine what sorts of funerary practices one
finds aesthetically pleasing or off-putting, and to see if there are any
trends. For example, I personally am less enamored of pure
utilitarian/altruistic methods like donating one's body to science, or where
you get your remains put into a package to grow a tree. Can't deny the
usefulness and rationality of such things, of course. But the thought process
of that I can't shake is "Well, at least I'll be of some use when I'm dead" or
"I don't want to be a bother."

My thought is that there's something good in the notion, not just of the dead
not being forgotten, but of having the dead impart some sort of cost or burden
on the living. I actually love the idea of pyramids and ancient mausoleums,
and the idea of people having been buried with personal or costly items -- not
because I myself am interested in having a lavish tomb or "thinking I can take
it with me," but because I think there's something primal in us that wants to
find some way of making the sense of loss more concrete and material. (At the
same time, that can be driven to excess in our modern funeral-director
economic system, which itself tries to piggyback on that desire to throw
wealth at the dead by instead throwing wealth at the living.) When it comes to
burial, I've always liked large standing headstones far more than just flat
markers, partially for historical/design purposes, but also just because I'm
not a fan of making such gravestones less prominent just to make the job of a
lawn-mower easier. I can't help but want graves to be obnoxious obstacles
enough that someone has to deal with them individually.

When it comes to cremation or the article's "liquifaction," I find it curious
that either method sits well with me except for the last step of cremulation.
It's not something that we generally think about, but when you cremate a body,
the fires aren't enough to get the job done -- you end up with many fragments
of fragile bone rather than some uniform powder. At that point, the fragments
go into a cremulator, which is essentially an industrial blender, to be
pulverized into powder. Maybe I'm just a romantic for older methods, but the
more modern industrial "grind grandma's bones in a blender" approach strikes
me as much more violent than immolating a corpse. I'd much rather cremation
was practiced as in Japan (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral#Cremation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_funeral#Cremation)
) where the fragments themselves are hand-picked out of the ashes (or rather
chopstick-picked) by relatives to be placed in the urn. I'd also be a fan of
bringing back the practice of ossuaries to balance the desire for burial with
the limitations of physical space.

Of course, this is all 'irrational' or 'illogical', but it's good to think
about what we actually favor when it comes to funerary practices, and what it
says about ourselves. I think that aesthetics, our sense of beauty/ugliness in
this situation, is connected with our worldview, our personal history, and our
morals/ethics in interesting ways. Looking through the thousands of years of
human civilization and seeing how various people dealt with the trauma of
death and loss is enlightening.

~~~
dctoedt
> _My thought is that there 's something good in the notion, not just of the
> dead not being forgotten, but of having the dead impart some sort of cost or
> burden on the living._

Sure, as long as "the cost or burden on the living" is merely that of
remembering our debt to the dead for their contributions to our present-day
lives. (Cf. President Obama's "You didn't build that" remark during the 2012
campaign [0], which triggered outrage by opponents who quoted it out of
context.)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that)

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mynameishere
I mean, people have been dumping lye on bodies for a long time. That's all
they're doing, but to a gooey extreme.

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swayvil
why not just toss the corpse into a volcano?

~~~
sumedh
Who is going to pay for the cost of transporting your body to the nearest
active volcano?

~~~
swayvil
All that matters is if it's cheaper.

~~~
sumedh
Is it?

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RickJWag
I find it creepy, especially putting the resulting fluid somewhere it might
leak into the water table.

Yuck!

~~~
adrianN
Cemeteries are also places where people's remains could eventually leak into
the water table.

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shams93
Not giving a sh&&t about religion I want my ashes turned into an action figure
but I need to make sure I design the figure before I drop dead so I don't get
turned into a cheesy indiana jones action figure after death
[https://www.cremationsolutions.com/blog/introducing-
crematio...](https://www.cremationsolutions.com/blog/introducing-cremation-
urn-hero-figures/2013/06/)

