What to do with the dead?

What is economically and socially correct for you?
Should ecology or the world situation decide how human bodies should be dealt with?
We've only got just so much room on this planet. Dead bodies take up space.
What about the religious beliefs of the person? Does that change things?
What will it be for you and yours?

- traditional burial in the ground - coffin/vault or natural in the dirt
- Sky burial
- Cremation - ashes scattered or entombed or kept by those still here
- get turned into a gem and placed in jewlery
- burial at sea
- Embalmed or not
- Ossuary the bones to make room ... or don't disturb them?
- Cryogenics .. freeze the dead to try to bring back to life later.
- Bury cremated ashes in space
- Become a firework and have your ashes blasted all over the sky
- Become a painting and hang in a museum or home

The different religious beliefs in regards to the dead human bodies may clash with what the world can deal with. We have billions of people on this planet. Billions more will be arriving. We don't have room for all the dead bodies. We just don't. Many religions approve and encourage cremation. Many cultures do. But many other faiths do not allow the dead to be cremated and they are very strict in their guidelines on how to deal with the dead body.

Catholicism allows cremation, but the body must be handled in a respectful manner and cremation must not be a statement made against God and the resurrection of the dead. Most protestant religions allow cremation. Hindus and Buddhists do. Sky burial was (and in places still is) practiced. It's natural but not very quick or efficient with space. Wiccans prefer natural burial but will go with cremation if need be. Native American funeral customs vary by tribe. I have read that the Jewish faith does not allow for cremation. I don't know if that's accurate. Islam requires burial , as far as I can find. Burial in Africa is pretty essential to the people there. They have pretty strict guidelines and beliefs.

Other reading -
Salon - 9 Wild Options for you
10 Weird Ways to Bury the Dead
- be freeze dried or become part of a reef off Florida

As for me ... cremation. I don't care what you do with the ashes as long as you don't use them to summon demons like in the Kim Harrison books. (I love those books!) I'll be dead and won't care. My family would probably want a place to go and spend time with my remains. So perhaps entomb the ashes for the sake of my daughter. But if I outlive the family (highly doubtful) I'd just ask someone to scatter them in the Presidential mountains of New Hampshire.

AND YOU?? What do you think? What's good for you and for the world??

SOYLENT GREEN!!


Just kidding, I think people may end up cremating more because there some places are running out of room for burials and it's cheaper too but who knows i think people will just pick whatever option is available to them at the time.

Bury me on the Moon, I would pay for that

Now there is a nice business plan as well

"They're dead. They're all messed up."
"There's another one for the fire."
"We must not be lulled into believing that these are our friends or loved ones. They are nothing more than pure motorised instinct. They must be destroyed on sight!"

I myself think it would be pretty cool to be turned into a gem and put in pommel of a sword and passed down in the family. But for the most part the dead body is just any empty shell i think we should find some kind of economic use for it. like strip of the flesh and use it to grow mushrooms and grind the bones to add to concrete something like that.

peace patriot

I've always fancied the Native American Indian way for myself. You know, the body put on a wooden platform, decorated with beads and such, and just left there till the wind takes me. Can't do that where I live though

Whatever they do to me, I don't want to be touched for 4 days. Dunno why, I just have a thing about that. I read something somewhere about the body feeling everything till the soul's out, and it stuck. As for an autopsy... don't even dare.

In fact, just ship me out to shark infested waters and drop me there.

aww...

thats a wonderful idea

- get turned into a gem and placed in jewlery

to bad ..in germany we forced to burn them in crematory or burie them..for loads of money

Use human flesh to feed mother nature. After all we on earth consume like no other. Only seems fit to give back to mother nature by feeding her species with human flesh.

Originally posted by Traydor
SOYLENT GREEN!!.

I actually advocate the euthanasia centers like they have in that movie. It's a human way to go. Let people decide when they want out and let them go with dignity and without pain. But that's for another discussion ....

I want the cheapest and simplest way for my husband (or someone else) to deal with. Cremation, no funeral and they can do whatever they wish with the ashes. Probably scatter them here on our mountain in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not going to be there OR care, so really, it's what my husband can best deal with.

If I had died before my wife, I'd have said "who cares, do whatever seems best," but since this is no longer the case, I've already stipulated that I be put next to her in her hometown cemetery.

As for wasting space, it's a bloody cemetery, who's going to want to use that land anyway? :-)

I had an interesting conversation with my mother in law a while back. What would you guess is the length of time that would pass before you reach the point where no one has the slightest clue who you are, beyond that granite carving? By being buried in my wife's family cemetery, I suppose that it will be extended out a generation or two, but it is inevitable that, apart from the church that promises to take care of things "in perpetuity", at some point my own little part of the planet will draw no mourners, rememberers or anyone at all.

And then, hundreds of years from now, some genealogy obsessed descendent will nip by and proclaim "Ooh, I found my great-great-great-great grandad's grave" and I'll smile in the great beyond.

For me personaly i would want to be cremated and my ashes spread in to a river to flow where they will. I would'nt want some monument to my existance taking up and spoiling perfectly good land. If people want to remember me all they have to do is think of me and thats it. They can take whatever parts are still good to help others then set me ablaze. My soul wont mind either way.

Originally posted by adjensen
What would you guess is the length of time that would pass before you reach the point where no one has the slightest clue who you are, beyond that granite carving?

Some cultures and beliefs are that you aren't completely dead until no one here remembers you and it's at that point that your soul can move on to the afterlife. I don't know how that works for famous people. Perhaps that is why they say to be humble in all the 'holy' books, etc.

Originally posted by FlyersFan

Originally posted by adjensen
What would you guess is the length of time that would pass before you reach the point where no one has the slightest clue who you are, beyond that granite carving?

Some cultures and beliefs are that you aren't completely dead until no one here remembers you and it's at that point that your soul can move on to the afterlife. I don't know how that works for famous people. Perhaps that is why they say to be humble in all the 'holy' books, etc.

Interesting point, I wasn't aware of that belief.

By the way, for everyone, if you have specific desires, MAKE THEM KNOWN! One thing that I've learned, in so many ways, over the past seven months, is that once you're gone, no one can ask you anything. I don't really know if taking her back to her hometown to be buried in that cemetery was my wife's real desire, she might have wanted to be shot into space. But because you don't talk about those sorts of things when you're 46, it didn't come up in a meaningful way, so I just did what I thought was best.

Whether you are 90 and in failing health, or 18 and at the height of your being, if something is important to you that would have relevance after you're dead, write it down or tell someone who will remember it.

To me - it seems the most rational approach would be to be strategically cut open - weighted down - and dropped into the sea naked.

Only the animals in the sea can decompose and re-use 100% of the Human body in a fairly short time span.

Also - the natural weights used could help create man made reefs that would help exiting sea creatures.

Best way to recycle us - imho - as cremation is a waste of resources and only increases useless entropy in our planetary system.

(not to mention it is ludicrously expensive to be done legally)

Would want to watch gasoline consumption for the process though - as over time that increases pollution and entropy and uses precious resources as well. Would not be to hard to engineer environmetally friendly power to this process I am sure - with a little effort.

reply to post by truthmagnet

Feed the oceans and create reefs. I kinda like it! Only thing is ... we humans eat a lot of chemical crap. Wonder if we'd be toxic to the lower life forms and by having them munch on us we'd be killing them.

Originally posted by truthmagnet
Would want to watch gasoline consumption for the process though - as over time that increases pollution and entropy and uses precious resources as well. Would not be to hard to engineer environmetally friendly power to this process I am sure - with a little effort.

Catapults!

Typically most religions dont really have a defined way to deal with the dead. For the most part how the dead are handled, has to directly with how much land is available for burial. In the United States we have lots of land so it has never been an issue. In parts of Europe you have to be cremated, and in some cases you only get to keep your little piece of the earth for so many years and they dig you up to give to someone else. It hasn't been historically unknown for a culture to change its burial practices either, it has happened where for centuries they buried their dead then cremated and then buried them again. It really is all about the logistics of burial more than any true spiritual reasoning to it.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
As for me ... cremation. I don't care what you do with the ashes as long as you don't use them to summon demons like in the Kim Harrison books. (I love those books!)

I'll be dead and won't care. My family would probably want a place to go and spend time with my remains. So perhaps entomb the ashes for the sake of my daughter. But if I outlive the family (highly doubtful) I'd just ask someone to scatter them in the Presidential mountains of New Hampshire.

AND YOU?? What do you think? What's good for you and for the world??

As for me ... also cremation, because due the views and thoughts [so in a way my believe now] I have to day about life, death and beyond, I see no reason whatsoever for why my physical remains must be entombed.

And just as you would perhaps let entomb your ashes for the sake of your daughter, I would let if my wife would prefer that instead of dispersing my ashes at the same place as where my parent’s ashes are dispersed, entomb my ashes in an urn for the reason of creating an in a way real personal place to go and spend time with my remains.

I think that dying is only the end of my physical body but a new beginning for the real me, my spirit so to say.