

Screw-in coffin patent issued - there
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/02/screw-in_coffin_patent_issues.html

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philk
This is hilarious, but probably not viable:

a) Coffins are sold to grieving families on the basis of "the one last thing
you can do for [deceased]". Hence sales are made based on how luxurious, etc.
the coffin is, not how efficiently it bores into the ground.

b) Who is going to want to file past a gigantic drill bit in a church?

c) If you look at the silhouette in fig 6, the coffin is roughly 40% longer
than the deceased. Hence to bury a 6 foot tall individual, the coffin will
need to be ~ 8.5 feet long, too tall to be screwed in by hand.

d) Part of the point of burials is the ceremony of lowering the coffin into
the grave. This won't be viable with the screw coffin - "alright folks, it's
time to bury Dad. Now these two hefty blokes are going to take a quarter of an
hour to screw him into the ground. You all stand there and listen to him bump
around inside the coffin".

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jvdh
I believe most countries have a minimum depth that bodies have to be buried
at. That is going to be hard to achieve with these kind of coffins.

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bmelton
I don't know why there couldn't be 'filler' space at the top put there just to
achieve the depth requirements.

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philk
Well, assuming the minimum depth is even as low as three feet, the deceased is
up to six feet tall and there's maybe a foot of additional space (thickness of
coffin, the pointy drill bit, satin pillows, etc.) you're now looking at a ten
foot long coffin. This seems to be a bit unwieldy at best, particularly when
you've got to stand it up to bore into the ground.

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electromagnetic
You can have a funeral in winter before the frost line raises, however it'll
destroy this. Frost doesn't stop a backhoe, I'd bet a lot of money it would
stop this because the torque required to break and shift frozen soil is
immense, especially considering it has to displace its entire volume _around_
the coffin.

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DrJokepu
This will give a whole new meaning to "turning in one's grave".

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Semiapies
Yow. Would be less expensive to have a drill to make the hole with, then lower
the coffin in, then to build the drill into the coffin.

Or to cremate.

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apower
This actually is a novel idea. And it saves space. Pack more deads per square
meter.

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philk
I imagine making every single coffin into a drill capable of boring a hole
into the earth is a lot more expensive than buying a couple of sets of digging
equipment per cemetery.

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sorbus
On the other hand, if you're going to bring in machinery, you need to make
sure that there's enough space to stop them from crushing the other coffins -
which might negate any space-savings from burying people vertically. Whereas
with this, a few people put it in, which needs very little space. Besides,
don't the families of deceased generally pay for their coffins?

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philk
I think finding people who can manhandle an abnormally large, heavy, drill
shaped coffin into place will be harder and more expensive than using
machinery - there's a reason why we don't dig graves by hand any more.

Families do pay for the coffins, but they also pay for burial costs as well
(so they'd also be paying for space and a portion of the machinery).

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bombs
I can't find anything online, but I can recall reading that Christian heathens
were buried vertically, because this meant that they could not enter heaven.
Is there anything like this in other religions (especially other monotheistic
ones)?

There'll be plenty of non-religious folks who could opt for this or another
form of vertical burial, but I wonder how many people or their families would
simply opt for the traditional, religious burial.

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boredguy8
Pallbearer? No, thank you.

(Though really I think the casket is INSIDE the screw. If it's not, that will
by my new invention: "Easy corpse retrieval system" is how I'll bill it, and
mostly to those singularity folks. "Be the first one out once we figure out
how to cure stuff. No messing digging or accidentally crushing the casket!)

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ojbyrne
At the risk of being downvoted, the phrase "What's up, doc?" was the first
thing that came to mind.

The opportunity for ridicule has probably killed many an invention (i.e. Nokia
and "side-talking").

