The Future of Burial

going to talk about the future of burial. Yeah. This was actually when I when we started talking earlier this week about what podcast sort of topics do we want to look at? Um, this was one I sent around Buried if you will, in a list of several, and I, being the goth kid at heart that I am, was like, oh, hey, let's do this. Let's let's do the one talking about death.

Part of this is because I've kind of had it on the brain more than usual lately, because I got to be on a on a pan with Julie Douglas for her new show Stuff of Life, in which we were talking about how how people process death in our culture and and it was a really interesting discussion. Um uh, Julian I got to go interview a professor who studies death culture and and that was a really fascinating thing. The one of those episodes is up and other should

be up soon. Let's let's mention it now while we're talking about other shows. Joe, you guys over and Stuff to Blow your Mind. Recently did an upset about burial correct? Not well, depends on what you mean by recently. Robert Lamb and I on the other podcast I do. We did the Stuff to Flow Your Mind episode called Human Remains, Past, Present in Future in September. Wait September, No, it wasn't September. It was October. It was October, sort of kind of

getting into the spirit of Halloween. I am right, Yeah, it fit our October theme all all all months we do creepy stuff. That's fair so as opposed to other times when nothing you say is creepy. All okay, since we're talking about other shows, I'll alway mentioned this. Uh, not that you could listen to it or see it, although there's a documentary where I briefly appear in in it. Where I was doing this, I did a a two

man show. I wrote and acted in a two man show about the history of burial practices and funeral practices, and we performed it at uh at a cemetery, historic cemetery here in Atlanta, historic Oakland Cemetery where Margaret Mitchell is buried. Yes, and uh, two different people acted in that, um besides myself, Bernie Clark and Nick Takowski, who are both local artists madmen types here in Atlanta, and I

think they would appreciate those labels. But so we did this this sort of comedic uh grave diggers from Hamlet type presentation. So I've been fascinated by this for quite some time, not just the future of rural practices, but the present state and how we got to that. Now, we're not gonna go too far looking into the past. We're really going to talk about what goes on today and how that might change over time and why it

might change. Yeah, and so okay, so we're gonna we're gonna be talking about some some very serious kind of topics. But but we're all going to die, you guys. And and this is the thing that we all have to deal with. Well, Kurts is not okay, well fair to everyone, but Kurtswile is going to die. So yeah, so so so let's so let's get into it today. UH. And apparently in countries other than the United States, embalming is not very it's not a very common practice at all,

but here it's it's quite common. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of like the average American might assume that embalming, the way we typically very dead in funeral homes in the United States is just how it's always been done. It's not the case. It's not the case here, and it's not the case in other parts of the world. We're largely going to be talking about the way it's done here in the United States because that's where we live, and also to cover all the different variations all over

the world, that would be a series unto itself, certainly. UM. But embalming is not mandated in the United States except in certain states under certain conditions. UH. A few will require embalming if a body needs to be transported across state lines, for example. But that's not all the states, it's just a few. But it still has become kind of the standard practice, UH, for multiple reasons. UM. There are some religions that forbid embalming. It is against their

religion to to treat the body in that way. Orthodox Jews and Muslims both hold those beliefs. Uh. There are others as well that other faiths that require the body to be cremated rather than buried, so it's not common all the way across the board. You might often find cremation in Hinduism exactly as that is one of them. So embalming in the United States didn't even become that

standard practice until the Civil War, which makes sense. The Civil War you had thousands of soldiers dying and so they would be embalmed before the bodies would be shipped back to their hometowns. From that point forward, embalming became more of a standard process in funerals in the United States.

It's really all about preservation. Yeah, in a weird way, I would almost say that embalming is a physical It's like the science of the denial of death, a technological realization of pushing death out of our out of our view by making it look for as long as possible, like you, you're really pretty much still alive. Yeah, it's it's mainly to stave off the decomposition process as long as possible. And I agree with you, Joe, that that is largely I think due to our our our philosophy,

our feelings about death, and they're pretty complicated. But ultimately, I think a lot of people like the idea of of this this preservation so that you can almost compartmentalize it in your mind and and it it doesn't have as strong an effect emotionally on you in that way.

Julie and I got to talk to to to live stuts doctor Lives stuts Is is the professor's name, a little bit about this very subject, and she she put forth a theory that has been discussed in the industries some that that death practices, like death rituals for the living, are a sort of way of of dealing with an

in between state of the body of the deceased. Uh, it's sort of sort of like a transitional state, a sort of coming of age ceremony almost like a like a like like an end of age ceremony, sort of like like prom but for you know, dead bodies. And which makes sense considering the SONGNI this very much like a problem for it for dead people are right and so um and so yeah. So it's it's letting the living take the deceased through this this in between stage

into the finality. Of being buried, right, but so when so there are psychological reasons we do this, but doing it doesn't come without cost. Oh yeah, yeah, that the practical application is pretty morbid. Yeah, and uh yeah, there's their costs, both psychologically, financially and environmentally as it turns out. So, and that's sort of what we're going to focus on today is some of these alternative methods of dealing with bodies after we have died in ways that might be

less costly and less environmentally destructive. In some cases they might be more so, but there are super cool we'll get into that. So if you're talking about the traditional involving process, the way it works is the body is is stripped of cloe oaths, it's washed h then you use a tube with a needle. You inject the needle into an artery, and you the tube is connected to

an embalming machine which pumps embalming fluid into the body. UM. That fluid is specifically designed to prevent bacteria from growing uh and other organisms as well, thus leading to the decomposition. So it's to preserve the body, usually long enough so that you can have your memorial service and your funeral service. UM and we're talking about a pretty significant amount of this stuff per body, and then you think about how many people die every year, it really starts to add up.

So you use about a gallon of this embalming fluid for every fifty pounds of the persons, or three leaders per every twenty three or so. That's right. So it's a fairly significant amount of this stuff and embalming fluid. Typically it's not bio friendly, not in the US. In the US, it typically contains formaldehyde as one of the

ingredients and that's a our synogen. So you there are a lot of people who are concerned about this carcinogen finding its way into the water table, you know, eventually uh, moving from the body into the soil and then getting absorbed into that particular call it ecosystem and UH it's it's such a big concern in some places that they have moved the places that still practice embalming, they have

moved from that to other types of chemicals. In the UK, UH there was actually a call for a band of for malde hyde back in and the industry started moving towards using UH gluterol hide gluderol to hide a boy. I don't know if I'll ever say that the way it's supposed to be said. But it's glutterol to hide based fluids which are less toxic than for malde hyde. So that's the sounds like. You don't talk about gluterald to hide all that much. Not so often, really, I don't.

It doesn't come up. And most of my conversations, Yeah, I hang out with the different crowd these days, we mostly talk about pokemons pokemon. Yeah, we don't know what they are. We just talk about them and how you've got to grab them all we know, we know there's some grabbing of pokemons. That's about it. To make a little transition, you know what you do with pokemons as you put them inside a container like almost like a coffin, exceptance of ball. Yeah, we're gonna talk about coffins now.

So also sometimes in the US called caskets, although that term is not frequently used in places like the UK or Australia, not for a coffin anyway. A casket may just be a container for jewelry, but in the US coffin and casket tends to be used pretty much interchangeably. So these days they the standard coffins that you would find are really meant as a barrier between the body and the elements. They're not impermeable. Normally, they're made out of things like wood or metal, and they're lined with

some sort of plush material. But there are some coffins that come with a rubber seal to make them as close to impermeable as possible, the idea being that this way. Really don't want this, yeah, yeah, but the idea being that it's supposed to prevent water from coming in, because, as the grave digger from Hamlet will tell you, water

will ruin a body. Um, it's actually in the speech. Well, yeah, it's it's preventing preventing water from getting in and preventing the materials that make up the coffin and the contents of the coffin from getting out. Yes, so that's really what the purpose is. But you don't want to truly impermeable coffin because as a body decomposes, it produces methane gas. If you have a container that has no way to vent the gas, that pressure builds and builds and builds

until yes, coffins can and sometimes do explode. We mentioned this in our stuff to blow your mind episode exploding coffins. Yeah, it's happened both in coffins that are buried under the ground and coffin stored in mausoleums. Did you talk about any mausoleums with explosions, because there's been a few cases where mausoleums have been severely damaged through exploding coffins. Uh. So, there are some coffins that are designed to vent this gas. Occasionally,

they're called burping coffins. They could have called it something else. They could They could have called it farting coffins. That would have been worse. So I don't know. For some reason, I'm less grossed up by farting coffins. I mean, that's a generational thing, I think at this point. Okay, that's that's fair enough. I I just burping reminds me of tupperware.

I anyway, so you can tell it's still fresh. Um. So, the coffin is then placed in what it's called a burial vault, which is a sealed chamber mint to protect the coffin from the weight of the earth that's above it, as well as any machinery that has to pass over it.

So typically US cemeteries you're using something like a backhoe in order to dig the grave site or the internment site as they sometimes call it in the funeral business um because they don't like to they don't like to use words that make people think of death, which is one of those weird culture things that I can totally understand on one side, and I think it's totally weird

on the other side. It's also relatively recent. A lot of the well, I mean funeral homes didn't even really exist until around World War two or so, when it became it started becoming so common to have in bombings that we needed a whole industry to to offset it, because embombing isn't the kind of thing that you that you can d I Y at home. You know, the big one in my hometown, Strickland Funeral Home. No no relation. Yeah, small town in Georgia, Strickland Funeral Stricklands. Yeah, apparently not

related to it to my branch. Uh. If they were, those that would be the family members we would be mooching off of, because funeral directors tend to make a lot of money um at any rate. So we've got we've got the burping coffins, we've got the vaults that we've talked about. The vaults are typically lined with either concrete or steel so that they can create the support system so that the ground does not cave in while machinery is driving across it. If you don't have a vault,

the ground will tend to sink. Yes, sure, sure, so so this right, this, This protects the coffin, and it also protects the environment from the coffin and the contents of the coffin, or you might say the appearance of the burial grounds. That. Yeah, that's also a case, like it would be somewhat disturbing to walk up to a cemetery and see areas of sunken earth around. I mean, it might feel a little weird. You might feel like

you're in a Romero film. Also, grass might stop growing there because of toxic compounds and the coffins or the embolbing fluid that also could happen stuff like that. So there is a growing concern, which is probably pretty clear from our conversation so far, that the traditional approach in the United States to funerals is environmentally harmful through many aspects.

You've got the formalde hyde, which is a chemical concern Again, not everyone gets embalmed before burial, so it's not always a factor, but it's common enough where it's it's more of the rule and less of the exception. Also, you've got the fact that you're using woods, often fairly rare woods for a lot of these coffins, and they're beautiful and that's the point. But yeah, but it's not necessarily sustainable wood that you're that's being used for these coffins.

So there's that environmental factor. And there's also the concern about just the fact that cemeteries take up a lot of open space, right, So that's space that could be used for something else, especially in high concentration areas, like I've read about the the problem in New York of well, where are we going to bury people? We're just we're out of places. Same in Tokyo. That's another I mean,

it's a really big problem. Mausoleums are off often a solution to that because and I'll talk about them a little bit more in just a second. Literally in just a second, it's like a it's like a skyscraper for bodies. Yeah, and we'll talk about more about that idea in greater detail later too. So that that kind of brings us to this this concept of entombment as post burial. So in tum mont often you have a lot of the same processes that lead up to the stage of burial,

except of course it's burying someone in the ground. You're putting them in a crypt or a tomb or a mausoleum above ground. And there are a lot of different reasons to do this. One is if you happen to live in a place where the soil is not good for digging in, whether it's too rocky or it's too sandy, it won't support itself, it will collapse in on itself too easily, or the water table is too close to the surface of the ground where you can't dig down

very far before you get water. There are a lot of mausoleums in New Orleans, yeah, which also and it's not just the water table there, it's also the propensity for flooding that is a big concern. Yeah. New Orleans cemeteries are amazing. Uh, that was one of my favorite things to do. Oddly, I'm not a Michabra person in general, but but the cemeteries are gothic and gorgeous and creepy.

And awesome all at the same time. And there's so amazing stonework in some of these these cemeteries in New Orleans, and it's all above ground because they couldn't dig down to to bury their dead. So and tuman is definitely one of those things that is common in certain parts of the country and the world. But when we get to masoleums, the the interesting thing there is that you

can be more conservative with your space. That's one of the solutions to this problem of having a lot of open space that you would have to dedicate to a cemetery um. They can hold lots of unrelated people. It's kind of like a cemetery, but in almost like a file cabinet kind of way. Yeah. Yeah, and that doesn't make them make them any less lovely than cemeteries can be.

I've I've had the opportunity to visit a number of really beautiful, uh like large structure mausoleums and yeah, like in Florida, mostly where at sea above re groundwater issue, ground water table, the whole, the whole way these things come about. They're very expend of initially, but but that expense can easily be distributed amongst the population and then individually.

The process of having someone interred in a mazoleum can be much cheaper than traditional burial depending upon the situation UM, and they can be very lovely, respectful places. It's not like it's, you know, a terrible alternative. UM. It also depends upon how you view what should happen to someone after they pass away. That also leads us to cremation, which is the other major way of of of saying goodbye to someone after they've passed on, and is one

that is mandated by certain religions as well. So before cremation, obviously, what you would want to do is remove anything that would not incinerate properly. Uh, anything artificial like an artificial heart or prosthetic um. Sometimes even things like hip replacements things like that can be removed moved so that you can then place the body in a flammable coffin and put it into the incineration chamber. Very high powered flame

is used to incinerate the body. Usually takes between two to three hours, depending upon the size of the body that we're talking about. UM. The ashes you get back are really sort of the calcified, crumbled bones that are

left all the other tissues are essentially vaporized in this process. Um, but fire pretty much breaks down everything I wasn't when I was reading our We have an article at how stuff Works about how cremation works that goes into much greater detail about what happens to each type of tissue throughout the cremation process. And as I read it, I thought, that's not necessary for us to include in this for

it to be informative. But if you want to learn more, I highly recommend reading how Cremation Works at how stuff works dot com because it will it will totally inform you. Yeah. Now, you mentioned about the cremains people receive or they're often referred to as ashes, but of course they're not the like we're saying. They're not the ashes of the soft

tissues of your body there the ground up bones. Yeah, I think that's a lot of people don't know your bones calcify and they essentially just crumble in the process of this of this cremation um. And so that's what you would receive in the cremins. They must be raked out in the end, I believe. So. Uh, it's really, by the way tricky to estimate what's the carbon footprint of this process. So obviously you're talking about using a lot of energy to burn a body. Uh, that's going

to have some sort of carbon footprint. But a lot of different factors will take part here. We're talking about again the size of the body. It's a larger body, it's gonna take longer, so it's gonna require more energy. It's also the time of day. Apparently I didn't know this, but apparently the time of day also depends on determines how big a carbon footprint is generated. Um and whether or not. Uh the crematorium is doing this on a

case by case basis or in batches essentially. Uh So a lot of those factors are making impossible for us to really say what the carbon footprint is except to say there is a carbon footprint here. Uh so you are you know, is is not a carbon negative or carbon neutral kind of approach to disposing of a body? Well in case you are being environmentally conscious when you're trying to do that, yeah, which I mean, you know is especially especially in these are modern times, that is

absolutely a concern. Uh And and all of these practices do have these environmental impacts and and right you know, like like a lot of people are living a lot longer, and that's wonderful. But we but we do have to

take this kind of stuff into consideration. Yeah, no, it's it's and I think on an individual basis, it's a lot easier to have this conversation than rather talk about large groups of people, because then when you talking about large groups of people, it sounds like you're mandating something, and we certainly, of course never do that. It's so deeply per sal Yeah, I mean, the grieving process is

incredibly personal. But there are some interesting alternatives that have emerged over the past few years for people who want to look into something else for you know, to happen to their body after they pass on, so that it falls in line with their individual philosophies. And one of those that's growing in popularity is the natural burial concept. The funny thing about this is there's really not that much to it. Yeah, it's actually about as basic as

it gets. So you're essentially getting rid of a lot of the stuff that's involved in your traditional US burial system by by formaldehyd Yep. You don't use embombing fluid by vault ye. You use a very simple biodegradable coffin made out of or no coffin at all, or no coffin at all, maybe just like a shroud or some kind of cloth. Yeah, I think I think most people

look at at least some form of coffin. There's probably a psychological element to that that I am not qualified to speak on, but uh, the ones I've seen have

largely been biodegradable materials, sustainable materials as well. That's another important part of it, because part of the philosophy of the natural burial is to reduce the environmental impact of your passing as much as possible, and so you want the body to be able to deteriorate naturally, and that includes the whatever coffin or other like wrapping or whatever

is around you as well. So I've actually seen some really interesting solutions to this, a lot of interesting coffins, like some that are gorgeous in their simplicity made out of stuff. I've seen cardboard coffins, so those would degrade pretty quickly. Um. I've seen bamboo and banana leaf coffins, ritan coffin, sea grass, lots of these sort of natural materials and they look really nice. I mean, there It's almost like a very large basket in many of these cases,

but they look very nice. Uh. And then there's also the Eco pod, which sadly right now is no longer available. It's at least temporarily unavailable. I guess the the operations in the UK uh in neerd in some sort of financial difficulty or something. I know that the company hopes to open up h handmade operational system in the North America continent somewhere, but I don't know what the status

is on that. But the eco pods were really cool, made from recycled newspaper, and they have a very interesting shape to them. The very outside was actually coated with a different type of paper, so it has a very kind of classy look to it doesn't quite look like a coffin. It has as almost a sort of a space age type of shape. You really have to look at a picture at one of these things to kind

of get an idea. But I like this idea because if I went this route, I could ask that they just coat my entire coffin with the Braves win a j C front page from when the Braves won the World Series. I would have been amazing. Uh. But you know that's not necessarily what I'm planning on doing. And also eco pod is not currently available. And if you're interested in having a open, open casket memorial service or anything like that, there are options for using dry ice

to preserve the body rather than embalming fluid. Right dry ice or refrigeration, both of which are much more environmentally friendly than using embalming fluid and won't won't halt the or or slow down the decomposition process once you're buried. So for this to work, you also have to have a place to bury people. You can't just bury him anywhere. It's frowned upon it anyway. Yes, no, I mean you can. Disposal of corpses is a highly regulated thing and it

should be. Yeah, there's a lot for lots of different reasons it should be. But in the United States there are there are several natural burial grounds. In the UK there are more than two hundred, so the UK it's been embraced much faster than here in the United States. They tend to be in areas that are, you know, these natural landscapes. A lot of them are in forests, and typically you might just use something as simple as a rock or a a native tree as a marker

for that that burial site, so again very green. Some of the places actually use GPS core and it's to mark the site, so you would use your GPS system to find a particular spot and that would be where you're, you know, the person you cared about was buried. I kind of like that idea too, the idea of not leaving any any physical thing there so that it's as untouched a landscape as you can possibly make it. Um And there are a couple of different very aitions on this.

Their hybrid burial grounds that's where you can find both the traditional burials and the um the natural burials, all in one general region, one general one cemetery. Essentially, there's natural burial grounds which are kind of the medium. That's where they practice land stewardship and restoration planning, and they can only use that land as a green cemetery. It

cannot be used for any other purpose. And then you have conservation burial grounds that go a step further where there their conservation strategy goes to the point where they're actually looking at ways to protect and restore local wildlife and habitats as well as act as a natural burial ground, And uh, I really like this idea a lot, like if if I didn't have my other plan in place, as sinister as it is, then I would probably go

with this approach. And as a way of not I'll tell you what my sinister joke plan is at the end. But the the there's an actual group called the Green Burial Council that has formed to try and create standards for this, because clearly you want to follow very careful protocols to make sure that you're being respectful both of the land and of the people. It's very important. And they also want to make sure that no one gets away with calling their operation a natural cemetery or green

cemetery while practicing things that are against the philosophy. So greenwashing is what we're talking about this, and greenwashing is a problem in all different industries where they're claiming to be where it's a marketing term rather than an actual practice. Yes, yeah, where you're like, hey, we can get more consumers if they think we're being very environmentally conscious, So let's call

this the green approach. Uh. Side note, little tangent, I'll never forget when I was I was going to attend CS one year and I got a big box in the mail UH that was related to c S. I was, I wonder what this is, and I opened it up. Inside the big box was a long smaller box, but it was a long box. I opened that up and inside it were a pair of double A batteries that

were called green double a's. And I thought, if you are trying to create batteries that are supposed to be green, don't pack them in a long box and then pack that in an even bigger box and send it like that's ridiculous. That would be greenwashing. At least I would argue that would be green washing. So let's talk about some other UH options besides natural burial. This other one, This next one is it gets a little gooey. It certainly does. For those of you who desire to be

literally washed down the drain, you do have an option. UH. This is known as alkaline hydrolysis, and it's often used to get rid of animal carcass is and also medical conduct could average at the Mayo clinic. So this is not like a We might think of it as a future technique, not because it's something that's still being developed, but just because it hasn't been so widely adopted. Culturally speaking,

it's futuristic, so it's known by several different names. The process itself is alkaline hydrolysis, but it's also known as resummation or liquid cremation or sometimes bio cremation. And here's the basic gist of it. You put the body inside

a gigantic steel container. Uh, and this this big steel cylinder with a mixture of water and potassium hydroxide which is lie and then you heat that up to like three hundred or three fifty degrees fahrenheit under high pressure, and this liquefies all of the soft tissue, leaving only the bones behind. And then the liquefied body can simply be washed down the drain and the bones then head on to the cremulator, which is not unique to this process.

A crimulator is also used in cremation. But great name for a thing, very cromulent name. I didn't know that was the name for that thing, cremulate. I thought immediately that that had to be one of the robots from Futurama. Yeah, right, there were next to the crushing eader, right exactly. But the cremulator, well, it is sort of a crush in eader. It it turns your bones into a fine powder that can then be taken away by the family or loved

ones of the deceased and so. Uh. This process reportedly uses less energy and produces fewer airborne pollutants and carbon emissions than traditional cremation. But it is not without its opponents. It has faced some political opposition, like it's only legal in some places and not in others. I found one interesting article in June article for the Springfield News Sun in Ohio by reporter Kelly Wynn, and it was called

a controversial liquid cremation sought in Ohio. And so this was talking about how at the times some funeral homes in Ohio we're trying to adopt alkaline hydrolysis, but they were facing opposition. Um, I'll just read a little section from it. Uh, the Catholic Church is opposed to the idea, and that opposition has prompted State Representative Ron mag chairman of Government of the Government and Elections Committee, to remove language from House Bill four eighty one that would have

made alkaline hydrolysis an acceptable form of disposition. That's a great word, disposition in Ohio. Mag who is a Catholic, said he felt uncomfortable about the process and spoke to a Catholic church leader. The process didn't seem respectful to me, and that's why I contacted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to get their opinion. Mag said they objected to that type

of disposal of the body. So there are obviously some cultural factors at play here with with the acceptance of new methods of dealing with the body, and and that's to be expected, I think, because how we deal with our dead is something that's very emotionally charged for people. Yeah, I think I think there's a lot of association between

decomposition and corruption. I think there's this idea that decomposition is somehow representative of corruption of the body, and any process that would speed that up, I think would automatically create kind of a bulk response with people who who sort of made that association. And it's I'm not saying that it's an uh one that should anyone should feel badly about me. Again, this is very personal sort of thing. Um Personally, this this approach I thought sounded very interesting

to me. I don't know how I would feel knowing that someone I loved had chosen to go through this process. I like, intellectually, rationally, I'm perfectly fine with it. I don't know how I would react emotionally if I were actually in the position where I knew someone I loved was going to be uh dissolved in this way. It

might that might make me bulk at it. I don't know, Yeah, I mean, I can't thinking about it really see that there's anything less respectful about this than about burning people with a flame, or about pumping them through full of formaldehide and burying them in a box, other than the fact that we just have the cultural inertia of those other methods that you know, And again, I don't think it's necessarily a rational thing. It's purely emotional. But you know,

cultural mores and social moras, that sort of thing. They have a big impact on our personalities, sometimes larger than we expect. Uh And so you know, but that that's that's a really interesting way. What if I wanted to, I don't know, turn myself into an icicle then explode

into a million pieces. Their their method for that, yep, and this one, I'm I had never heard of it before we started composing these notes, and I'm really excited about this one that sounds like like if you'll forgive my like Mr Freeze style pun he the coolest way to go, It is the coolest. You're welcome, Joel Schumacher. He directed that one. I know, no, I know, I know, chill out, Jonathan um So. So this is called promission, and essentially this is freezing shattering and then freeze drying

your body into a powder that can be buried. So so after death, you take the body and you freeze it. You submerge it in liquid nitrogen to deep sub zero temperatures, and this makes it brittle and crystalline. So once the body is frozen solid in this crystalline state, it is subjected to mechanical vibration. You sort of put it in a rock polisher, just a chamber that vibrates high frequency yes, and this shatters the frozen remains and eventually transforms them

into a fine gravel or sandy consistency. And then you use a vacuum chamber to sort of boil the moisture out of the resulting powder. And this is essentially what the process of freeze drying is. So you freeze dry it, and then you remove any metal fillings, implants, pros theses from the powder, and then what's left behind can be buried in a shallow grave. And in this and we often say buried in a shallow grave is kind of like a like sneak. You know, you kill somebody and

bury them in a shallow grave. But in this case it's a positive thing because the body is not recognizable as a body, but it can still contribute back to the ecosystem and nourish the soil. I didn't mean to snicker, except for the fact that she said we often say it, and and and just the way you're putting it, like yeah, daily basis, I'm talking about shallow every Wednesday. So so is anyone actually doing this? Is this is this hypothetical? Yes, right now it is. It is a proposal rather than

a real process. As far as I know, this hasn't been done to any people um or if it has, I hadn't. I can't. I couldn't find evidence of it. But it's been promoted by the Swedish company called pro Messa, which was founded by a biologist named and I'm afraid I'm gonna mispronounce her last name, but I'll do my best. Your name is Susanne why a Massac and I might add the why are uk ran a cool piece on her and on promission a couple of years ago called

freeze drying the dead could help save the planet. Uh. And one of the things that I liked about this article was that it also uncovered this interesting turf war between this pro promission faction in Sweden and then a pro cremation faction who insisted at the time that promission was was never gonna work and it would just never come to market. Um. But anyway, she gave a quote to them in this article where she said, we don't

see the dead body is the final end. Well treated, the body will support something new, life will continue, and that is going to create a totally new relation to death and and dying of the body. It also makes it possible to start talking about death. And I like her approach here because she's essentially she's proposing a technology. Now I think it has been it's pretty well accepted that except among its critics in the cremation community, this

would work. Um, but it's not being done yet. It's weird to think of a cremation community Uh, yeah, I think in many ways it's similar to the idea of the natural burial, this idea of returning the body to the earth to become part of it again, the circle of life. I was going to say that too, so I'm glad you beat me to it. Yes, exactly. Uh.

Similar to that is the Eternal Reefs idea. Now, this is a company that's actually based out of here in Georgia, um and their idea is to take the cremains from someone so you God, So it's not an alternative decremation, not alternative decremation. It's actually cremation is part of this.

But you would bring the cremains to eternal reefs and they would use the cremains to uh, to mix with concrete actually to create artificial reefs or marine life and then put those offshore to replace some of the natural reefs that have been destroyed over the course of the last century. And uh really in this case, again, it's since it's not an alternative to cremation or anything, you might wonder, well, what's the deal are these artificial reefs? Only?

Do they only work if you put human cremains in them? No, the idea here is that you're helping fund this process. You you are returning. Like from a philosophical standpoint, you could think, I'm helping give life to other creatures by giving them a place to to inhabit. It's it's poetic and also right. And instead of potentially doing harm to an environment, you're you're you're doing good with your fun costs exactly. So it's it's really a way of giving back to the earth by paying in as part of

your your funeral fees to have this happen. So uh, I like the idea, although again it's not like it's an alternative to to cremation. It actually is just another step. So instead of storing the remain cremains and like an urn or something, we're putting them in a mile's lamb, you would make them as part of a marine habitat. Uh. Of course, another process that we should talk about is one in which you more definitely preserved the body. Yeah,

like like like crazy preservation. We're talking plastination, which was developed a nineteen This episode full of great words, yea, So plastination, well, I mean, you've got to come up with some pretty clever words to deal with with death. So people don't think about, you know, dying. But plastination is a process developed in nineteen seventy seven by Gunther von Hoggins who was looking at a way of preserving body parts indefinitely. And it involves replacing the water and

fat in a body with certain types of plastic. And you can use different types of plastic and the different types will create different effects. And the process has four steps. I'm not going to go into detail on each of the steps, but if you want to know what they're called, it's fixation, dehydration, forced impregnation in a vacuum, and hardening. Yeah. So it's a relatively illusionary all on their own. Yeah, you don't really need a whole lot of explanation to

really get it into what that is all about. So, like I said, use different types of plastics for different effects. Some of them are more flexible, some of them hardened to a point where you could actually polish the body part that you have. Uh plastinated. Often used for for medical purposes, like if you wanted to do an anatomy class and you needed to show slices of the body so that medical students could identify where oregons were. That

sort of thing. That's a very important part. Of course, it's very useful and and von Hogen's developed this specifically for the medical community so that doctors and scientists would have reliable models to look at that could last, you know, indefinitely. Uh. Of course we've seen it used beyond that particular application, and I'll get more into that in just a second. So you might donate your body to plascination if you specifically wanted your body to be used in the advancement

of science. But there is some controversy around this, uh, largely around then the concept of consent. Uh. So plascination is probably most famously associated with the Body Worlds exhibits, which are they originated in Japan and have traveled the world multiple times, and there have been several cases of people accusing Body Worlds of using bodies that came from people who did not concer sent for their bodies to

be used in this way. Now, supposedly there's a list thousands of names long of people willing to donate their bodies to plascination for this specific use, but there have been at least some cases where there have been accusations that some of the bodies we came from Chinese prisoners who had been executed. That's a big problem. Uh some from uh Russian sources, where again it maybe that the case was that the people whose bodies were on display never gave their consent for it to be used in

that way. Now, of course, body worlds said that they are very much concerned with this. They don't ever want to use any body that wasn't associated with consent. And there's been a lot of lawmakers who have said, if it comes down to it, we need to be able to say, can you show us the death certificate, the signed consent, Yeah, to prove that person or at least

the family. So that's where that controversy is. Um that being said, I think that plastination itself, it serves very valuable purpose again in that in that medical application of teaching, I think it's incredibly valuable. So let's talk a little

bit about the future of cemeteries. One of the things that Lauren mentioned earlier kind of with moles Lambs was this idea of skyscraper cemeteries, and I can't believe we didn't touch on this in our our Future of Skyscrapers, right, we talked about vertical cities, but we did not talk about vertical cities of the dead, yes, which could be

a thing. Uh. Now, we talked about how open space is a precious resource in some areas and that you know, dedicating that open space to what amounts to dead people is problematic, uh in in a lot of different communities. But one of instead of taking up a bunch of space at ground level, you did the skyscraper approach, so you had level after level after level. You could take up a relatively small amount of open space and just

build upward. It's the Morgal approach. Yes. Uh So. In two thousand thirteen, there was an architecture student named Martin McSherry who presented a concept called the vertical cemetery. And it's a really neat looking design. It's a very kind of it looks kind of like a honeycomb from the outside. It's white with all these it's almost like a lattice work. And the idea is that coffins would fit in the gaps of that lattice, and you would use a crane to actually lift a coffin up to a higher level

and slotted into the right spot. It would take up less ground space and it was specifically because there's a real land scarcity problem in Norway. So this is a this is this was seen as sort of a conceptual and yet practical solution to a real problem that is arising in Norway, and it is something that we could possibly see if people continue to choose to be buried, then this might be one of the solutions that we'll

see in the future. Mean, statistically speaking, there's a lot more dead people on the planet than there are living people. That's true. That funny how that works out. Uh. So there's there's also some other interesting ideas, some that are kind of similar to stuff we talked about before. Uh there's the Urban Death Project, which sounds like a band but it's not. Or maybe it is too, but it's also it's also an actual project that's proposing a way of dealing with the deceased. Oh yeah, it could fit

in with the concept of natural burial, yes exactly. Architect Katrina Spade talks about this, and it's a process that would involve turning a body essentially into compost. And the process involves taking the body, wrapping it in a shroud of linen, and laying that body in a bed of wood chips and sawdust. Now the body would then start to decompose and over the course of a month turn

into compost um. New bodies would be added over time, and what happens is that the at the end of that month, you would extract the soil from the bottom. There be an extraction mechanism that would allow you to harvest the soil from the bottom of this uh this this wood chip and sawdust pit. I guess pit is probably not a word that they would They would use their own in their own marketing materials, and I don't

want to think about throwing them into the pit. But at anyway, you would extract the soil from the bottom, and you could invite loved ones to come and take some of that soil home and use that in a guarden, a kind of a way of remembering the person and incorporating them back into your life in a in a symbolic way. But it's also used in like parks and stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, And there there's lots of other companies

that are working with alternative processes for similar concepts. I'm sure that you've seen some of them post posted up on your social media feeds because they've they've they're they're they're really snazzy headlines. It's you know, like like turn your body into a tree that kind of stuff. And so, you know, there's a few companies that are offering biodegradable urns and tree saplings as like a little paired unit. So you know, you plant the urn under the sapling

and your ashes help feed the tree. A more dramatic version is provided by this Italian startup company called Capsula Munda, which buries a person in this egg shaped biodegradable coffin that the corpses in a fetal position inside of it, and it could be planted under a sapling. I'm not an expert on decomposition, but you know, while I appreciate the artistry of this of this version, I suspect that something like the Urban Death Project would would be better

for the tree overall. I just worry about that particular approach. If there's terrible flooding an erosion, then you have a dead person emerging from an egg, and that would be awful. I think the cool thing about this, the Capsula Mondy proposal, is that you could end up with your skeleton entwined in the roots of a tree people. People in the future who dig you up will find the roots going through your eye holes and everything is in their states.

It's an appealing idea. In the past, trees preyed upon humans, these love crafty and trees of the century. Oh you've given me such a great idea for a short story now alright, so moving on. There's also a concept called the future cemetery. This is something out of the UK. The UK appears to be really kind of forward thinking when it comes to the treatment of the dead. It's really interesting to me. For those who want the high

tech experience, they could look into the future cemetery. It offers an interactive approach that incorporates augmented reality, audio installations and pico projection or pico if you prefer projection. A Pico projection is the They're very tiny projectors that you can fit right in your pocket. You can typically connect them to something like a phone and uh projected against the wall. Anyway. They use that for memorials in the cemetery.

So imagine recording your thoughts before you die. Obviously, that could be displayed to someone using a smart phone apple looking at your grave site like hologram style. Even like it would be kind of cool. I would imagine, like, think about something you would just want to impart to future generations, even if it's just, hey, be cool to each other. You want to be like do a little Waynes World thing, like or not Wayns World, the Bill and Ted thing, be excellent to each other type deal.

It's just kind of a neat idea. Or if you want to be cranky, you could be get off my lawn whatever you want. And then the person holds up the smartphone where they're looking at your grave site, you pop up and you say the thing. I love that idea nicely for multiple reasons. Um, this particular cemetery is actually located at Arnos Veil Cemetery in the UK, so it's just one part of their cemetery. It's kind of a proof of concept ever changing project to like they're

always incorporating new stuff into it. And uh, I really like that idea. But let's say that you set your sights higher than that, much higher up into orbit. But since there is no up in space, you could be setting your sites much or or or you could be saying your sites but direction has no meaning at any rate. This is an option that is, for people who are less interested in minimizing their carbon footprint. We're talking about space burial. Uh. I feel like that's something that's kind

of in name only, if you know what I mean. Well, I mean it's not really a burial per se by by the technical definition of the word. Well, okay, So, so there are a few companies out there that will send like a gram or so of your cremains up into space. Um. And this has been made possible by commercial and consumer space travel becoming more affordable and common. Um. So, you know, you can you can take like a two minute suborbital flight, you can take a full orbital flight.

You can hit your ride on a cube SAT that will lose orbit and burn up during re entry a couple of years later. You can crash into the Moon, or you can leave Earth's orbit entirely. And these services range in costs from about a thousand bucks to over twelve thousand, depending on how far out you want to go. Yeah. Someone I know, no is probably too strong a word. Someone I met did this. James Dowon also known as

Scotty from Star Trek, right, Jean Roddenberry did it? Timothy Leary? Yeah, uh yeah, so there there's plenty of precedents for that. So this kind of brings us to the conclusion. I thought I would end by talking about what I plan on doing once I have shoveled off this mortal coil go ahead. So the joke answer, which I would never really do, but I like to joke about it, is that I have a little bit of a reputation for

occasionally irritating my wife. And so I said, what would be a way that I could continue to do that even after I'm dead? And I thought, what would what if I set aside a certain amount of money I had myself cremated, and that money goes to a person whose only job is to come into my house and hide my cremains in a different location each day, and before my wife is allowed to go to bed, she has to find me, and that way I can continue to irritate her even after I'm dead. That's very strange.

I don't deny it, but for some reason it fills me with glee. Not that I would expect my wife to even entertains, yeah, I'm going to bed, but actually she'd be like, I'm not allowing someone into my house, which is a perfectly valid response. But no, what I really think I'm going to do. Is I really think I'm going to leave my my body to science. I think we donate my body to science. I have not filled up official paperwork which I really need to dose.

I don't wonder if that means that you may eventually be subject to alkaline hydrolysis. If so, so be it. I honestly, first of all, I'm going to be beyond carrying at that point, so I don't have a personal issue that. Obviously it would be something I would have to talk with my my wife, because I do respect what she wants as well, and obviously it will be more for her benefit assuming I predecease my wife, which I certainly hope that's the case, because I can't bear

the thought of the alternative. But yeah, I would certainly be something I would talk with her about first. But personally that that's like my first choice because I like the idea of continuing to contribute in some small way to educating future generations. Consider that to be part of what I do here. Like it's a lot of fun, but I enjoy the idea. I get satisfaction the thought that we help educate people, um, not just entertain them, but teach them. And to do that after I'm alive,

you know, once I've gone and passed away. Uh really just feeds back into that philosophy. So that's kind of why I look toward it. If I didn't do that, I think the natural burial is the way I would want to go. It was really appealing to me, uh very much. So like before I heard about natural burials, I was I was leaning much more toward cremation because I didn't want to take up space. I'm very I'm already very aware of too much taking up too much

space when I'm in areas. I'm like, I'm constantly apologizing. I don't want to feel like that after I'm dead. Well, yeah, we we've spent our whole lives extracting energy resources from the life all around us in our environment. It seems only fair that we should allow them to turn around

and do the same thing back to us. Yeah. So uh yeah, that's that I just thought would conclude with that, And you also got some insight into my twisted sense of humor with what I if if all things were were according to my my design, do you do do you have plans to that you would like to share with the audience. I guess not in particular, except I've had the same thought. Really, I mean, I like the idea.

I don't have particular attachment to the use of a dead body after the person is dead, and so I think it would be if if it can be made use of for medical reasons or for medical research, any kind of scientific research. I think that's a good thing to do. Yeah. Absolutely, Yes, I agree with you guys. Although I'm pretty excited about this. This freezing and shuttering. Sweet, that's pretty rad Like if if if I can't help science, then I would like to be frozen in shatter. That's

that's fair. It's pretty dramatic, that would be. I think that'd be you know, that's a dramatic way to go. Yeah. I find a lot of these alternatives very la. You need to help defeat that cremation lobby that's keeping it down. Yeah, yeah, ice rather than fire. And yes, somewhere somewhere someone can can can put up a memorial or tombstone with the Robert Frost poem on it. It'll be great. Yeah, that's the only thing, Like I think, would I want any

physical Marker and Uh. At this point, I think I've done enough that's on the Internet that I feel that would be It's yeah, that's enough for me. The question is again for for those who love me, if they want to place to associate uh, then that would be more for them than obviously for me. Uh. Otherwise, I'm fine with with not leaving anything else, just saying, you know,

here's a guy who existed. Uh. You know, I have no romantic notion about that, although it wouldn't mean that I would deny someone the opportunity to do what I did to Thomas Hardy's great. All right, On that note, I'm going to wrap this up. Guys. If you enjoyed this episode of forward thinking, let us know. If you have questions, send them in. If you want to know

what I did to Thomas Hardy, I'll tell you. But you can just send us a message our email addresses FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter. At Twitter we are FW thinking. Just search up thinking in Facebook. We'll pop right up. You can leave us a message and we'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, I visit forward thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,