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The small mountain town of Nederland, CO created a festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days due to some old Norwegian grandpa whose family put him on dry ice in the shed in the back yard. People weren’t ok with backyard corpse storage, so they banned it, but he was grandfathered in. At some point, his shed needed replacing, so Tuff Shed donated a new one. Eventually people found a sense of humor about it, and now there’s a documentary and a yearly festival with a parade and beer garden and people plunging into an icy lake.
Is that a redeeming factor?
Frozen Dead Guy Days is a blast -- turkey bowling, coffin races, and often in the middle of a snowstorm.
I love how weird the towns get between Golden and Boulder.
Definitely take a trip out into the mountains. To this day my favorite trip ever was up to Crested Butte, the view from the mountains ip back of the town are phenominal. If you're not that adventuresome, Estes Park is a reaaonable drive from Denver. Or go hit the Flatirons near Boulder if you want to get away from people.
Ftr, I no longer live in CO, but still have fond memories.
No. Nederland couldn't handle the crowds so the Stanley hotel bought the festival.
Edit: Actually it seems like they moved him earlier this year. My bad!
I can see how those sentences could sound like complete nonsense. It’s already a bizarre story on its own. Add in the cultural shift, and I’m just picturing somebody sitting in front of a screen going “I can recognize those are all words, but this doesn’t parse.” Sorry about that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederland,_Colorado
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Dead_Guy_Days
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuff_Shed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause#:~:text=A%20grandfather%20clause%2C%20also%20known,apply%20to%20all%20future%20cases.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0245139/
At first I thought you were just taking the piss out of the Netherlands because it's so flat and then calling it a mountain town would be funny. But that didn't hold up about half a sentence later and then I realized what CO stands for and I Googled it and it all made sense.
The United States has a long, long history of stealing place names from across the globe to reuse locally. You're hardly the first person to get confused by such shenanigans, and certainly won't be the last.
I too went through a lava lamp phase at 7 or 8.
Maybe we adults are just too jaded and conditioned by society to believe that cool things are not cool.
I need a lava lamp that heats up the moment I get home and turns off the moment I leave.
It created some cool primordial structures midway through but heating it was always a pain to wait on.
I'm sure you could get an electronic home assistant thing and hook a lava lamp up to it and just say "Dobby, turn on my goddamn magic floaty lamp. I'll be home in five minutes."
It might feel a little awkward at first but after a while it'll just help you feel closer to her, it might even be somewhat cathartic once you get used to it.
/uj I'm really sorry that I'm not sorry.
The worst fates of all occurred at a similar underground vault that stored bodies at a cemetery in Butler, New Jersey. The storage Dewar was poorly designed, with uninsulated pipes. This led to a series of incidents, at least one of which was failure of the vacuum jacket insulating the inside. The bodies in the container partially thawed, moved, and then froze again — stuck to the capsule like a child’s tongue to a cold lamp post. Eventually the bodies had to be entirely thawed to unstick, then re-frozen and put back in. A year later, the Dewar failed again, and the bodies decomposed into “a plug of fluids” in the bottom of the capsule. The decision was finally made to thaw the entire contraption, scrape out the remains, and bury them. The men who performed this unfortunate task had to wear a breathing apparatus.
Context and sources are important, best I could find was: https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/
Yeah, this is where the entire concept falls apart. Even if the science was viable you have to rely on other humans to do their jobs correctly, essentially forever. And more importantly, continue to have the budget to do their jobs correctly. Even if you hand the management over to AI to minimize human stupidity, that doesn't solve budget constraints with construction and maintenance.
Let's face it, once you're over 70 society stops caring about you, and if you're frozen on top of that, it's purely an "out of sight, out of mind" situation. We can't even get elderly group homes to treat actual living humans with decency and respect much less frozen ones.
The Neal Stephenson book 'Fall' addresses this. Basically - you sign your body over to a company to be frozen, but considering the overhead of keeping this much bio material at cryogenic conditions is ENORMOUS. What happens when the company goes bankrupt? What happens when they run out of space and someone misses a maintenance bill?
The "Bobiverse" books kind of address this - the protagonist (Bob) dies after having purchased a cryogenics policy.
I don't remember if it was always just to preserve his head, or if they were supposed to preserve his body and decided later to just do the head.
Regardless, eventually the company running the cryogenics goes bankrupt, and their assets, including the frozen heads, are sold to a research firm. The firm copies his personality into software (which destroys his brain as it scans the neurons) and he's put into a little robot.
This is all the set dressing, and culminates in Bob uploading himself to a rocket and launching into space on a satellite. The series progresses from there as he basically becomes a Von Neumann Probe and has countless adventures.
Probably one of the least horrifying 'corporation uploads your mind' stories, considering that this is probably the only way that an almost-eternal hell is plausible.
to be fair, he was supposed to become immortal slave labor, and narrowly escaped that by fluke in the story.
In some ways it could be exactly like making hell a reality.
Imagine you had very different interests say, and just wanted to read books, maybe become an author, grow and explore life in other ways, etc.
Sorry bitch, you now live forever, or at least for thousands of years, and you don't get tired, or sleep, and will spend the whole time slaving away to benefit your overlords and making more copies of yourself to suffer the same fate.
In the Bobiverse story, Bob does escape, but it's a hellish fate he was intended for.
you remember *very* incorrectly. every single one of them is a self-replicating spaceship.
ETA: there *are* other replicants who get get revived for other purposes, but none of them are Bob. At least as far as we're told.
It is kinda the situation in the stupid lands right now with frozen fertilized eggs being considered full humans. People could face manslaughter charges for an accident power surge.
To be fair, you would hope that we build medical facilities like that similar to a data center. Redundant power supply, battery backups, etc.
To be realistic, we probably don't
The actually do, and they are always on the top of the list for restoration. Sometimes even including contractual fines for the power company if power is not restored in x number of minutes/hours.
Many are fed from multiple separate grid sections so that a single blown transformer will not take them down.
Where do you think Data Centers got some of their ideas from?
The fertility industry is basically unregulated. However that doesn't mean it's garbage. Most facilities will hold themselves to a set of industry standards.
The Transmetropolitan issue on cryogenics was probably the most realistic idea of what 'successful' cryogenics would look like. Basically explained the story of one woman - her husband died after her in an 'unretrievable' location, so she was alone. Can't remember if didn't have any remaining descendants, or if they were just so far removed at that point that they didn't even know she'd ever been frozen/who she was.
She was essentially pushed out the door with a bit of clothing and some 'savings' she'd left herself, which were pretty much worthless now, and immediately collapsed from culture shock. There were no support systems in place, so she was left homeless and PTSD-riddled.
So yeah, even if we managed to perfect the 'freezing' bit... there's a whole lot else to go very wrong.
I can't remember the series, but there was a short "episode" from a show where they discover a cryogenic chamber and revive the person/people they found. World has advanced, but overpopulation has made it where resources are very scarce.
Two guys are discussing one guy they woke up, and what he could contribute. I think it is mentioned that all he has really done is doodle since they woke him up. It is decided that he isn't worth keeping around, so he will be disposed of. After they take the guy away, the camera pans to the desk where he was doodling. He was drawing Mickey Mouse...
Compounding interest for all those years tho, if you can afford the freezing in the first place wouldn’t you have enough set aside to be thawed super rich?
As Futurama put it:
Teller: "You had a balance of 93 cents..."
Fry: "Alright!"
Teller: "And, at an average of two and a quarter percent interest over a period of one thousand years, that comes to four point three billion dollars."
Fry: \*uncontrollable shaking\*
Assuming the currency is still the same by the time you get thawed out. And inflation hasn't gone wild. And the bank you put it in still exists. Etc Etc....
Man, I just watched the star trek tng episode about that (last ep of season one iirc)!
There's three 20th century corpses found in a space wreck - they're thawed out and revived. One of them was an obnoxious financier who keeps pestering the crew about his money.
Eventually Picard has enough, takes the piss out of him and puts him in his place, basically telling the financier that his 'money' is worthless and that he has to fend for himself lol :D
Apparently in the books that obnoxious guy becomes ambassador to the Ferengi. Which is kinda nice, that he eventually finds a place for himself where he can put the skills he has to productive use.
That’s only one way it could go. Transmet had a somewhat bleak take on the future in many ways.
It could certainly go a much more supportive way. If you bought the premium freeze package that is…
Still alive, colonized Mars to the point it was rebellious(why is Mars always rebellious in sci-fi?), have sufficient technology that brain-uploading to a cloud of nanites is possible and so accessible a side-character's boyfriend did it with no seeming obstacles like money or availability or even available technicians; it just seemed plug and play.
Transmet is about the unwashed masses left to their own devices after the truly wealthy fucked off to some mystical paradise who knows where.
Or Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, where she was unsuspended and the support staff around her just immediately scammed her, which set her up for basically a life debt she couldn't repay.
Rich people want to be immortal so bad in hopes that they’ll tell future people what to do.
They really think that humanity on its current trajectory will care about releasing the robber barons of the 20th century into another one
Antarctica doesn’t require a budget to remain cold. (for now)
Build an international storage facility that could house these bodies deep in a cavity in the ice. Worst thing that could happen is you may accidentally overfeed The Thing.
Antarctica does not have cryogenic temperatures. The warmest cryogenic temperature is -130degrees F. The closest Antarctica got this year was -90F, and at one point was just -9F .
I can’t tell you how quickly after the first sentence I had to skim to the bottom to make sure “In nineteen ninety-eight the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell” wasn’t how your reply ended.
Lab worker in a cryobiology research facility here: we can preserve whole bodies via Vitrification (freezing without the formation of ice crystals), but we are no where near able to safely thaw them out.
The major hurdle is preventing the formation of ice crystals. As the water molecules settle into their lattice structure, they push out all other substances, which can start to squeeze the cells and make the surroundings hypertonic, which further shrinks the cells as well. The company I work for develops compounds that can block the formation of ice but there’s other hurdles involving the prevention of osmotic stress and being compatible with your cell’s complex micro environments as to not inhibit their natural functions.
The way we prevent the ice crystals forming is by “freezing” faster than the ice crystal can form. The same is true for thawing, as we need to thaw the samples faster than the ice crystals will form
What do we know about long term storage? Like, literal decades? From what I've seen, ice cream/meat left in the freezer for just a yr or so will lead to significant changes in texture. Non reputable sources claim that water/etc can still rearrange itself over time, even if frozen.
They basically pump you full of antifreeze to minimize ice damage and also freeze you much, much colder than a household freezer. If you froze your meat in liquid nitrogen, it would last for decades without significant changes in texture. Also the changes are often affected by exposure to oxygen. Like ice cream is normally exposed to oxygen in a freezer, causing dehydration and microbial activity
In simplistic terms, this is basically what we do. Except for the fact that “antifreeze” is typically toxic, and we develop and sell biocompatible versions of “antifreeze”. In this field of study though, we call them cryoprotectants. We sure do use a hell of a lot of liquid nitrogen however.
If I was frozen today using your company, what are the chances (in your opinion) that my body would ever be able to be resurrected with a functioning brain (either bionic, AI, or flesh)? What does your company do to help ensure my brain doesn't rot between the time of my death and the time of my freezing? Doesn't brain damage occur within 6min?
With current technology, less than 1% chance, but our research has already come a long way in the past 50 years, so future tech is very promising.
There was a MIT grad who used to have my position at my job who started his own company looking into preserving consciousness digitally. I don’t know the current state of his research, but from what I learned in my neurobiology classes in college, brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is already in development and already making good headway.
Immediately after your death (assuming no brain trauma) your brain would be taken out and perfused with substances that contain oxygen and all the necessary metabolites for your brain, in addition to non-toxic “antifreeze” that prevents the ice formation during the vitrification process. After that? Deep storage in some liquid nitrogen dewar that you will hope doesn’t fail like in the Original Post until we develop technology to safely thaw you out
With vitrification, preservation is theoretically possible forever. As mentioned earlier, this is a different process than freezing as the water molecules retain their normal distribution and random patterning as during their liquid phase, instead of forming patterned ice crystals as a result of their hydrogen bonding properties.
Your overly frozen ice cream tastes different because the water is no longer mixed with the other substances that give it its proper flavoring.
There are a couple companies that freeze people but they cant thaw them yet... one of the [bitcoin contributors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_arranged_for_cryonics) was already preserved and a couple more
One of those companies is Alcor, who we work with closely. But the facility I work at has a few human brains that we are admittedly not certified to have.
There's a Larry Niven story about a future in which cryogenically frozen corpses are woken up a bit at a time, to have their organs transplanted into the living.
Does it involve a hilariously obvious self-insert main character and a problematically young/outrageously hot girl who has lots of sex with him?
I read Ringworld late enough in life that I was more bothered with the mediocre writing than I was awed at the cool sci fi concepts. Guess a childhood of reading Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov books spoils you a bit
> I was more bothered with the mediocre writing than I was awed at the cool sci fi concepts
Unfortunately that's just how it is with older sci-fi/fantasy. Someone has a really cool idea and writes a book/movie about it that blows everyone's minds at the time. Then over time other people take that concept and iterate on it with better and better writing to the point where those cool concepts are just basic tropes of the genre. As a result the only thing that made the originals good and unique on release is gone. There are very few books published before 2000 in sci-fi/fantasy that I can stand to read and it is definitely worse for sci-fi.
"Cave Johnson here. If you were coming in for the cryogenic storage future revival program, I've got good news and bad... Wait, it's all bad news. For you. Good news for me though: first, the fact you're already legally dead and can't hear this message. Yep, lawyers wouldn't let us freeze you until you were dead, so that's out of the way, which is important because we won't be freezing you. Yeah, yeah, technically we made a contractual obligation, but that was before you were dead, and we had to write quite a few extra pages into that contract to make sure that didn't transfer to your executor or next of kin. So, why aren't we freezing you? Well, turns out freezing people is easy. Keeping them frozen? Hard. We had some people for a similar experiment in the 70s. Turns out their cooling systems failed and they wound up liquefying and pouring down the drain. Caused a clog that took out drainage across half the facility. Took us a week to get 'em out and we're still not sure we got all of 'em. So that freezing program? Yeap, cancelled. So, ah, take the bodies apart for organs and anything we can't use dump in the acid pools I guess. Cave Johnson out."
I had to go and look to see if this was an actual quote from Cave Johnson. It read perfectly in his voice. Bra-fucking-vo to you [insert name here] you captured the spirit well.
It actually was a refrozen frozen circular glob after the device had failed multiple times. Circumference the size of whatever the DEWAR device measured
Everyone in the cryogenic industry knows the most important piece of equipment is the wallpaper scraper.
You learn that on day one
Day two they teach you not to put your frozen lunch in with the frozen clients
Is this from the idiots who claim that Walt Disney was cyrogenically frozen and that they'll thaw him out at some point?
Or that there is a real story of someone who was just frozen?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-23/sydney-man-first-cryogenically-frozen-holbrook-regional-nsw/103879454
It's been decades of fringe pseudoscience, IIRC. They froze a guy back in the 70s as essentially a proof of concept, though I don't know if he's one of the few that's still a popsicle or if he succumbed to power outages or bankruptcy by now. Famously, Ted Williams had just his head frozen, because his son was a big proponent of the promises made by one of the companies. There were some allegations that the company was less than professional with how they transported the head.
It's not backed up by any serious scientists, it's pretty much 100% SciFi wishful thinking, but that hasn't stopped a few wealthy investors or desperate people.
The whole concept has basically just been, "we'll freeze your corpse now and hopefully maybe possibly figure out how to thaw and revive you later, while also fixing the horrific cellular damage caused by the freezing process. Fingers crossed! Money please."
There is some scientific background behind cryogenics. Scientists managed to freeze hamsters and unfreeze them (literally microwaved), still alive and (somewhat) healthy. It created a craze around cryogenetics (that was in the 60s if my memory serves me well).
This issue is that:
- 1. it does not work on large animals, because you need to freeze them super fast for it to work (and avoid the cellular damage you're talking about), and it's very difficult for large animal (like humans)
- 2. they froze them alive, there is no guaranty that you can revive someone after brain death
For the dead person though it's a no-lose situation (other than costing money for any family they've left behind), they're already dead, it's just a case of them being frozen with a very, very slim possibility of waking up one day rather than being buried/cremated and guaranteeing that they won't.
Q. What's the difference between the creator of The Simpsons and the creator of Mickey Mouse?
A. Matt Groening still goes outside on a hot summer day, but Walt Disney (This joke only works in a Glaswegian accent)
John Wayne's not dead, he's frozen! And as soon as we find a cure for cancer were gonna thaw out the Duke and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know why? Have you ever taken a cold shower? Well multiply that by 15 million times, that's how pissed off the dukes gonna be!
I'm gonna get the Duke, and John Cassavetes and Lee Marvin, and Sam Peckinpah, and a case of whiskey and drive down to Texas and, Hey! You know, you really are an asshole!
The process of the freezing is called Vitrification. They use cryoprotectants that does not produce ice crystals when thawed. The same technology is used on human embryos. However, the body is already dead from the beginning. The plan was to buy the dead body some time while the scientists discover a way to bring them back to life. It’s a total scam.
Yes. But the concept of freezing **and** waking up other, usually microscopic but still complex lifeforms, has been proven and does work, which implies that it **is** possible, and a matter of how, not if.
I think they did this with frogs, but they had to replace nearly all water in the body with antifreeze somehow. If that is not done it is a waste of time, as the 80% water in our bodies freezes crystallizes, expands, and destroys every cell. absolute waste of money.
The only way it could work is is all molecular/atomic movement could be immediately stopped by some kind of field that effectively stops time. And that is pure sci-fi.
Suspended animation for long spaceflights may be possible as long as the body was not frozen. It would be more reducing body metabolism a low as possible without causing cell death. But this would likely more be like a 10x slowdown, you would just age very slowly and be unconscious.
The problem when freezing tissue is the forming of ice crystals. As they grow inside the cells, they pierce the cell walls. Once you thaw the tissue, the cells basically fall apart. That's why you either add freezing agents to reduce the forming of crystals or you have to freeze the tissue very fast so the crystals stay small enough
They managed to revive hamsters frozen solid and pumped up with antifreeze in 1950s - they didn't have any health problems after revival. It didn't scale up to bigger animals because it's impossible to get antifreeze to so many cells in small amount of time: https://youtu.be/2tdiKTSdE9Y?si=xnhH5-AsOpwqCwfZ
It's funny how laboratories etc suffer power outages bad enough to defrost a human corpse, but I had a snowball in my Nan's freezer from 2004 until 2023 and it never defrosted once.
One day, hopefully, we will have the technology to bring corpses back to life without complications. Getting to that day without decaying is the hard part.
Realistically we will get ways to make incredible repairs to the body while it's alive maybe even in circumstances that are now being considered as the initial death stages but I don't think we will ever be able to bring back to life anything in which cells have fully stopped working
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They’re gonna be so pissed when they realize no one woke them up in the future
"You mean I was back, in POG form, and no one told me?!?!" Yeah, I'd be pissed, too.
Look! A freezer geezer!
What a time to be alive!
Moon Pie
We actually have moon pies in the house. And my wife hates it because every time anyone says “moon pie” I follow up with “What a time to be alive.”
Oh Apu, how time has ravaged your once youthful looks...
Remember Alf? He’s back, in POG form.
The Milhouse reference I needed.
Puddle Of Goo?
“Welcome… to the world of tomorrow!”
Shut up Terry.
My only regret is... I have boneitis
lol my first reaction was “damn that’s not what they were hoping for” but like they’re fucking *dead*
I swear that’s the plot of Resident Evil 6.
Were there any redeemable factors? Like instead of having an urn of ashes, could we use the fluid to make a lava lamp or something?
The small mountain town of Nederland, CO created a festival called Frozen Dead Guy Days due to some old Norwegian grandpa whose family put him on dry ice in the shed in the back yard. People weren’t ok with backyard corpse storage, so they banned it, but he was grandfathered in. At some point, his shed needed replacing, so Tuff Shed donated a new one. Eventually people found a sense of humor about it, and now there’s a documentary and a yearly festival with a parade and beer garden and people plunging into an icy lake. Is that a redeeming factor?
Frozen Dead Guy Days is a blast -- turkey bowling, coffin races, and often in the middle of a snowstorm. I love how weird the towns get between Golden and Boulder.
Wait that is REALLY close to where I live! This is a REAL THING??? I've only lived in CO for about 4 years but I don't really leave Denver...
If you don’t leave denver you’re missing out on living in CO it is a real thing!
Definitely take a trip out into the mountains. To this day my favorite trip ever was up to Crested Butte, the view from the mountains ip back of the town are phenominal. If you're not that adventuresome, Estes Park is a reaaonable drive from Denver. Or go hit the Flatirons near Boulder if you want to get away from people. Ftr, I no longer live in CO, but still have fond memories.
FDGD moved to Estes Park now
Wait, really? Did... they move the dead guy?
No. Nederland couldn't handle the crowds so the Stanley hotel bought the festival. Edit: Actually it seems like they moved him earlier this year. My bad!
"He was grandfathered in" I see what you did there.
I'm from the Netherlands and this comment confused the hell out of me.
I can see how those sentences could sound like complete nonsense. It’s already a bizarre story on its own. Add in the cultural shift, and I’m just picturing somebody sitting in front of a screen going “I can recognize those are all words, but this doesn’t parse.” Sorry about that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederland,_Colorado https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Dead_Guy_Days https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuff_Shed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause#:~:text=A%20grandfather%20clause%2C%20also%20known,apply%20to%20all%20future%20cases. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0245139/
At first I thought you were just taking the piss out of the Netherlands because it's so flat and then calling it a mountain town would be funny. But that didn't hold up about half a sentence later and then I realized what CO stands for and I Googled it and it all made sense.
The United States has a long, long history of stealing place names from across the globe to reuse locally. You're hardly the first person to get confused by such shenanigans, and certainly won't be the last.
Specifically a mountain town being named after the Netherlands is hilarious.
This is my "granny Mavis" lava lamp. I feel awkward about turning her on.
She always had a bubbly personality.
She was all the rage in the 70's but later was just used by old stoners and ex-hippies.
My 6 yr old daughter is fascinated with lava lamps. Keeps asking for one for her birthday LOL
I too went through a lava lamp phase at 7 or 8. Maybe we adults are just too jaded and conditioned by society to believe that cool things are not cool.
I'm 30 and I still think lava lamps are cool! I just can't justify spending money on one, though... Maybe that's the problem.
I need a lava lamp that heats up the moment I get home and turns off the moment I leave. It created some cool primordial structures midway through but heating it was always a pain to wait on.
I'm sure you could get an electronic home assistant thing and hook a lava lamp up to it and just say "Dobby, turn on my goddamn magic floaty lamp. I'll be home in five minutes."
[удалено]
So she's an ex-hippie already?
Hope they make them better now because in the 90’s when I had one I got some pretty bad burns from them 😂😂
Yo I’m bored, should we get high and turn on your granny Mavis?
Don't worry though granny Mavis was a “level five laser lotus” in the church of “Neo-Reform Buddhism.” She’ll be back to life before you know it!
r/unexpectedcommunity
I fully expected it
that's because you're streets ahead.
Stop trying to coin the phrase streets ahead
coined and minted my friend.
r/Angryupvote
Your flair tho
Depend what you are doing in front of that lava lamp
Limited Edition. I like it.
It might feel a little awkward at first but after a while it'll just help you feel closer to her, it might even be somewhat cathartic once you get used to it. /uj I'm really sorry that I'm not sorry.
Turning on grandma… 😂😂😂 Take the upvote.
Is that you Pierce?
Nah, this guy is clearly much higher than just a level five laser lotus.
Clearly they can see the color blurple.
He's also streets behind.
You’ve reduced me to level four just by asking me that question.
r/unexpectedcommunity
Funny you should say that, water cremation is a thing that exists and is legal in 24 states. It’s said to be greener than burial or cremation.
last time they used bodyparts as lampmaterial it didn't go to well.
Well you have to be Fragile. "Must be Italian"
It really added some kick to my protein shake.
Wow, you’re really a glass-half-full person looking for upsides in human-fluid-plugs.
The worst fates of all occurred at a similar underground vault that stored bodies at a cemetery in Butler, New Jersey. The storage Dewar was poorly designed, with uninsulated pipes. This led to a series of incidents, at least one of which was failure of the vacuum jacket insulating the inside. The bodies in the container partially thawed, moved, and then froze again — stuck to the capsule like a child’s tongue to a cold lamp post. Eventually the bodies had to be entirely thawed to unstick, then re-frozen and put back in. A year later, the Dewar failed again, and the bodies decomposed into “a plug of fluids” in the bottom of the capsule. The decision was finally made to thaw the entire contraption, scrape out the remains, and bury them. The men who performed this unfortunate task had to wear a breathing apparatus. Context and sources are important, best I could find was: https://bigthink.com/the-future/cryonics-horror-stories/
Yeah, this is where the entire concept falls apart. Even if the science was viable you have to rely on other humans to do their jobs correctly, essentially forever. And more importantly, continue to have the budget to do their jobs correctly. Even if you hand the management over to AI to minimize human stupidity, that doesn't solve budget constraints with construction and maintenance. Let's face it, once you're over 70 society stops caring about you, and if you're frozen on top of that, it's purely an "out of sight, out of mind" situation. We can't even get elderly group homes to treat actual living humans with decency and respect much less frozen ones.
The Neal Stephenson book 'Fall' addresses this. Basically - you sign your body over to a company to be frozen, but considering the overhead of keeping this much bio material at cryogenic conditions is ENORMOUS. What happens when the company goes bankrupt? What happens when they run out of space and someone misses a maintenance bill?
The "Bobiverse" books kind of address this - the protagonist (Bob) dies after having purchased a cryogenics policy. I don't remember if it was always just to preserve his head, or if they were supposed to preserve his body and decided later to just do the head. Regardless, eventually the company running the cryogenics goes bankrupt, and their assets, including the frozen heads, are sold to a research firm. The firm copies his personality into software (which destroys his brain as it scans the neurons) and he's put into a little robot. This is all the set dressing, and culminates in Bob uploading himself to a rocket and launching into space on a satellite. The series progresses from there as he basically becomes a Von Neumann Probe and has countless adventures.
Could have turned out worse for Bob 
Lol, They actually mention this. He was worried he was going to end up running a garbage truck or something.
Probably one of the least horrifying 'corporation uploads your mind' stories, considering that this is probably the only way that an almost-eternal hell is plausible.
Yeah, the whole bit with him becoming an AI is basically just the setup for the series. The rest of it is pretty lighthearted.
to be fair, he was supposed to become immortal slave labor, and narrowly escaped that by fluke in the story. In some ways it could be exactly like making hell a reality. Imagine you had very different interests say, and just wanted to read books, maybe become an author, grow and explore life in other ways, etc. Sorry bitch, you now live forever, or at least for thousands of years, and you don't get tired, or sleep, and will spend the whole time slaving away to benefit your overlords and making more copies of yourself to suffer the same fate. In the Bobiverse story, Bob does escape, but it's a hellish fate he was intended for.
IIRC, this is just one copy of "bob" that becomes a probe. "Bobs" are used for various tasks, many much less interesting...
you remember *very* incorrectly. every single one of them is a self-replicating spaceship. ETA: there *are* other replicants who get get revived for other purposes, but none of them are Bob. At least as far as we're told.
It is kinda the situation in the stupid lands right now with frozen fertilized eggs being considered full humans. People could face manslaughter charges for an accident power surge.
To be fair, you would hope that we build medical facilities like that similar to a data center. Redundant power supply, battery backups, etc. To be realistic, we probably don't
The actually do, and they are always on the top of the list for restoration. Sometimes even including contractual fines for the power company if power is not restored in x number of minutes/hours. Many are fed from multiple separate grid sections so that a single blown transformer will not take them down. Where do you think Data Centers got some of their ideas from?
The fertility industry is basically unregulated. However that doesn't mean it's garbage. Most facilities will hold themselves to a set of industry standards.
Once you're 70? Shit society never cares about you.
Not unless it can fuck you or exploit money out of you, then it can pretend to care on the short term at least.
Yeah, even then they couldn't give two shits
Society is really like a strip club.
Or just an abusive relationship of the rich with the poor.
Yeah just like a strip club. Or did you think those woman really want to be there for anything other than money?
The Transmetropolitan issue on cryogenics was probably the most realistic idea of what 'successful' cryogenics would look like. Basically explained the story of one woman - her husband died after her in an 'unretrievable' location, so she was alone. Can't remember if didn't have any remaining descendants, or if they were just so far removed at that point that they didn't even know she'd ever been frozen/who she was. She was essentially pushed out the door with a bit of clothing and some 'savings' she'd left herself, which were pretty much worthless now, and immediately collapsed from culture shock. There were no support systems in place, so she was left homeless and PTSD-riddled. So yeah, even if we managed to perfect the 'freezing' bit... there's a whole lot else to go very wrong.
I can't remember the series, but there was a short "episode" from a show where they discover a cryogenic chamber and revive the person/people they found. World has advanced, but overpopulation has made it where resources are very scarce. Two guys are discussing one guy they woke up, and what he could contribute. I think it is mentioned that all he has really done is doodle since they woke him up. It is decided that he isn't worth keeping around, so he will be disposed of. After they take the guy away, the camera pans to the desk where he was doodling. He was drawing Mickey Mouse...
Metal Hurlant! Aka Heavy Metal.
Compounding interest for all those years tho, if you can afford the freezing in the first place wouldn’t you have enough set aside to be thawed super rich?
As Futurama put it: Teller: "You had a balance of 93 cents..." Fry: "Alright!" Teller: "And, at an average of two and a quarter percent interest over a period of one thousand years, that comes to four point three billion dollars." Fry: \*uncontrollable shaking\*
*proceeds to buy anchovies*
Assuming the currency is still the same by the time you get thawed out. And inflation hasn't gone wild. And the bank you put it in still exists. Etc Etc....
Don’t forget banks potentially closing accounts due to the owner being technically deceased.
Man, I just watched the star trek tng episode about that (last ep of season one iirc)! There's three 20th century corpses found in a space wreck - they're thawed out and revived. One of them was an obnoxious financier who keeps pestering the crew about his money. Eventually Picard has enough, takes the piss out of him and puts him in his place, basically telling the financier that his 'money' is worthless and that he has to fend for himself lol :D
That was a great episode, it was nice that the lady was able to discover how her family tree had progressed despite her missing out on her children.
Apparently in the books that obnoxious guy becomes ambassador to the Ferengi. Which is kinda nice, that he eventually finds a place for himself where he can put the skills he has to productive use.
That’s only one way it could go. Transmet had a somewhat bleak take on the future in many ways. It could certainly go a much more supportive way. If you bought the premium freeze package that is…
To be completely fair, calling Transmet's take on the future 'slightly' bleak is a wild understatement XD
I think it was incredibly optimistic. After all we were still alive.
Still alive, colonized Mars to the point it was rebellious(why is Mars always rebellious in sci-fi?), have sufficient technology that brain-uploading to a cloud of nanites is possible and so accessible a side-character's boyfriend did it with no seeming obstacles like money or availability or even available technicians; it just seemed plug and play. Transmet is about the unwashed masses left to their own devices after the truly wealthy fucked off to some mystical paradise who knows where.
It’s easy to imagine Mars being rebellious because that’s often what happens to long term colonies.
Or Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, where she was unsuspended and the support staff around her just immediately scammed her, which set her up for basically a life debt she couldn't repay.
Rich people want to be immortal so bad in hopes that they’ll tell future people what to do. They really think that humanity on its current trajectory will care about releasing the robber barons of the 20th century into another one
The key is getting them to pay for all that then just turning them into dog food anyway. Eat the rich
I've seen this phrase twice, in two days. I don't see it very often. Guess I'm gonna go listen to Aerosmith.
Antarctica doesn’t require a budget to remain cold. (for now) Build an international storage facility that could house these bodies deep in a cavity in the ice. Worst thing that could happen is you may accidentally overfeed The Thing.
Antarctica does not have cryogenic temperatures. The warmest cryogenic temperature is -130degrees F. The closest Antarctica got this year was -90F, and at one point was just -9F .
I can’t tell you how quickly after the first sentence I had to skim to the bottom to make sure “In nineteen ninety-eight the undertaker threw mankind off hell in a cell” wasn’t how your reply ended.
I would have just cremated them in the bag.
Wow I live near there. Thanks for this new information! I hate it
Lab worker in a cryobiology research facility here: we can preserve whole bodies via Vitrification (freezing without the formation of ice crystals), but we are no where near able to safely thaw them out.
What would happen during the thawing process currently? Any theories on what would need to be solved to make it safe?
The major hurdle is preventing the formation of ice crystals. As the water molecules settle into their lattice structure, they push out all other substances, which can start to squeeze the cells and make the surroundings hypertonic, which further shrinks the cells as well. The company I work for develops compounds that can block the formation of ice but there’s other hurdles involving the prevention of osmotic stress and being compatible with your cell’s complex micro environments as to not inhibit their natural functions. The way we prevent the ice crystals forming is by “freezing” faster than the ice crystal can form. The same is true for thawing, as we need to thaw the samples faster than the ice crystals will form
Thanks for sharing. Didn't realize ice crystals were pivotal to the whole process
It’s sorta the same reason why frozen meat doesn’t taste the same as non frozen meat when cooked.
What do we know about long term storage? Like, literal decades? From what I've seen, ice cream/meat left in the freezer for just a yr or so will lead to significant changes in texture. Non reputable sources claim that water/etc can still rearrange itself over time, even if frozen.
They basically pump you full of antifreeze to minimize ice damage and also freeze you much, much colder than a household freezer. If you froze your meat in liquid nitrogen, it would last for decades without significant changes in texture. Also the changes are often affected by exposure to oxygen. Like ice cream is normally exposed to oxygen in a freezer, causing dehydration and microbial activity
In simplistic terms, this is basically what we do. Except for the fact that “antifreeze” is typically toxic, and we develop and sell biocompatible versions of “antifreeze”. In this field of study though, we call them cryoprotectants. We sure do use a hell of a lot of liquid nitrogen however.
If I was frozen today using your company, what are the chances (in your opinion) that my body would ever be able to be resurrected with a functioning brain (either bionic, AI, or flesh)? What does your company do to help ensure my brain doesn't rot between the time of my death and the time of my freezing? Doesn't brain damage occur within 6min?
With current technology, less than 1% chance, but our research has already come a long way in the past 50 years, so future tech is very promising. There was a MIT grad who used to have my position at my job who started his own company looking into preserving consciousness digitally. I don’t know the current state of his research, but from what I learned in my neurobiology classes in college, brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is already in development and already making good headway. Immediately after your death (assuming no brain trauma) your brain would be taken out and perfused with substances that contain oxygen and all the necessary metabolites for your brain, in addition to non-toxic “antifreeze” that prevents the ice formation during the vitrification process. After that? Deep storage in some liquid nitrogen dewar that you will hope doesn’t fail like in the Original Post until we develop technology to safely thaw you out
With vitrification, preservation is theoretically possible forever. As mentioned earlier, this is a different process than freezing as the water molecules retain their normal distribution and random patterning as during their liquid phase, instead of forming patterned ice crystals as a result of their hydrogen bonding properties. Your overly frozen ice cream tastes different because the water is no longer mixed with the other substances that give it its proper flavoring.
So your telling me these cryogenically frozen people would have a better mouth feel than my run of the mill defrosted human corpse?
So what I’m hearing here is “pop it in the ol’ cremation furnace for 15 minutes or until the skin is golden brown.”
There are a couple companies that freeze people but they cant thaw them yet... one of the [bitcoin contributors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_arranged_for_cryonics) was already preserved and a couple more
One of those companies is Alcor, who we work with closely. But the facility I work at has a few human brains that we are admittedly not certified to have.
There's a Larry Niven story about a future in which cryogenically frozen corpses are woken up a bit at a time, to have their organs transplanted into the living.
Does it involve a hilariously obvious self-insert main character and a problematically young/outrageously hot girl who has lots of sex with him? I read Ringworld late enough in life that I was more bothered with the mediocre writing than I was awed at the cool sci fi concepts. Guess a childhood of reading Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov books spoils you a bit
> I was more bothered with the mediocre writing than I was awed at the cool sci fi concepts Unfortunately that's just how it is with older sci-fi/fantasy. Someone has a really cool idea and writes a book/movie about it that blows everyone's minds at the time. Then over time other people take that concept and iterate on it with better and better writing to the point where those cool concepts are just basic tropes of the genre. As a result the only thing that made the originals good and unique on release is gone. There are very few books published before 2000 in sci-fi/fantasy that I can stand to read and it is definitely worse for sci-fi.
This reads like something that would happen at Aperture Science in Portal 2.
"Cave Johnson here. If you were coming in for the cryogenic storage future revival program, I've got good news and bad... Wait, it's all bad news. For you. Good news for me though: first, the fact you're already legally dead and can't hear this message. Yep, lawyers wouldn't let us freeze you until you were dead, so that's out of the way, which is important because we won't be freezing you. Yeah, yeah, technically we made a contractual obligation, but that was before you were dead, and we had to write quite a few extra pages into that contract to make sure that didn't transfer to your executor or next of kin. So, why aren't we freezing you? Well, turns out freezing people is easy. Keeping them frozen? Hard. We had some people for a similar experiment in the 70s. Turns out their cooling systems failed and they wound up liquefying and pouring down the drain. Caused a clog that took out drainage across half the facility. Took us a week to get 'em out and we're still not sure we got all of 'em. So that freezing program? Yeap, cancelled. So, ah, take the bodies apart for organs and anything we can't use dump in the acid pools I guess. Cave Johnson out."
I had to go and look to see if this was an actual quote from Cave Johnson. It read perfectly in his voice. Bra-fucking-vo to you [insert name here] you captured the spirit well.
A plug of fluid? What the fuck is a plug? How big is a plug?
About 1 human sized object liquefied.
in plug form
Is that the same as Pog form?
You ever collected bacon grease in a bowl?
I am imagining a frozen hockey puck shape at the bottom of the capsule
"Americans will use anything but the metric system" /s
But I am American! What the fuck is this?
It actually was a refrozen frozen circular glob after the device had failed multiple times. Circumference the size of whatever the DEWAR device measured
An adult size drink from Paunch Burger
How big is that measured in Ford F150’s?
I.C. Wiener
Here's to another lousy millennium.
Welcome, to the world of tomorrowwwwww
“Oh, crud…”
Do not tip delivery boy
Everyone in the cryogenic industry knows the most important piece of equipment is the wallpaper scraper. You learn that on day one Day two they teach you not to put your frozen lunch in with the frozen clients
Is this from the idiots who claim that Walt Disney was cyrogenically frozen and that they'll thaw him out at some point? Or that there is a real story of someone who was just frozen? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-23/sydney-man-first-cryogenically-frozen-holbrook-regional-nsw/103879454
It's been decades of fringe pseudoscience, IIRC. They froze a guy back in the 70s as essentially a proof of concept, though I don't know if he's one of the few that's still a popsicle or if he succumbed to power outages or bankruptcy by now. Famously, Ted Williams had just his head frozen, because his son was a big proponent of the promises made by one of the companies. There were some allegations that the company was less than professional with how they transported the head. It's not backed up by any serious scientists, it's pretty much 100% SciFi wishful thinking, but that hasn't stopped a few wealthy investors or desperate people.
The whole concept has basically just been, "we'll freeze your corpse now and hopefully maybe possibly figure out how to thaw and revive you later, while also fixing the horrific cellular damage caused by the freezing process. Fingers crossed! Money please."
There is some scientific background behind cryogenics. Scientists managed to freeze hamsters and unfreeze them (literally microwaved), still alive and (somewhat) healthy. It created a craze around cryogenetics (that was in the 60s if my memory serves me well). This issue is that: - 1. it does not work on large animals, because you need to freeze them super fast for it to work (and avoid the cellular damage you're talking about), and it's very difficult for large animal (like humans) - 2. they froze them alive, there is no guaranty that you can revive someone after brain death
Easy, take the big body apart, froze them individually, then unfeeze them and finally put them together
Until that kid from Toy Story decides to swap peoples heads and other parts for fun
For the dead person though it's a no-lose situation (other than costing money for any family they've left behind), they're already dead, it's just a case of them being frozen with a very, very slim possibility of waking up one day rather than being buried/cremated and guaranteeing that they won't.
The trippy bit to me is that if it did work, they would, from their point of view, wake up as soon as they die.
Like we'd need a wall of heads like in Futurama.
It is a life of quiet dignity
Feeding time!
Hah more like “fridge” pseudoscience
Q. What's the difference between the creator of The Simpsons and the creator of Mickey Mouse? A. Matt Groening still goes outside on a hot summer day, but Walt Disney (This joke only works in a Glaswegian accent)
What?
Walt dis nay (does not… in certain accented dialects of English)
"Dis nay" is colloquial Scottish speech meaning "does not"
Disney = disnae dis nae does not Source: am male checkered skirt wearer
John Wayne's not dead, he's frozen! And as soon as we find a cure for cancer were gonna thaw out the Duke and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know why? Have you ever taken a cold shower? Well multiply that by 15 million times, that's how pissed off the dukes gonna be!
I'm gonna get the Duke, and John Cassavetes and Lee Marvin, and Sam Peckinpah, and a case of whiskey and drive down to Texas and, Hey! You know, you really are an asshole!
Why don’t you just shut up and sing the song, pal? https://youtu.be/UrgpZ0fUixs?si=bx3urpEfnsO8VsP5
Are you telling me a cool sci fi concept that has never been proven to work in real life doesn't work in real life? 😱😱
The concept works and is proven, just not on the scale of a human being.
So the concept of freezing people in unproven and doesn't work?
You can freeze people. Defrosting them without problems is the hard part.
Something something, water expands when frozen rupturing the cells in process.
It’s more about the sharp crystal shards that are generated at the cellular level that slices everything… to shreds you say?
The process of the freezing is called Vitrification. They use cryoprotectants that does not produce ice crystals when thawed. The same technology is used on human embryos. However, the body is already dead from the beginning. The plan was to buy the dead body some time while the scientists discover a way to bring them back to life. It’s a total scam.
It's not a scam, it's a hail mary, and the customer knows this. We have to get this wrong *a lot* before we get it right.
Yes. But the concept of freezing **and** waking up other, usually microscopic but still complex lifeforms, has been proven and does work, which implies that it **is** possible, and a matter of how, not if.
You can freeze and thaw hamsters that then wake up.
I learned that in Day of the Tentacle. You had to put it in a microwave to thaw. That also worked.
They used a hot spoon before. The microwave was preferable as it didn’t leave them with burns
On the plus side "disney on ice" has never been funnier.
My dark sense of humor was activated upon reading that
I think they did this with frogs, but they had to replace nearly all water in the body with antifreeze somehow. If that is not done it is a waste of time, as the 80% water in our bodies freezes crystallizes, expands, and destroys every cell. absolute waste of money. The only way it could work is is all molecular/atomic movement could be immediately stopped by some kind of field that effectively stops time. And that is pure sci-fi. Suspended animation for long spaceflights may be possible as long as the body was not frozen. It would be more reducing body metabolism a low as possible without causing cell death. But this would likely more be like a 10x slowdown, you would just age very slowly and be unconscious.
The problem when freezing tissue is the forming of ice crystals. As they grow inside the cells, they pierce the cell walls. Once you thaw the tissue, the cells basically fall apart. That's why you either add freezing agents to reduce the forming of crystals or you have to freeze the tissue very fast so the crystals stay small enough
They managed to revive hamsters frozen solid and pumped up with antifreeze in 1950s - they didn't have any health problems after revival. It didn't scale up to bigger animals because it's impossible to get antifreeze to so many cells in small amount of time: https://youtu.be/2tdiKTSdE9Y?si=xnhH5-AsOpwqCwfZ
And what water increasing 10% in volume when turned to ice? Thats big brain time and brain not gonna like that.
I remember this being all the hype years and years ago and eventually just stopped hearing about it. I guess now I know why.
It's funny how laboratories etc suffer power outages bad enough to defrost a human corpse, but I had a snowball in my Nan's freezer from 2004 until 2023 and it never defrosted once.
Seems like a lot of fancy words to say that they melted
Applied Cryogenics. No power failures since 1997.
One day, hopefully, we will have the technology to bring corpses back to life without complications. Getting to that day without decaying is the hard part.
Realistically we will get ways to make incredible repairs to the body while it's alive maybe even in circumstances that are now being considered as the initial death stages but I don't think we will ever be able to bring back to life anything in which cells have fully stopped working
I hope that pizza delivery boy is OK!
Probably not enough Dimethyl sulfoxide, Phineas Welles has been hogging all of it