
Mushroom burial suit turns dead bodies into clean compost (2016) - gscott
https://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bodies-into-clean-compost/
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dusted
Getting human bodies to decompose underground is not trivial. The idea is
nice, but I think the idea of a burial forest is much nicer, as it gives an
excuse to plant some trees, and provides multiple moral perspectives for not
chopping them down again. The burial forest idea is basically that you bury
someone, and plant a tree on top, like a tombstone, but, a tombtree, and that
tree is then both a memorial for the deceased, and, more importantly, it is a
tree, and trees are nice to have around.

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mongol
How does that work in the long perspective? At one point it either falls over
by itself, or it is chopped down? If it falls over by itself, what is done
with it then?

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askvictor
At many graveyards you now lease a grave for a certain number of years, not in
perpetuity. Not really much different to that. No idea what they do with the
bodies once the lease is up...

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logfromblammo
Traditionally, the previous occupant is exhumed and their bones deposited in
the ossuary building. I imagine a modern cemetery just quietly trashes the
headstone when the lease expires, and re-leases the plot at full price, as
though no one had already been buried there.

I'm not sure when the gravesite lease for ethical business practice expires.

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AdmiralAsshat
I assume this is coming up again because it was recently announced that
celebrity Luke Perry was buried in a mushroom suit:

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/04/entertainment/luke-perry-
mush...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/04/entertainment/luke-perry-mushroom-
suit-trnd/index.html)

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madengr
Liquification is another method, essentially pressure cooked in a lye
solution.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_(body_di...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_hydrolysis_\(body_disposal\))

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burfog
Not much can beat a sky burial. Tibetians sometimes still do it. If you search
around, you can find a photo sequence documenting it. The only notable
modernization is plastic aprons for the workers. They strip and slash the
body, then step back and let vultures eat. After the vultures have left only
large bones, the workers smash up the bones with a bit of oatmeal in a bowl.
The vultures like that too, ultimately leaving nothing uneaten.

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wintergrasp
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_vulture_crisis)

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noobly
I hope my pals use my corpse for some cubensis when I'm ripe for it.

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devy
How is this Mushroom method compare to the leading green cremation of Alkaline
Hydrolysis that has been around for over 130 years?[1]

[1]: [https://www.frazerconsultants.com/2016/06/dissolved-
bodies-s...](https://www.frazerconsultants.com/2016/06/dissolved-bodies-
sewers-alkaline-hydrolysis-debunked/)

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Gustomaximus
I'm surprised sea burials aren't more of a thing. Much the same but easier to
deal with the body really.

The boat serves as a function room so is set-up ready to go always and has
business model flexibility if you want to take people out for a harbour cruise
other days.

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KineticLensman
> I'm surprised sea burials aren't more of a thing

I have friends who started a small boat tour company and found that sea
burials made up quite a large proportion of their business. They were jokingly
wondering whether to pivot and call their new company "The Final Wave".

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fjsolwmv
For more somber traditionalists, overboard the body in a No Wake Zone.

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cstross
Novelist brain is now feverishly working out ways to use this in a crime
novel. (Probably one involving a smart serial killer.)

~~~
jlangenauer
There was an episode of Hannibal where this sort of thing was part of the plot
- using bodies to grow fungi.

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ben7799
Shades of "The Expanse" and "Silo" series. IIRC Wool, etc.. had people being
decomposed right back into the farm area, and the Expanse has bodies being fed
into the "recycler".

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eatbitseveryday
Was also a TED Talk on this.

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

Edit: looks like it is linked in the article too.

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ajhaupt7
On a related note, the state of Washington is about to legalize human
composting -- [https://thecompost.io/articles/the-kids-arent-
alright#compos...](https://thecompost.io/articles/the-kids-arent-
alright#composting-grandpa)

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steve19
The article claims the mushrooms break down heavy metals. How do they do that?

I know there are marine bacteria that can convert mercury into a less toxic
form, but I am surprised some mushrooms can convert ALL the toxic heavy metals
in our bodies into something less toxic.

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yongjik
According to Wikipedia on the lead designer:

> She earned a B.A. degree in psychology from Wellesley College (1998) and an
> M.S. degree in visual studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> (2006).

My bet is that this doesn't really work, or, well, maybe it does, in the exact
same way a buried dead body eventually decomposes.

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chillingeffect
I can give away the entire game here. I was in her class when Jae-Rhim
designed this project. It was a class taught by [sic] Kzysztof Wodczizco
called "Interrogative Design." He was at MIT then and is at Harvard now. [a]

The whole point of Kzyzstof's Interrogative Design practice is to design
something half-ass and make it seem serious as hell to get people talking and
improving the idea. It "asks a question." It's not taking the piss out of the
audience, because the audience is already lulled into a consumer trance of
evaluating every possible purchase and can generally be led into doing the
problem-solving work. In fact, it's mainly taking the piss out of the artists
because half the time they think their design will actually work.

Wodiczko has incredible cache from being part of the resistance to Communism
in Poland. He impressed me, but made me incredibly cynical. Like many
designers, he practiced an ideology that brought his audience so close to
understanding life through aesthetic and psychological principles (bit of
Jung, bit of Deleuze, bit of Steve Jobs), but ultimately left them cold,
positioning himself as a thought leader, expecting the rest of the world to
complete his projects, using their imagination and the money he gets from
universities. For instance, when I took the class, he was obsessed with Moses
and viewed the bible as a design exercise. He wanted us to come up with
something as persuasive as the stone tablets. I guess I'm just another
idealistic geek who thinks technical facts matter and people can do the right
thing without being led around by fairie tales.

[a] [https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/person/krzysztof-
wodiczko/](https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/person/krzysztof-wodiczko/)

~~~
fjsolwmv
The next generation of laziness? Fake Itt Til Someone Else Makes It.

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logfromblammo
Or have someone lay out your corpse on the ground, cover it with staked-down
chicken wire to keep large scavengers from moving the body around, and dump
some Dermestid beetles on it to accelerate the process. Between the beetles
and the corpse flies that show up naturally, the soft tissues pupate, molt,
and fly away a few grams at a time, leaving a cleaned skeleton.

I'm putting that in my next testament, along with artfully arranging the bones
in a clear polyurethane casting resin, so that I can creep out generations of
my descendants as a plastic heirloom.

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ryannevius
If this interests you, Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets is an interesting
dissertation on how mushrooms can "save the planet." His TED talks are a
decent intro as well.

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fernandopj
Interesting Start Trek: Discovery homage I didn't know until reading this: the
Discovery ship runs in a form of subspace called "mycelial network", using a
"mycelium drive", whose inventor is called... "Paul Stamets".

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mymythisisthis
We need new rituals in our society. I want my body to be eaten using
dermestide beetles to clean my bones
[http://beetlestobonesskullcleaning.com/](http://beetlestobonesskullcleaning.com/)

We need to punish people that do environmental damage, like use embalm
chemicals.

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asadlionpk
Human bodies decompose on their own. Just bury. Muslims have been doing that
for over a thousand years and it just works.

It's one of those things that we (specially the west) are over-engineering.
Same goes for using paper in restrooms. I am waiting for the west to evolve
and just use water already.

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nabla9
I don't see how mushrooms can get rid of heavy metals as said in the article.

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mikro2nd
They don't "get rid" of heavy metals in any absolute sense, but they _do_
remove them from the environment, concentrating the metals within the fruit
bodies of the fungus where they can be easily "harvested" and processed to
either recover the metals or sequester them from the rest of the environment.

Fungi are also spectacularly good at remediating hydrocarbon-polluted soils
and related material - even deeply polluted sites that are normally just
fenced off and "forgotten" as toxic-waste sites.

Take a look at some of Paul Stamets's talks on your favourite Tube site.

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itronitron
I was hoping for pictures, but the company page for the Infinity Burial Suit
sells t-shirts! I can't think of a better gift for the Goth in someone's life.

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zarmin
I want to be buried in terra preta wearing a mushroom suit.

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agentultra
This is beautiful. I can't think of a better way to go. Mushrooms are the
best!

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cascom
what is the solution to deal with all of the inorganic/e-waste that are in
most people's bodies these days (pacemakers, artificial hips, etc.)

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shujito
page looked white until I blocked scripts on it

