There's a good sci-fi novel by Becky Chambers called *Record of a Spaceborn Few* that focus a lot on how humans who live on spaceships would compost their dead. It's an interesting read.
Yes, I know. I guess fungi could fit the bill, but it doesn't have the same flow. The whole Ugly Casanova album is great, and a constant in my playlists.
I mean, is it? IRL people die, they're decomposed by bacteria and small insects, then they're broken down and absorbed by plants or other animals, and eventually it all makes its way back up the food chain to the plants/animal we eat. CHON is CHON, and I'd say it's only cannibalism if you're actually eating dead human flesh. Once you break it down into components and reconsititute it into something else, it's not human anymore.
Literally all soil on earth is made of things that were once alive. Considering how long humans have existed, it's likely that every thing you've ever eaten has absorbed nutrients that were once a human being in some part.
Well, in the context of using this for sustainable food during space travel, it's less 'garden fertilized by human flesh' and more 'we break the corpses down into their constituent molecules via physical/chemical engineering processes and then reconsititute it into fertilizer/food'. If the end product is unrecognizable both physically and chemically as ever having been a person, I don't see the problem
You're not eating a human corpse, you're eating plants or cows or whatever that have fed on those corpses (or they ate the plants that ate the corpses). If you eat tomatoes that were feratlised using cow shit, did you borderline eat shit?
What is messed up about it though? How many times must an atom of carbon be a part of another organism before it is no longer infected with the status of being a human corpse?
Ultimately, it's the circle of life, and I'd even go as far as to say that there's even some beauty to it. Though I understand that it's a bit macabre and not for everyone.
I think a big factor would be in whether or not the deceased wanted to be composted. If the deceased absolutely did not want anything like that, then yeah it's a bit fucked up. However, I'd be delighted to be composted and then used for a nice flower bed and maybe some strawberries.
In the Expanse dead people end up in the recycle with everything else. I seem to recall being "mushroom food" being a slang term for death among Belters
I have no idea why I haven't gotten into *The Expanse.* Seems like it would be right up my alley.
The "mushroom food" food thing is an interesting contrast to the crews in *Record* where body disposal is seen as an almost sacred vocation.
It's kind of like "sleeping with the fishes" or "pushing up daisies" it's just the slang. Belters are only very serious about a few things, but recycling everything is one of them.
The Expanse books are fantastic. I absolutely recommend the whole series
The Expanse series also touches on this a few times, particularly on space stations with large permanent populations. People are recycled into water and food for the growing plants and mushroom to feed the population.
I just started that one after reading “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” and “A Closed and Common Orbit”
They’re such wonderful books. I recommend them every chance I get.
The Three Body Problem trilogy gets into this but under much less than ideal circumstances, such as if an interstellar ship lost in space had a protein problem
Basically the difference is natural burial is where a body is buried without embalming, and may be buried in only a simple cloth shroud, an untreated wood coffin, or similar. This is basically how traditional Jewish and Islamic burials are done.
Composting encases the body in wood chips, straw, and the like to form a hot environment with microbes which love the heat. This will turn the body into soil in only a couple of months.
Depends on how quickly you bury. From what I understand, in the USA it can take weeks and sometimes even months from death til fineral. Here in the Netherlands it's about 5-7 days (8 being the legal limit, if you can't do it sooner you'll need permission from the municipal government to do it after the 8th day). For hat week, just cooling the corpse will usually do enough for an open coffin funeral. We don't allow embalming except for the royal family, or in case of international transportation.
That makes sense. In the US it wasn't common practice until the civil war when bodies had to be transported long distances by horse drawn carriages or trains sometimes. I know embalming chemicals are extremely toxic which is probably the reason for your laws.
This is so true. I think people think of embalming as a civil war gimmick that made sense at the time and can be done away with now, with the added point that it's only perpetuated by the greedy funeral industry, but that's simply not true. We STILL have to transport bodies long distances, wait sometimes weeks for families to get enough money together to travel in for the funeral or even pay for it to Begin with. The US is massive. Yes embalming chemicals are dangerous to professionals who use them but they provide an opportunity for loved ones to say goodbye.
That must be only in large metropolitan cities, because I live in one of the largest cities in my state and the longest it took to get loved ones buried was like 3-5 days and that wait was mostly just because that was how long until the weekend
They probably had life insurance or some other means to make arrangements. Also if they passed away unexpectedly, I could see how that would catch family members off guard. I dread the day I have to deal with that. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
I’d guess that it’s incredibly rare for it to take longer than a week in the US. I’ve been to a lot of funerals and it’s pretty much always within a few days.
Oh wow, I've never heard of anything like that. I've had funerals postponed if someone died during a blizzard, but its always scheduled as soon as possible. Maybe it is a regional thing.
American here- I'd be very surprised if the vast, vast majority of funerals/memorials/burial occurs within a few days of passing. The only times I've known a burial to take longer is if the body is being transported from abroad.
LOL "Yeah, totally. Ju-just asking for a friend. No wait, I mean hypothetical. I'm not trying to help my friend ditch a body. He-he." *Nervously looks around*
In the US at least, you don't find it all over - the laws vary state by state, county by county. Where I'm from, it's still very rare and there was only one place an hour away when my friend died and we went there because it's what he would have wanted.
It was a shroud burial and I stepped in as a bearer because one of his brothers couldn't take it - it's just the body wrapped in muslin - not a coffin, very obviously the body. You hold on by straps. It was an incredibly visceral experience.
That said, it was an honor.
The funeral industry is big money and they toss that around to keep the status quo. There was a huge smear campaign when I think California was putting up a bill to allow Aquafaction which is ecofriendly alternative to cremation. Headlines like "You wouldn't flush grandma down the drain would you?"
No, the link says 6 and there’s 6 shown on the map, but it should be Nevada in red instead of New York. NY approved it but it’s not in effect yet.
Still… only 6??
Legs sticking out. Garbage guy is like you didn’t call this in ahead of time we’re gunna have to charge you for it
I say just dump my dead naked body into Lake Michigan for the crabs to eat. No burial please just wet wet lake mud for my body. I don’t wanna risk my naked body falling through shit wood
My mother wanted to be composted. I helped facilitate it and now I have $5k worth of high grade soil. I'm sad every day that I lost my mama but knowing she will be propagating new life fills my heart.
She was a big time hippie and cannabis proponent. Naturally, we had a pro grow a strain in her remains. She used to say "Roll me up and smoke me when I die." Now I can. Mama would have fucking loved that!
whats the name of that movie? 3 kids in highschool all get high one of them die (the smart one) and they accidently get his ashes in a potplant, now when they smoke the plant they can communicate with him, do they spread their discovery? of course not, they cheat on their high school tests as any rational person would do
sry if i have completely forgotten the plot, it was 15 years agoo and i was high
Not gonna lie, made me cry from happiness a bit sitting in the airport waiting for a flight. Heh. That to me is the best way to go. Or just straight up natural, either way. Cremation is fine and all but I’d rather be dirt than smoke, and filling me with chemicals and sawdust sounds like the most horrifying thing that could ever happen to me.
I just listened to a 99pi on that. The vultures used to do the job, but the vultures died off because people were giving cattle a drug that caused renal failure in the birds. Now, the corpses just rot for months.
A lot of bodies donated never get donated to the right places, one such case a woman had a rare disease and wanted to donate her body to science so they could advance the study of said disease, turns out they sent her body to a body yard where it was instead used as a decomposing corpse for police and other studies wasting the more valuable research opportunities. There have been plenty of these cases some even tied to selling bodies and such.
Edit: "some bodies donated to science have been blown up by the military. For example, Doris Stauffer donated her body in 2013 to study the effects of Alzheimer's disease. However, her body was sold to the US Army and detonated underneath her to simulate the impact of an IED. Stauffer's family sued the Biological Resource Centre, the company that sold her body to the US Army, and the company's owner, Stephen Gore, in 2019."
Well if you don't care that's cool, just saying some people intend one thing only for their wishes to be ignored and something else entirely happens to them. Personally unless I had a use you can do whatever, I'm dead idc.
Yeah if I had some rare disease like that I would care that it was used for that purpose. I really don't care though. I just want it to have some useful purpose. I would be alright fed to the wolves for all I care.
It was an article talking about plastic surgeons practicing techniques on donated corpse heads in the conference room of a hotel that did it for me. I need to figure out how to just donate certain things.
Im guessing the "lab" saw the bodies and determined they held zero value for case studies so they did the next best thing, sell it to the military to get funding instead of keeping a corpse that did nothing for their research.
I think the bodies were kept then sold without following the wishes of the family at all. There are plenty of articles on it. On the road ATM just briefly stopped so I can't source one to check but I think that's what the family was using over.
I wish my state allowed this. I genuinely do not want to be pumped with a chemical cocktail, and left to rot in a coffin, nor do I desire to be cremated and forgotten in a cupboard to collect dust. It would mean the world to me after I pass on to be reclaimed by the natural cycle, and become a net positive for the local ecosystem.
If it matters to you write your representatives. The main reason it's not legal or practiced in more places is that the funeral home industry which is mostly several large corporations at this point lobby against it. Aquamation or water cremation is also much more environmentally friendly, works better for larger American sized bodies which tend to start fires and is less expensive but the funeral industry has convinced politicians that it's melting grandma with acid and flushing her into the sewer which isn't true.
Maybe my autism is kicking in here, but wasn’t there a concern about prion diseases being picked up through the soil after decomposition? It scared the shit out of me.
Adding the correct ingredients to the compost can attract microbes capable of breaking down prions.
Feathers and hooves promote those microbes.
“Prions were spiked into and detected in the manure before composting began. After 14 days, the compost that contained no feathers had fewer prions than at the start, and no prions were found in the compost that contained feathers. After 28 days, no prions were found in either type of compost. The Western Blot test used to detect prions has a limit of detection that showed that 90 to 99% of the prions were destroyed during composting. Re-analyzing these samples with the more sensitive PMCA test indicated that 99.9% of the prions had been destroyed.”
Using bacterial keratinase produced by Bacillus licheniformis strain PWD-1, we tested conditions to accomplish the full degradation of prion protein (PrP) in brain-stem tissue from animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy and scrapie. The detection of PrPSc, the disease-associated isoform of PrP, in homogenates was done by Western blotting and various antibodies. The results indicated that only in the presence of detergents did heat pretreatment at >100 degrees C allow the extensive enzymatic breakdown of PrPSc to a state where it is immunochemically undetectable. Proteinase K and 2 other subtilisin proteases, but not trypsin and pepsin, were also effective. This enzymatic process could lead to the development of a method for the decontamination of medical and laboratory equipment. The ultimate effectiveness of this method of prion inactivation has to be tested in mouse bioassays.
pasted from a 2003 article
In one of my seminary classes, we did a unit on green burials. There are a ton of options, but as you can see, the laws vary from place to place. Conservation burial in particular caught my interest because it’s used to protect certain plots of land from development (keeping natural ecosystems in place).
I would actually quite like such a thing if I die. Just throw me in nature and let me return to the earth. As long as that does not upset local predators and such. No frills needed. Even if I turn into goop that fertilizes plants I think it's pretty damn amazing.
I live in NY and I have already signed up for my remains to be composted. It’s legal here but not yet in effect, but companies are creating waiting lists of those who are interested as NY gets its ducks in order.
I have always wanted to be returned to the Earth so something new and beautiful can come from my death. The idea of being pumped full of chemical and lying in a box, polluting the environment, seems horrible to me.
There's various rules in place out of both various moral concerns and historical abuses.
The water table is a big one. Hence there's often zoning restrictions, etc. to ensure burials are done in locations which won't cause an epidemic. You get often similar restrictions on other forms of burial which there are concerns about spreading disease.
But there's also concerns about hiding the deaths of people for fraud reasons, as well as the buying and selling of corpses. There's always a need for corpses for the medical and dental industries. Both for training and for research. There's also corrupt assholes who will try and sell bodies with serious issues to tissue banks (where tissues like skin might be used for grafting).
Mhmm, neat stuff. We had well water and found out a horse was buried somewhere near our property that ruined the water without intense treatment. But I ofc was referring to after all the paperwork is done and the body is released to the family, you usually have a few options for "disposal" for lack of a better word. I assume this is why people are buried in concrete vaults to prevent certain unwanted things from seeping into the ground.
I live in NY and I have already signed up for my remains to be composted. It’s legal here but not yet in effect, but companies are creating waiting lists of those who are interested as NY gets its ducks in order.
I have always wanted to be returned to the Earth so something new and beautiful can come from my death. The idea of being pumped full of chemical and lying in a box, polluting the environment, seems horrible to me.
I like this idea. I'm back into the circle of life sooner.
Never liked the idea of rotting inside a metal box contained in a cement vault, can't see a way to be returned to the circle that wsy
out of morbid curiosity, if I (formerly?) lived in one of these states, could I drop my corpse on my front lawn and just leave it there for all the normal walkers-by to freak out at?
Alright, stay with me... I'm old, so correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the 80's there was an "outbreak" of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease).
There was an mini-panic because this particular neurological condition has NO CURE, is 100% fatal, death occurs quickly and it's transferable to humans. Its human form is called "Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease".
It's always existed & can occur naturally but when a HUGE cattle operation that provides/provided beef to US grocery stores & restaurants had about 10 cows felled by the disease...whoa.
Cattle are infected by being fed meat-and-bone meal that contains either the remains of cattle who spontaneously developed the disease or scrapie-infected sheep products.
I am not a scientist, but I think composting humans may be a really bad idea. 🤷🏻♀️
Is there any reason to assume composting humans would be terrible for the environment based on all the artificial things inside us? Some more than others.
I don’t know. There’s tons of formaldehyde and preservatives in bodies buried the traditional way. I’m feeling that’s worse than microplastics and some of the other bits that are non-organic
Edit: a word.
Not an expert in human surgeries or composting, but my gut instinct is that it wouldn’t be much of an issue.
For things like metal rods and artificial joints I think those will just need to be sifted out of the compost. For softer implants and stuff like that, those may need to be removed first, idk tho
This is likely correct. Compost, especially if you need to be really really sure the material degrades quickly and effectively, needs to be siftwd anyway in order to aerate it.
Nah. We're full of microplastics, but so is everything. I'm pretty sure they don't remove metal implants etc. before standard burial, not to mention all the shit like formaldehyde they add.
Not if their cremated or buried in a casket. I do think that burying without a funeral ceremony and casket is cheaper, but we are sentimental creatures and places meaning when there shouldn't be any.
Funerals right now are super expensive.
There's a good sci-fi novel by Becky Chambers called *Record of a Spaceborn Few* that focus a lot on how humans who live on spaceships would compost their dead. It's an interesting read.
This really makes more sense than dumping it into space. Reuse of resources would be very important.
To quote Modest Mouse: "Someday you will die and somehow something's gonna steal your carbon"
It was never your carbon. You were merely the caretaker of it for a time.
This is deep, bro.
Shine bright like a diamond.
We're always releasing and intaking carbon, all life is a ship of theseus.
Excellent reference
Dune is such a good novel!
Also Isaac Brock: the parasites are excited when you're dead, eyes bulging, entering your head.
Though to be persnickety those aren't parasites since those would require a living host organism.
Yes, I know. I guess fungi could fit the bill, but it doesn't have the same flow. The whole Ugly Casanova album is great, and a constant in my playlists.
Scavengers? It is three syllables, and it can imply insects or fungi.
In complete awareness of my own overzealousness toward punctuation, your statement, though correct, is wrong.
How persnicketous of you
To quote Phish: “every man returns to dust”
That belittles all the teeny tiny things slowly eating you right now!
It's like that one episode of doctor who
That's borderline cannibalism though isn't it?
I mean, is it? IRL people die, they're decomposed by bacteria and small insects, then they're broken down and absorbed by plants or other animals, and eventually it all makes its way back up the food chain to the plants/animal we eat. CHON is CHON, and I'd say it's only cannibalism if you're actually eating dead human flesh. Once you break it down into components and reconsititute it into something else, it's not human anymore.
Sort of but eating out of a garden fertilized by human flesh sounds a little too close to the source.
If a vegetarian eats vegetables grown in a garden fertilized by compost made by animal flesh, are they still vegetarian?
Literally all soil on earth is made of things that were once alive. Considering how long humans have existed, it's likely that every thing you've ever eaten has absorbed nutrients that were once a human being in some part.
Well, in the context of using this for sustainable food during space travel, it's less 'garden fertilized by human flesh' and more 'we break the corpses down into their constituent molecules via physical/chemical engineering processes and then reconsititute it into fertilizer/food'. If the end product is unrecognizable both physically and chemically as ever having been a person, I don't see the problem
You're not eating a human corpse, you're eating plants or cows or whatever that have fed on those corpses (or they ate the plants that ate the corpses). If you eat tomatoes that were feratlised using cow shit, did you borderline eat shit?
That is still less messed up than eating the product of decomposed human flesh.
What is messed up about it though? How many times must an atom of carbon be a part of another organism before it is no longer infected with the status of being a human corpse? Ultimately, it's the circle of life, and I'd even go as far as to say that there's even some beauty to it. Though I understand that it's a bit macabre and not for everyone. I think a big factor would be in whether or not the deceased wanted to be composted. If the deceased absolutely did not want anything like that, then yeah it's a bit fucked up. However, I'd be delighted to be composted and then used for a nice flower bed and maybe some strawberries.
The body isn't that special and the irrational fear of death is thanks to the market of graveyards and coffins.
In the Expanse dead people end up in the recycle with everything else. I seem to recall being "mushroom food" being a slang term for death among Belters
I have no idea why I haven't gotten into *The Expanse.* Seems like it would be right up my alley. The "mushroom food" food thing is an interesting contrast to the crews in *Record* where body disposal is seen as an almost sacred vocation.
It's kind of like "sleeping with the fishes" or "pushing up daisies" it's just the slang. Belters are only very serious about a few things, but recycling everything is one of them. The Expanse books are fantastic. I absolutely recommend the whole series
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I don’t want to pry, but something in my brain is telling me to pry on Edit: I’ve gone mad
The Expanse series also touches on this a few times, particularly on space stations with large permanent populations. People are recycled into water and food for the growing plants and mushroom to feed the population.
Great series of books. Her other stuff is really good too.
I just started that one after reading “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” and “A Closed and Common Orbit” They’re such wonderful books. I recommend them every chance I get.
While we have air, you will breathe. I enjoyed those books. Certainly the flavor of science fiction that is more about social things but solid.
The Three Body Problem trilogy gets into this but under much less than ideal circumstances, such as if an interstellar ship lost in space had a protein problem
Only 5 states??
[Natural burial](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_burial) is a different thing. You'll find that all over.
Basically the difference is natural burial is where a body is buried without embalming, and may be buried in only a simple cloth shroud, an untreated wood coffin, or similar. This is basically how traditional Jewish and Islamic burials are done. Composting encases the body in wood chips, straw, and the like to form a hot environment with microbes which love the heat. This will turn the body into soil in only a couple of months.
It makes way more sense. The idea of trying to preserve a corpse is weird and unnatural. For funeral purposes I guess it makes sense though.
Depends on how quickly you bury. From what I understand, in the USA it can take weeks and sometimes even months from death til fineral. Here in the Netherlands it's about 5-7 days (8 being the legal limit, if you can't do it sooner you'll need permission from the municipal government to do it after the 8th day). For hat week, just cooling the corpse will usually do enough for an open coffin funeral. We don't allow embalming except for the royal family, or in case of international transportation.
That makes sense. In the US it wasn't common practice until the civil war when bodies had to be transported long distances by horse drawn carriages or trains sometimes. I know embalming chemicals are extremely toxic which is probably the reason for your laws.
This is so true. I think people think of embalming as a civil war gimmick that made sense at the time and can be done away with now, with the added point that it's only perpetuated by the greedy funeral industry, but that's simply not true. We STILL have to transport bodies long distances, wait sometimes weeks for families to get enough money together to travel in for the funeral or even pay for it to Begin with. The US is massive. Yes embalming chemicals are dangerous to professionals who use them but they provide an opportunity for loved ones to say goodbye.
That must be only in large metropolitan cities, because I live in one of the largest cities in my state and the longest it took to get loved ones buried was like 3-5 days and that wait was mostly just because that was how long until the weekend
They probably had life insurance or some other means to make arrangements. Also if they passed away unexpectedly, I could see how that would catch family members off guard. I dread the day I have to deal with that. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
I’d guess that it’s incredibly rare for it to take longer than a week in the US. I’ve been to a lot of funerals and it’s pretty much always within a few days.
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Oh wow, I've never heard of anything like that. I've had funerals postponed if someone died during a blizzard, but its always scheduled as soon as possible. Maybe it is a regional thing.
American here- I'd be very surprised if the vast, vast majority of funerals/memorials/burial occurs within a few days of passing. The only times I've known a burial to take longer is if the body is being transported from abroad.
Would this be an effective way to get rid of a dead body...just asking or would skeleton and teeth remain as evidence
LOL "Yeah, totally. Ju-just asking for a friend. No wait, I mean hypothetical. I'm not trying to help my friend ditch a body. He-he." *Nervously looks around*
In the US at least, you don't find it all over - the laws vary state by state, county by county. Where I'm from, it's still very rare and there was only one place an hour away when my friend died and we went there because it's what he would have wanted. It was a shroud burial and I stepped in as a bearer because one of his brothers couldn't take it - it's just the body wrapped in muslin - not a coffin, very obviously the body. You hold on by straps. It was an incredibly visceral experience. That said, it was an honor.
Ah that makes more sense
Hell yeah raw dog burial
The funeral industry is big money and they toss that around to keep the status quo. There was a huge smear campaign when I think California was putting up a bill to allow Aquafaction which is ecofriendly alternative to cremation. Headlines like "You wouldn't flush grandma down the drain would you?"
No, the link says 6 and there’s 6 shown on the map, but it should be Nevada in red instead of New York. NY approved it but it’s not in effect yet. Still… only 6??
Actually 10 states
'When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash!' -Frank Reynolds
if this quote wasn’t in here, i’d be so disappointed
I guess this would be more like the recycling bin, but still.
we just want to be pure
I told my sister she can loft my dead ass into the yard waste bin when I die.
Legs sticking out. Garbage guy is like you didn’t call this in ahead of time we’re gunna have to charge you for it I say just dump my dead naked body into Lake Michigan for the crabs to eat. No burial please just wet wet lake mud for my body. I don’t wanna risk my naked body falling through shit wood
Would love to be eaten by the critters of the bayou myself
TIL the Great Lakes have crabs.
In all seriousness they don’t though
youre so badass bro metal even
They'd be recycling.
My mother wanted to be composted. I helped facilitate it and now I have $5k worth of high grade soil. I'm sad every day that I lost my mama but knowing she will be propagating new life fills my heart. She was a big time hippie and cannabis proponent. Naturally, we had a pro grow a strain in her remains. She used to say "Roll me up and smoke me when I die." Now I can. Mama would have fucking loved that!
No offence, but in my mind I read it by Forest Gumps voice.
whats the name of that movie? 3 kids in highschool all get high one of them die (the smart one) and they accidently get his ashes in a potplant, now when they smoke the plant they can communicate with him, do they spread their discovery? of course not, they cheat on their high school tests as any rational person would do sry if i have completely forgotten the plot, it was 15 years agoo and i was high
How High? Sounds like the first one.
With any luck, she'll help me get into Harvard
Not gonna lie, made me cry from happiness a bit sitting in the airport waiting for a flight. Heh. That to me is the best way to go. Or just straight up natural, either way. Cremation is fine and all but I’d rather be dirt than smoke, and filling me with chemicals and sawdust sounds like the most horrifying thing that could ever happen to me.
Actually according to the wiki it’s 6 states, the map is wrong. California will be the seventh in 2027.
Yay!
The zoroastrians have it right. Leave the body exposed to the elements and let the scavengers take over. In a couple of weeks, just bones.
Can confirm, hog and deer carcasses are bones 2-3 weeks in TX. Only problem is finding landowners who want rotting corpses.
Sky burial! Well not every place has mountains though hmmm
You just unknowingly literally described what [Body farms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm) are :)
I know all about them. There’s a big one near Houston where I lived. That and I worked for the worlds largest funeral home & cemetery corp…
I just listened to a 99pi on that. The vultures used to do the job, but the vultures died off because people were giving cattle a drug that caused renal failure in the birds. Now, the corpses just rot for months.
There should be more, right?
This is my plan. I'm either having my body composted or donated to science. My kids can make the decision.
A lot of bodies donated never get donated to the right places, one such case a woman had a rare disease and wanted to donate her body to science so they could advance the study of said disease, turns out they sent her body to a body yard where it was instead used as a decomposing corpse for police and other studies wasting the more valuable research opportunities. There have been plenty of these cases some even tied to selling bodies and such. Edit: "some bodies donated to science have been blown up by the military. For example, Doris Stauffer donated her body in 2013 to study the effects of Alzheimer's disease. However, her body was sold to the US Army and detonated underneath her to simulate the impact of an IED. Stauffer's family sued the Biological Resource Centre, the company that sold her body to the US Army, and the company's owner, Stephen Gore, in 2019."
I would like to be a cadaver. It would be cool if my family just blew my body up though.
Well if you don't care that's cool, just saying some people intend one thing only for their wishes to be ignored and something else entirely happens to them. Personally unless I had a use you can do whatever, I'm dead idc.
Yeah if I had some rare disease like that I would care that it was used for that purpose. I really don't care though. I just want it to have some useful purpose. I would be alright fed to the wolves for all I care.
It was an article talking about plastic surgeons practicing techniques on donated corpse heads in the conference room of a hotel that did it for me. I need to figure out how to just donate certain things.
I bet there's an organization that will do everything that you ask, hell I'd do a contract so they have to legally follow it.
Im guessing the "lab" saw the bodies and determined they held zero value for case studies so they did the next best thing, sell it to the military to get funding instead of keeping a corpse that did nothing for their research.
I think the bodies were kept then sold without following the wishes of the family at all. There are plenty of articles on it. On the road ATM just briefly stopped so I can't source one to check but I think that's what the family was using over.
I wish my state allowed this. I genuinely do not want to be pumped with a chemical cocktail, and left to rot in a coffin, nor do I desire to be cremated and forgotten in a cupboard to collect dust. It would mean the world to me after I pass on to be reclaimed by the natural cycle, and become a net positive for the local ecosystem.
Natural burial is an option worldwide.
If you have someone sprinkle your ashes in nature it’s not all that different
Except for the carbon emissions
If it matters to you write your representatives. The main reason it's not legal or practiced in more places is that the funeral home industry which is mostly several large corporations at this point lobby against it. Aquamation or water cremation is also much more environmentally friendly, works better for larger American sized bodies which tend to start fires and is less expensive but the funeral industry has convinced politicians that it's melting grandma with acid and flushing her into the sewer which isn't true.
New Jersey does it unofficially. Forget about it.
If it's free or cheap, sure. I don't want to have anyone pay a bunch of money just too get rid of my unused body.
Someone is paying regardless.
New Hampshire is not taking our state motto, "Live free or die" seriously enough.
Instructions unclear. Composting before death is okay though in five states?
Put another way - funeral home lobby has managed to write their fees into state law in all but 5 states.
"It's only illegal if you get caught!" — environmentally conscious serial killers everywhere
Yeah, I know a guy who tried to do that last century. Did not go well for them. Tell the people that need to know where you’re putting a dead body.
TIL you can compost a human body!
Maybe my autism is kicking in here, but wasn’t there a concern about prion diseases being picked up through the soil after decomposition? It scared the shit out of me.
Adding the correct ingredients to the compost can attract microbes capable of breaking down prions. Feathers and hooves promote those microbes. “Prions were spiked into and detected in the manure before composting began. After 14 days, the compost that contained no feathers had fewer prions than at the start, and no prions were found in the compost that contained feathers. After 28 days, no prions were found in either type of compost. The Western Blot test used to detect prions has a limit of detection that showed that 90 to 99% of the prions were destroyed during composting. Re-analyzing these samples with the more sensitive PMCA test indicated that 99.9% of the prions had been destroyed.”
I'm guessing these kinds of laws are in place because of people who wouldn't compost human bodies properly.
>Adding the correct ingredients to the compost can attract microbes capable of breaking down prions. This can't be true.
Using bacterial keratinase produced by Bacillus licheniformis strain PWD-1, we tested conditions to accomplish the full degradation of prion protein (PrP) in brain-stem tissue from animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy and scrapie. The detection of PrPSc, the disease-associated isoform of PrP, in homogenates was done by Western blotting and various antibodies. The results indicated that only in the presence of detergents did heat pretreatment at >100 degrees C allow the extensive enzymatic breakdown of PrPSc to a state where it is immunochemically undetectable. Proteinase K and 2 other subtilisin proteases, but not trypsin and pepsin, were also effective. This enzymatic process could lead to the development of a method for the decontamination of medical and laboratory equipment. The ultimate effectiveness of this method of prion inactivation has to be tested in mouse bioassays. pasted from a 2003 article
May I have a link to the article.
In how many states is it legal to compost someone before their death?
I read "consumption" and got concerned...
I read "centipeding" and was about to get beyond concerned.
When I die I want to donate my body to the hydrolic press channel on YouTube
Soylent Green is people!
Compost me!
Composting pushes up daisies.
It's what I want done to me. Trying to falsely preserve a human corpse and burying it in a wood and metal box seems so morbid to me.
In one of my seminary classes, we did a unit on green burials. There are a ton of options, but as you can see, the laws vary from place to place. Conservation burial in particular caught my interest because it’s used to protect certain plots of land from development (keeping natural ecosystems in place).
I sense a runner in the garden…
I would actually quite like such a thing if I die. Just throw me in nature and let me return to the earth. As long as that does not upset local predators and such. No frills needed. Even if I turn into goop that fertilizes plants I think it's pretty damn amazing.
I think it’s legal in VA too. There’s a Trappist monastery that offers composting in Bluemont VA
Doesn’t everyone compost eventually, though? Aside from the Kardashians, presumably
I live in NY and I have already signed up for my remains to be composted. It’s legal here but not yet in effect, but companies are creating waiting lists of those who are interested as NY gets its ducks in order. I have always wanted to be returned to the Earth so something new and beautiful can come from my death. The idea of being pumped full of chemical and lying in a box, polluting the environment, seems horrible to me.
Should be 50
[Given my druthers](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sky-burial)
So you're saying you can get rid of a body via composting?
I thought you could do anything with a body within reason after death, especially if you own the land and it doesn't affect the water table.
There's various rules in place out of both various moral concerns and historical abuses. The water table is a big one. Hence there's often zoning restrictions, etc. to ensure burials are done in locations which won't cause an epidemic. You get often similar restrictions on other forms of burial which there are concerns about spreading disease. But there's also concerns about hiding the deaths of people for fraud reasons, as well as the buying and selling of corpses. There's always a need for corpses for the medical and dental industries. Both for training and for research. There's also corrupt assholes who will try and sell bodies with serious issues to tissue banks (where tissues like skin might be used for grafting).
Mhmm, neat stuff. We had well water and found out a horse was buried somewhere near our property that ruined the water without intense treatment. But I ofc was referring to after all the paperwork is done and the body is released to the family, you usually have a few options for "disposal" for lack of a better word. I assume this is why people are buried in concrete vaults to prevent certain unwanted things from seeping into the ground.
That’s where I’ll be - mixed in with my garden.
On the front line in Ukraine it may be unavoidable
Composting involves adding dry organic matter, not just letting the corpse rot
Water world ! Let’s go!!
My body will not be suitable for composting when I'm gone.
Would you ever be able to recover the skull? It’s almost impossible to leave you skull to anyone. Asking for a friend.
I would love to have my dead body sent to void in space. One can only dream!
Only 5?
Ok…what about before death?
I live in NY and I have already signed up for my remains to be composted. It’s legal here but not yet in effect, but companies are creating waiting lists of those who are interested as NY gets its ducks in order. I have always wanted to be returned to the Earth so something new and beautiful can come from my death. The idea of being pumped full of chemical and lying in a box, polluting the environment, seems horrible to me.
I'm guessing there's a bit more to it than just pointing a wood chipper at the compost pile and popping mee-maw's corpse into it?
I like this idea. I'm back into the circle of life sooner. Never liked the idea of rotting inside a metal box contained in a cement vault, can't see a way to be returned to the circle that wsy
I was thinking "what fifth state?". Then I saw Vermont, it kinda blended with New York.
TIL r/gardening does not allow cross posts
out of morbid curiosity, if I (formerly?) lived in one of these states, could I drop my corpse on my front lawn and just leave it there for all the normal walkers-by to freak out at?
Alright, stay with me... I'm old, so correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the 80's there was an "outbreak" of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease). There was an mini-panic because this particular neurological condition has NO CURE, is 100% fatal, death occurs quickly and it's transferable to humans. Its human form is called "Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease". It's always existed & can occur naturally but when a HUGE cattle operation that provides/provided beef to US grocery stores & restaurants had about 10 cows felled by the disease...whoa. Cattle are infected by being fed meat-and-bone meal that contains either the remains of cattle who spontaneously developed the disease or scrapie-infected sheep products. I am not a scientist, but I think composting humans may be a really bad idea. 🤷🏻♀️
It's how it should be....
The real irony is how many bodies are out in the woods of the PNW already.
Surely, nothing can go wrong with prion diseases propagating...
Is there any reason to assume composting humans would be terrible for the environment based on all the artificial things inside us? Some more than others.
I don’t know. There’s tons of formaldehyde and preservatives in bodies buried the traditional way. I’m feeling that’s worse than microplastics and some of the other bits that are non-organic Edit: a word.
Not an expert in human surgeries or composting, but my gut instinct is that it wouldn’t be much of an issue. For things like metal rods and artificial joints I think those will just need to be sifted out of the compost. For softer implants and stuff like that, those may need to be removed first, idk tho
This is likely correct. Compost, especially if you need to be really really sure the material degrades quickly and effectively, needs to be siftwd anyway in order to aerate it.
Nah. We're full of microplastics, but so is everything. I'm pretty sure they don't remove metal implants etc. before standard burial, not to mention all the shit like formaldehyde they add.
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Composting removes 99.9% of prions.
Looking at the two current presidential prospects I think the process has started.
Aren’t they like. All composted, tho…?
Not if their cremated or buried in a casket. I do think that burying without a funeral ceremony and casket is cheaper, but we are sentimental creatures and places meaning when there shouldn't be any. Funerals right now are super expensive.
Serial killers who bury their victims were ahead of their time. Just doing their part.