I wonder if they could be recycled? Not joking. Those hip replacement parts are incredibly expensive; I'm sure there are folks who are in need and could use a cheaper option.
In the US, if possible, my heart valve will be cut out of my cadaver and sent back to the manufacturer for analysis. The devices from my body, that have been replaced over time, were tested until failure. The FDA is very interested in performance metrics of implanted devices. The materials are not recycled in the US afaik.
I was told by an elderly foreign gentleman that he made his living by removing such things from bodies before burial or cremation. He said that the metals in teeth were most of his business.
> Cremation–in which a body is burned into ash—is an energy suck and emits damaging pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
> a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil
I wonder how much energy it takes to complete the composting process and how they can ensure that the electricity needed (even if less than cremation) is generated by sustainable methods.
I'm sure someone can calculate it, but it wouldn't be much. It'd be an electric motor running slow with relatively light weight (<300lbs). Likely less than 10kWh for the entire process.
As for sustainability, Wouldn't be hard to power the whole thing with a solar farm and batteries. That said, oregon is part of a set of states which draw a very large portion of their power from hydro.
Turning a compost pile takes very little energy. So little in fact that a human can do it with one hand in a minute. Leave the container in the sun for heat, and turn it on an axle. In addition it's only once a day at most.
Heat in the winter would be less than the amount used for those electric blankets. In the summer you could almost power the composter with a car battery.
Cremation takes a about 40 kilowatt hours of electricity or fuel. The process usually requires very expensive furnaces that can get hot enough. In addition it requires special permits and there are a lot of regulations and zoning limitations.
However, 40 kwh isn't that much compared to steel and concrete production. Especially since the per capita is literally 40kwh. Most people use more than that to brush their teeth. The real advantage (of composting) is that it makes a cheaper alternative for families of deceased.
There are anerobic composting methods that are even more passive then what is described in the article.
For example, in Bokashi composting you innoculate your organic matter with a blend of anerobic microbes (primarily Lacto Bacillus) store in anerobic conditions for a few weeks. When you empty the bucket it doesn't look especially decomposed but it smells sweet and pickled. You can then bury it in your yard and it rapidly decomposes into soil.
This method can safely decompose meat, dairy, and all sorts of materials you wouldn't ordinarily consider safe for at home aerobic composting. I imagine it would be an ideal system for a compost burial process so long as the family is okay with the idea of fermenting their loved ones..
Why can't people just opt to be buried without embalming or a casket? Sounds like a nice way to go buried whole and maybe with some sort of tree seed that grows over where you are laid.
Not going to lie on a personal level, the composting process sounds terrible.
I think there is the option (at least in the UK [1]) to be buried in a coffin which is quickly biodegradable, thereby speeding up the recycling process.
Sadly I know this because a young person that committed suicide opted for such a burial. I imagine the older generations are more concerned with tradition and religion.
Personally I'd opt for a Mongolian style sky burial. They just take you out onto a mountainside, cut you up a little bit, and the carrion birds and other animals come to eat you up. Seems like the quickest way to return your elements to the earth.
Hey dang, I don't actually understand what the above poster did wrong or why they were downvoted so heavily or why you felt the need to personally reprimand them.
Not saying you or anyone else is wrong for doing so, but I feel like something must be going over my head. Can you enlighten me?
I post that particular moderation line a lot in a very specific kind of context, which this felt like an example of to me - but I didn't mean it to be a big deal, nor to come down hard on you. I'm sorry if it felt that way!
Fair enough. I personally found it a macabre and funny yet unoffensive little quip - something to bring a bit of harmless levity to a fairly sober context. It made me chuckle anyway.
That's usually how Muslims do it. Though we usually use very simple wooden caskets to ease transportation and handling . We usually also bury the corpse 24h or less after death, since we traditionally couldn't preserve it ( though refrigeration made that possible without embalming)
That's interesting, I didn't know we had that in common. Islam takes a lot from Judaism so I guess it shouldn't be surprising. If I had to guess about why it needs to be so fast though, it is probably not a good idea to not bury someone very very quickly in the middle east. As for the very simple caskets, in Islam it is because we are supposed to be all equal in death so going with expensive tombstones or caskets would be very frowned upon. That's why a Muslim cemetery is usually very "minimalistic" and the tombstones very simple.
I'd add (because it's not obvious from what you said) that the gasket does not go into the tomb. The corpse goes enveloped in white gaze. And before the transportation the corpse is cleaned with water and perfumed with safran.
Enbalming isn't universal; AFAIK it's forbidden, or at least discouraged, in Judaism and Islam, say. Coffins also aren't universal (but can be made biodegradable, anyway)
Human remains can be somewhat toxic (particularly to humans).
Human remains are a breeding ground for disease that specializes in breaking down humans. Now imagine that diseased juice getting into the local water system.
It's a myth that human remains are toxic. A human body is only as toxic as the living human that it once was. Which is to say, avoid getting blood and feces on your mucous membranes and you're not at any elevated risk.
With regard to drinking water, here's what the CDC advises with regard to whether people should be concerned with a natural abundance of un-preserved corpses in the wake of a natural disaster:
"Bacteria and viruses from human remains in flood water are a minor part of the overall contamination that can include uncontrolled sewerage, a variety of soil and water organisms, and household and industrial chemicals. There are no additional practices or precautions for flood water related to human remains, beyond what is normally required for safe food and drinking water, standard hygiene and first aid."
In general their broader advice is that you don't need to worry about any sort of disease outbreak happening if there are un-preserved corpses lying around (a position with which the WHO concurs).
We should be more concerned with formaldehyde leaching out of preserved corpses than from any chemical byproduct of human decomposition.
> A 68 kg (150 lbs) body which contains 65% water will require 100 MJ of thermal energy before any combustion will take place. 100 MJ is approximately equivalent to 3 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 liters of fuel oil (0.8 US gallons). Additional energy is necessary to make up for the heat capacity ("preheating") of the furnace, fuel burned for emissions control, and heat losses through the insulation and in the flue gases.
> As a result, crematories are most often heated by burners fueled by natural gas. LPG (propane/butane) or fuel oil may be used where natural gas is not available. These burners can range in power from 150 to 400 kilowatts (0.51 to 1.4 million British thermal units per hour).
>Crematories heated by electricity also exist in India, where electric heating elements bring about cremation without the direct application of flame to the body.
>Coal, coke, and wood were used in the past, heating the chambers from below (like a cooking pot). This resulted in an indirect heat and prevented mixing of ash from the fuel with ash from the body. The term retort when applied to cremation furnaces originally referred to this design.
More eco-friendly option would be to use pellet or electricity.
Since prions are found abundantly in the head, just bury or lock away the skulls and treat them like nuclear waste. Compost or cremate the rest of the body.
This is a solved problem! My startup is building modern, cutting-edge catacombs where we're redefining what it means to have a huge, underground maze full of decomposing human heads.
It really is ripe for disruption. Will need significant upfront capital infusions, though, and really the ultimate play is on the cloud or possibly blockchain which has some bootstrapping issues. Watching this space closely.
Sounds like a civilized thing to do. Just hack off the head and store it in some permanent disposal site. Then a few centuries later our ancestors will have to move the nuclear waste because of some leakage and will dig up the skulls.
Clearly a savage had lived there amongst the nuclear barrels. Its mind altered by the radiation, chopping off those poor worker heads.
If it wasn't clear: /s
And yes prions might be dangerous but what you propose seems out of proportion.
Now hold on, I think you're on to something. We still haven't solved how to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to our descendants several millenia from now. What better warning than thousands and thousands of skulls piled around the hazmat?
It's more gallons than I'll probably use in my lifetime - I've driven maybe five miles in total when debating going for a drivers test and I'm now in my mid-thirties.
if you only count the amount you have driven in the drivers seat sure, but you have used far far more. You were inevitably a passenger be it in a car, bus train, plane, ship, etc... then there is the fuel used to transport everything you have ever bought. Starting with raw material extraction involving heavy machinery and then at each point on from there in transit between factories and warehouses until it ends up as a finished product at the store or delivered to your door. every step involved a internal combustion engine burning hydrocarbons.
Prions are scary, but the fact that prions have presumably existed for just as long as life has existed on Earth, there must be something that keeps prions from replicating out of control and causing mass death and extinctions.
It could be, because cultures that were using human bodies, instead of burning or burying them, went extinct.
> Prehistory of endocannibalism controversy
Whether or not endocannibalism was commonplace through much of human prehistory remains controversial.
A team led by Michael Alpers, a lifelong investigator of kuru,[14] found genes that protect against similar prion diseases were widespread, suggesting that such endocannibalism could have once been common around the world.[15][16]
A genetic study with a range of authors published by the University College London in 2009 declared evidence of a "powerful episode" of natural selection in recent humans. This evidence is found in the 127V polymorphism, a mutation which protects against the kuru disease. In simpler terms, it would appear the kuru disease has affected all humans to the extent we have a specialised immune response to it.[17] However, a study drawing from hundreds of resources in 2013 claims further that 127V derives from an ancient and wide spread cannibalistic practice, not related to kuru specifically, but "kuru-like epidemics" which appeared around the time of the extinction of the neanderthals who co-existed with humans. This allows the suggestion that cannibalistic practises may have caused diseases which killed the neanderthals, but not the humans because of the 127V resistance gene.[18]
>The earliest known reference to a requirement for a six-foot burial occurred in 1665 during the Great Plague of London. John Lawrence, the Lord Mayor of London,[13] ordered that the bodies of plague victims "...shall be at least six foot deep." The city officials apparently believed this would inhibit the spread of the disease, not realising that the true vector was fleas living on rats in the streets.
Set up one of those thermal solar power plants that are like a sea of mirrors and a tower with a boiler on top, then raise the body in a cage on a winch to the top.
In Iain M. Banks' Culture series, customarily, a ship Mind displaces (teleports) your body to the center of the nearest star on death. That way your atoms contribute to the star and will eventually rise to the surface and spread through the universe. Also takes care of prion diseases.
I was of the impression that Prions are notoriously impervious to heat. They were said to withstand typical disinfecting protocols using an autoclave (250°F for 15-20min). Quick source:
> To destroy a prion it must be denatured to the point that it can no longer cause normal proteins to misfold. Sustained heat for several hours at extremely high temperatures (900°F and above) will reliably destroy a prion.
Autoclaves are meant to destroy living material while preserving what's being sanitized, while cremation intends to destroy everything and preserve nothing. For that reason, there's a difference in both temperature and exposure times.
I'd be just as happy to know i was being disposed of via a magma flow or something. I really don't care whats done with my body after i'm done with it... just as long as its disposal isn't going to do further damage to the world or its inhabitants...
I always remember Cardinal Newman instructing for a load of compost to be dumped on top of his coffin to prevent there being anything to dig up and sanctify. They still tried a hundred years later but all they found was a brass plaque and earth...
An active compost pile can consume an animal carcass of any size, bones and all, in the 60-90 days. This is the way nature recycles resources and she has gotten very good at it over the eons.
> Newman's beatification was still dragging on fitfully when Pope Benedict fast-tracked him two years ago. On a wet October day in 2008, an assortment of priests and grave-diggers arrived at the cemetery in Rednal, armed with shovels and a mechanical digger. They planned to transfer Newman's remains to a tomb back at his church in Birmingham. Nothing was found except the brass name-plate and a few bits of rotten wood. A solution to the mystery was discovered in the archives of the Birmingham Post. A journalist at the burial reported that, on Newman’s orders, the grave was filled with compost to hasten decomposition. His corpse (someone described him in great age as toothless and shrivelled like "a shrimp") had apparently dissolved into the soil. He had cheated the relic hunters.
This makes so much sense, I prefer that my body can be used to grow plants/trees and whatever vegetals rather than getting putrefied in a coffin, and using land space for no reason
Aerobic bacteria in composters can eat bone, egg shells, and meat pretty well. If you are going to do it in a garden though you will want something to contain the smell and prevent breeding of pests.
I want to get dropped into an active volcano when I go. The heat is already there so no need for a furnace or manufacturing of a coffin. I guess the helicopter ride would be the greatest emitter.
Recompose, the country’s first human composting funeral home does it like this: a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil that can be delivered back to the family or used for planting.
It's like what the mafia used to do to dissolve bodies
This description seems unpleasant, especially the hook part. I expect they need some better description that doesn’t involve people picturing themself or their loved ones being torn up by a hook.
I didn’t even consider that as a possible interpretation. I thought of the hook as a crank to turn the cylinder. But now you have me questioning which is correct?
That's pretty interesting. Does leave me with a different opinion on the service. Not sure if good/bad, just different.
Edit: after a few minutes of thought, I definitely like this less. Imagining my body like a pair of shoes banging around in the dryer or torn to shreds is not a great thought. In a way it's irrational. I don't think of cremation as my body in an inferno even thought that's what it is. I've always liked the idea of just having myself tossed in a hole and a tree planted over me. I've done this with my late dogs and it's always a joy to revisit the tree even after (especially after) years past. Gives me a feeling they are there still. It's odd but such is life, and death.
I don't think the bodies will mind. I know mine won't when I'm gone. Sure some particularly squeemish family members might have an issue with it but as long as it's in the deceased's will, and they entrusted the right person as executor of estate, it shouldn't be a problem.
If it's legal by the time my clock is up I'd like a "burial" where they just throw my body into a forest and let nature take its course, but that one's probably gonna take a lot longer to be legal because of the worry that like, a coyote will drag an arm or something into a populated area. Previously my plan was to have my ashes pressed into a vinyl record of my music and distributed among friends and family but now this is a pretty appealing prospect.
But I suspect that if people knew what "embalming" means, they'd be squeamish about that as well.
...
I was present for a cremation sale where the funeral director explained that they fire the body, then collect any metals (titanium screws etc) and sell them for scrap.
This bothered me, but I can't say (still to this day) whether it was because it seemed way too graphic for the average bereaved family member, or if I was just offended that the crematorium thought it was OK to sell other peoples' property.
I doubt this helps put your concerns to rest, but some composting toilets use a manually cranked stirrer to mix the fecal matter with the existing compost materials.
For anyone disturbed by the thought of a body being turned with a hook, consider who that person is since they died.
My perspective is that they’re a memory in whoever remembers. They have lasting impacts to varying degrees. Now they are a collection of elements, much of which supports many other living things. I care that the body is processed in a way towards most ecological reciprocity, whatever that may be for that region of the world.
Treating our dead with respect is probably one of the oldest signs of human culture. People care a lot about the bodies of their deceased loved ones. See Antigone by Sophocles. You're welcome to your views, but most people have strong, deeply felt emotions and opinions on how dead bodies should be properly handled.
Things like this, though, show that those attitudes are changing. Not rapidly, and certainly not in a majority of people, but they are indeed changing.
If this seems disrespectful, then I encourage you to look into what the embalming process actually entails, as (IMO) it's worse: https://youtu.be/B5-NtLmKUDE?t=201
I respect the bodies, and the land, water, air, and other bodies that made them, which is why I prefer my remnants be digested by microbes with minimal resource-cost so long as it is safe enough for the land. We’re so spoiled with luxuries like embalming and fancy boxes. Abstraction layers may still feel like respect, but they distance us from the core of survival, which is the health of the other living things here.
How can we shift our strong, deeply-felt emotions around dead bodies?
Your phrasing is very interesting: "consider who that person is since they died." It's interesting because you refer to the dead person in the present tense, "who it is," not "who it was". Yet, in the following sentence you say "they are a collection of elements." Even when attempting to state "cold hard facts," we cannot help but exhibit our humanity, and it's a reminder why we should treat the dead with respect. In my opinion, being alive is more than just a collection of atoms and the interactions between them. And in death, while the electrons stop moving in that particular way that made us alive, that "something special" still remains in the form of their memory.
I mean, why do all this theater when there is a much better long lived and respected tradition: Burial-at-Sea. Roughly 60% of the US pop lives within a 100 miles of a seacoast.
Wrap them in something organic for presentation, a weight stone, then, go out to sea (with family along option -others may be ok with remote video) and let them slip into the ocean like sailors buried at sea.
No creepiness, no vicarious cannibalism via eating veggies nourished by uncle Vinnie or aunt Mathilda or anything.
As someone who lives in the middle of the United States, shipping my body out to the closest ocean for burial and flying family out to witness my burial doesn't seem very practical.
I don't even know if that's possible. 3 miles is a long way, and bodies are squishy and... easy to separate, relative to a rock or bullet.
The speed you would need to get that far might be high enough for the force to tear off limbs or to shred the skin. The chances of you getting a permit after you put "might rain human limbs or remains on the beach" is very low.
You'd probably have better luck with little solar-powered, GPS-guided dinghys or kayaks that can go out 3 miles, drop the body and come back.
What are the energy costs of transporting a body from inland out onto the ocean? Probably less than cremation I suppose. Still, with some slight modifications I think you could improve efficiency. Load the bodies into shipping containers, to take advantage of all that existing logistics infrastructure, then push the whole container over the side once the container ship is an appropriate distance from shore. You can even tell families that Vinnie and Mathilda have become an artificial reef.
Parts of the body will decompose at different rates, so it won't be long before parts of the body will detach from the part that is weighted down. 7,000 people in the US die every day, 2.6 million a year. Random body parts from millions upon millions of corpses quickly find their way onto beaches everywhere, to the delight of sunbathers.
So if you scale up from the relatively small numbers of people who die (and whose bodies aren't recovered) by accident or suicide near/in water, it's probably reasonable to expect a lot more of this. Maybe your idea is workable if you go far enough out that any detached remnants are grabbed by the big oceanic gyres.
I don't know about the WWII case, but in countries like the UK where it is legal to be buried at sea there are regulations about where you can perform the ceremony specifically because bodies do drift: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-guernsey-24224570
Although the article mentions that this is the first time it's happened in 25 years, note that only about a dozen people every year choose to be buried in this way: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38210497
I’m down with a “Viking funeral”. Yes, I know that the Vikings didn’t actually float their dead out to sea on perfectly good boats that were set on fire, but it’s still a cool idea.
A simple backyard compost will go through chicken bones quite well once it gets going. I'm not surprised an optimized process can take care of a whole body in a matter of weeks.
I believe that there was someone in the Mafia whose procedure was not unlike the modern lye hydrolysis methods -- heat, pressure, and a basic solution. Rendering took only hours, supposedly, an efficient method of Llupara bianca.
This is abhorrent, as if it was taken unironically out of a dystopian science fiction novel.
Decomposition is a natural process that happens to any corpse. It does not need to be optimized. That said, it does not need to be slowed down with embalming either.
It actually is used in at least one sci fi novel, although not at all dystopian, Becky Chambers 3rd wayfarer novel: Record of a spaceborn few. I read the first 3 and highly recommend them, the world (universe?) building is wonderful, and the characters are sympathetic and well written. I'm saving the next one for when I next feel down, there's only 5, don't want to finish them too soon!
Fully support this for myself, though I don't think I need my composed remains to be returned to the family. Not sure why, but that feels more grim than ashes on the mantle (though I don't feel a need for that either).
One example on the benefit of being returned to the family is that they can take you and plant a tree in you and then you grow into a tree, likely near the family, so that you can still be with them in a physical way!
there are folks who pay to convert their ashes into diamonds, maybe I'll do both 'cause y'er not the boss of me.
but seriously if someone has money for something like this how do you judge that they did not live their life fully? at least its better than taking up permanent real estate in a cemetery.
According to Dr. Elaine Ingham, "the compost tea lady", a large compost pile designed to be anaerobic can consume cow carcasses. It does take several months.
No, actually, they meant anaerobic. There's a trend nowadays where organic matter is steeped in water in a sealed container and allowed to decay without oxygen and the water is used to water plants, hence "compost tea." Maybe "compost" isn't strictly a good word for it but that's what they call it.
Beware of articles like these. They are PR pieces profiling the services of a company. And making it seem like everyone is doing it. and how it is all the rage.
> Better to spread the compost somewhere they already grow (like Oregon) and collect seasonally.
Different species of psychedelic mushrooms have been found in almost all of the contiguous United States and Hawai'i. It used to be thought that the PNW and Southeast US were the only places they grew in the US, but new native species have been discovered in the last 20 years, and some of them are actually quite common, prolific and apparently potent.
238 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadPacemakers are removed carefully, especially if they include RTGs.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/
Prosthetic implants are typically not removed.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140311-body-parts-that-...
I know someone who saved up the ones dropped or otherwise opened and not used on a cath lab. I’m not sure what he did after that.
> a corpse is placed in a cylinder with organic materials, like wood chips, plants, and straw, then heated and turned repeatedly for several weeks with a hook until it’s broken down into a nutrient-rich soil
I wonder how much energy it takes to complete the composting process and how they can ensure that the electricity needed (even if less than cremation) is generated by sustainable methods.
As for sustainability, Wouldn't be hard to power the whole thing with a solar farm and batteries. That said, oregon is part of a set of states which draw a very large portion of their power from hydro.
Heat in the winter would be less than the amount used for those electric blankets. In the summer you could almost power the composter with a car battery.
Cremation takes a about 40 kilowatt hours of electricity or fuel. The process usually requires very expensive furnaces that can get hot enough. In addition it requires special permits and there are a lot of regulations and zoning limitations.
However, 40 kwh isn't that much compared to steel and concrete production. Especially since the per capita is literally 40kwh. Most people use more than that to brush their teeth. The real advantage (of composting) is that it makes a cheaper alternative for families of deceased.
For example, in Bokashi composting you innoculate your organic matter with a blend of anerobic microbes (primarily Lacto Bacillus) store in anerobic conditions for a few weeks. When you empty the bucket it doesn't look especially decomposed but it smells sweet and pickled. You can then bury it in your yard and it rapidly decomposes into soil.
This method can safely decompose meat, dairy, and all sorts of materials you wouldn't ordinarily consider safe for at home aerobic composting. I imagine it would be an ideal system for a compost burial process so long as the family is okay with the idea of fermenting their loved ones..
Not going to lie on a personal level, the composting process sounds terrible.
[1] - https://naturalendings.co.uk/green-coffins/
https://futurism.com/living-cocoon-coffin-fungus
Sadly I know this because a young person that committed suicide opted for such a burial. I imagine the older generations are more concerned with tradition and religion.
[1] https://www.nhfuneral.org/green-burial-cemeteries-in-the-us-...
Not saying you or anyone else is wrong for doing so, but I feel like something must be going over my head. Can you enlighten me?
If that still doesn't make sense I'm happy to call it a misfire.
Zoroastrian rituals related to death are fascinating (not only because of their impact on abrahamic religions, but that's a different story)
Or a ensure a Ralphs is nearby.
Human remains are a breeding ground for disease that specializes in breaking down humans. Now imagine that diseased juice getting into the local water system.
With regard to drinking water, here's what the CDC advises with regard to whether people should be concerned with a natural abundance of un-preserved corpses in the wake of a natural disaster:
"Bacteria and viruses from human remains in flood water are a minor part of the overall contamination that can include uncontrolled sewerage, a variety of soil and water organisms, and household and industrial chemicals. There are no additional practices or precautions for flood water related to human remains, beyond what is normally required for safe food and drinking water, standard hygiene and first aid."
https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/handleremains.html
In general their broader advice is that you don't need to worry about any sort of disease outbreak happening if there are un-preserved corpses lying around (a position with which the WHO concurs).
We should be more concerned with formaldehyde leaching out of preserved corpses than from any chemical byproduct of human decomposition.
They are not diseases, but common microorganism - and they are specialized into breaking down any dead organic material.
You don't want them in the drinking water, though. But you don't want any microorganism in the drinking water.
The article mentions the amount of land that this uses. I’d imagine that’s a big part of it.
Because this is a huge waste of land.
https://begravenindenatuur.com/overzicht-natuurbegraafplaats...
> A 68 kg (150 lbs) body which contains 65% water will require 100 MJ of thermal energy before any combustion will take place. 100 MJ is approximately equivalent to 3 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 liters of fuel oil (0.8 US gallons). Additional energy is necessary to make up for the heat capacity ("preheating") of the furnace, fuel burned for emissions control, and heat losses through the insulation and in the flue gases.
> As a result, crematories are most often heated by burners fueled by natural gas. LPG (propane/butane) or fuel oil may be used where natural gas is not available. These burners can range in power from 150 to 400 kilowatts (0.51 to 1.4 million British thermal units per hour).
>Crematories heated by electricity also exist in India, where electric heating elements bring about cremation without the direct application of flame to the body.
>Coal, coke, and wood were used in the past, heating the chambers from below (like a cooking pot). This resulted in an indirect heat and prevented mixing of ash from the fuel with ash from the body. The term retort when applied to cremation furnaces originally referred to this design.
More eco-friendly option would be to use pellet or electricity.
I think it's not, but, maybe?
missed opportunity or subtlety mastery ?
Clearly a savage had lived there amongst the nuclear barrels. Its mind altered by the radiation, chopping off those poor worker heads.
If it wasn't clear: /s
And yes prions might be dangerous but what you propose seems out of proportion.
For people who drove cars.. mostly a (once-in-a-lifetime) symbolical gesture.
Compared to an estimated 130 billion wild mammals. That’s without the vast herds of herbivores that used to roam the plains of the world.
> Prehistory of endocannibalism controversy Whether or not endocannibalism was commonplace through much of human prehistory remains controversial.
A team led by Michael Alpers, a lifelong investigator of kuru,[14] found genes that protect against similar prion diseases were widespread, suggesting that such endocannibalism could have once been common around the world.[15][16]
A genetic study with a range of authors published by the University College London in 2009 declared evidence of a "powerful episode" of natural selection in recent humans. This evidence is found in the 127V polymorphism, a mutation which protects against the kuru disease. In simpler terms, it would appear the kuru disease has affected all humans to the extent we have a specialised immune response to it.[17] However, a study drawing from hundreds of resources in 2013 claims further that 127V derives from an ancient and wide spread cannibalistic practice, not related to kuru specifically, but "kuru-like epidemics" which appeared around the time of the extinction of the neanderthals who co-existed with humans. This allows the suggestion that cannibalistic practises may have caused diseases which killed the neanderthals, but not the humans because of the 127V resistance gene.[18]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannibalism
>The earliest known reference to a requirement for a six-foot burial occurred in 1665 during the Great Plague of London. John Lawrence, the Lord Mayor of London,[13] ordered that the bodies of plague victims "...shall be at least six foot deep." The city officials apparently believed this would inhibit the spread of the disease, not realising that the true vector was fleas living on rats in the streets.
Do you feel like we should roll the dice? If we roll a 6, it could be worse that the Plague and Covid combined
"Head towards the light".
I’m not sure how real of a concern this is as deer with CWD die and decompose and I’m not aware of any transmission in this way.
> To destroy a prion it must be denatured to the point that it can no longer cause normal proteins to misfold. Sustained heat for several hours at extremely high temperatures (900°F and above) will reliably destroy a prion.
https://dwr.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/what-are-prio...
I don't know the specific temperature profile of cremation, but I doubt it is sufficient.
https://www.cremationresource.org/cremation/how-is-a-body-cr...
https://www.ft.com/content/0e6f301c-baea-11df-9e1d-00144feab...
for anyone else who was curious :)
https://www.cleanairgardening.com/how-to-compost-meat/
It's like what the mafia used to do to dissolve bodies
> Over the next 30 days, naturally-occurring microbes—and a few turnings with a tool similar to a dough hook—break the body down.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93wmd5/the-first-us-funeral-...
Edit: after a few minutes of thought, I definitely like this less. Imagining my body like a pair of shoes banging around in the dryer or torn to shreds is not a great thought. In a way it's irrational. I don't think of cremation as my body in an inferno even thought that's what it is. I've always liked the idea of just having myself tossed in a hole and a tree planted over me. I've done this with my late dogs and it's always a joy to revisit the tree even after (especially after) years past. Gives me a feeling they are there still. It's odd but such is life, and death.
I'll probably get over it but I had a similar visceral reaction.
If it's legal by the time my clock is up I'd like a "burial" where they just throw my body into a forest and let nature take its course, but that one's probably gonna take a lot longer to be legal because of the worry that like, a coyote will drag an arm or something into a populated area. Previously my plan was to have my ashes pressed into a vinyl record of my music and distributed among friends and family but now this is a pretty appealing prospect.
Anyone interested in eco-death is probably well aware of this youtube channel but if not you should check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWo2-LHwGMM
But I suspect that if people knew what "embalming" means, they'd be squeamish about that as well.
...
I was present for a cremation sale where the funeral director explained that they fire the body, then collect any metals (titanium screws etc) and sell them for scrap.
This bothered me, but I can't say (still to this day) whether it was because it seemed way too graphic for the average bereaved family member, or if I was just offended that the crematorium thought it was OK to sell other peoples' property.
https://youtu.be/U9kw0A9_oCM
See Nature's Head, for instance.
I’m okay with the spark of life being a result of a collection of stuff and the interactions amongst it all.
I treat the dead with respect because I’m my own panopticon.
Wrap them in something organic for presentation, a weight stone, then, go out to sea (with family along option -others may be ok with remote video) and let them slip into the ocean like sailors buried at sea.
No creepiness, no vicarious cannibalism via eating veggies nourished by uncle Vinnie or aunt Mathilda or anything.
Traditional burial-at-sea.
It may not be cost effective for some... but a large percentage (~60%) of the US pop live within a 100 miles from seashores...
The speed you would need to get that far might be high enough for the force to tear off limbs or to shred the skin. The chances of you getting a permit after you put "might rain human limbs or remains on the beach" is very low.
You'd probably have better luck with little solar-powered, GPS-guided dinghys or kayaks that can go out 3 miles, drop the body and come back.
Every year every person in US produces >10 tons of CO2, any energy required for their body disposal is irrelevant.
So if you scale up from the relatively small numbers of people who die (and whose bodies aren't recovered) by accident or suicide near/in water, it's probably reasonable to expect a lot more of this. Maybe your idea is workable if you go far enough out that any detached remnants are grabbed by the big oceanic gyres.
Although the article mentions that this is the first time it's happened in 25 years, note that only about a dozen people every year choose to be buried in this way: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38210497
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owKFlNU_T5w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7t1WguYJyE
Decomposition is a natural process that happens to any corpse. It does not need to be optimized. That said, it does not need to be slowed down with embalming either.
Open burials for pets and such are also legal here in Oregon as long as it is 100 or so feet away from a water source, like a stream, pond, lake etc.
"Please volunteer for human composting. Recycle yourself!"
but seriously if someone has money for something like this how do you judge that they did not live their life fully? at least its better than taking up permanent real estate in a cemetery.
aerobic - with oxygen
Anaerobic decomposes as well but it is not compost. Anaerobic decomposition is putrefaction and creates the "smell of death"
Yes, there is a trend for anerobic teas. But it didnt come from Elaine Ingham.
Different species of psychedelic mushrooms have been found in almost all of the contiguous United States and Hawai'i. It used to be thought that the PNW and Southeast US were the only places they grew in the US, but new native species have been discovered in the last 20 years, and some of them are actually quite common, prolific and apparently potent.