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New / Non-Traditional Corpse Treatment & Interment Strategies

Synchronicity?

I just came in from watching a television show about the body farm. It was an episode of Geo Files which aired on the National Geographic Channel. It was fascinating. Dr. Bass has written a book about the body farm as well. I think it is called Death's Little Acre.

Personally, I like the Chinese method. They bury the dead for a year or so, then dig them up, clean and polish the bones, and place them in decorative urns which are treated with great reverence by the family. It takes up more space than cremation, but I've always thought it was a lovely custom.
 
Who was that guy in the 19th C who put it in his will that his body was to be fed to the inmates of Battersea dogs home?

(He didnt get his wish, by the way)

You cant beat that for effficiency, better still, use hyenas, for they will eat and digest the bones too.
 
LifeGem

"There's all sorts of things you can do with ashes. Like creating diamonds with them, as LifeGem does. (Couldn't find a online link for them, odd.)"

Found it!! www.lifegem.com

I'm new to all of this but have been reading the posts for a couple of weeks. Its great!!
 
Re: LifeGem

NicStoj said:
Found it!! www.lifegem.com

I'm new to all of this but have been reading the posts for a couple of weeks. Its great!!

Oopsadaisy! It's http://www.lifegem.com .. not sure what happened with your link there Nic! ;)

In a sense, this is a lovely idea. Having a diamond rather than ashes is much ... I dunno.. nicer. But then I start thinking, "what if their soul is trapped within the diamond?". Freeaky! :eek!!!!:
 
Oops.

You're right, it is a little bit freaky, but their spirit could also be trapped in the ashes, so either way.....

I still keep threatening my loved one with this treatment!!
 
U.S. Firm Offers Taiwanese 'Space Burials'

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan is one of the most densely populated places in the world, and there's not much more room for new cemeteries. But a U.S. firm is offering a solution: shooting people's remains into space.

The Houston-based Celestis Inc. announced Thursday that it has signed a deal with one of Taiwan's biggest funeral homes, Baushan Enterprise, to provide “space burials” to the Taiwanese.

Robert Tysor, chief executive of Celestis, explained how it works at a contract-signing ceremony in Taipei. He said the ashes are packed into an aluminum tube about the size of a lipstick container. The tube is shot into space on commercial rockets from bases in the United States and Russia, he said.

The tube orbits Earth once every 90 minutes before re-entering Earth's atmosphere and burning up, he said. It can orbit for months or even years, he said.

“It helps one fulfill the instinctive desire to explore space,” Tysor said.

Baushan manager Yeh Feng-chiang told reporters, “Whenever the moon rises, you can look up into the sky and remember the deceased.”

Space burial costs about ,000, about the average price of a burial in Taiwan, Yeh said.

He said people can also send their ashes to the moon's surface for about ,000.

In Asia, Celestis said it began offering the service in Japan two years ago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/10/national/main536134.shtml
 
Shanghai facing grave problem: land for tombs running out fast

3/25/04



SHANGHAI, China (AP) _ China's most populous city _ already short on housing, electricity and water _ is now running out of land for graves, reports said Thursday.

Land set aside for graves will be exhausted in five years, but appeals to citizens to place their loved ones' remains in wall units or scatter their ashes at sea have been unsuccessful, Shanghai's Labor Post said.

``Citizens of Shanghai will be facing a severe situation of having nowhere to bury the dead,'' the report said.

About 80 percent of the 100,000 Shanghainese who die each year are still buried in individual or family tombs, it said.

Since the 1949 revolution that swept the communists to power, China has promoted cremation as a way of saving tillable land once used for burials. Millions of grave sites were plowed over to create more farm land, and extravagant funerals were frowned on as superstitious and unacceptable for proper Communists.

However, traditional attitudes toward burial returned with loosened social and economic restrictions in the 1980s. Bodies are still routinely cremated, but by the early 1990s, traditional horseshoe-shaped graves could again be seen rising from hills and hedgerows on Shanghai's outskirts.

Property developers have also begun building massive tomb complexes that appeal to the emerging class of wealthy city residents. That has been an especially lucrative business in the area around Shanghai, whose residents enjoy the highest average incomes anywhere in China.

With a population now estimated at 20 million and a fast growing economy, Shanghai has been consuming land and other resources at an alarming pace.

Thousands of migrant workers shelter in hovels on the city's edge due to a shortage of affordable housing. Electricity has been rationed for factories due to a power shortage, and the city's aquifer has fallen to chronically low levels, forcing the coastal city to search for new sources of water further inland.

Land for graves has always been a low priority and tombs were officially permitted only in areas unsuitable for cultivation, such as on sandy and briny soil. Of the original 330 hectares (740 acres) set aside for cemeteries, less than half remains, the Labor Post reported.

The rate of decline won't likely end soon. Only about 15 percent of Shanghainese opt to have their ashes kept in halls or slotted into compartments in walls. Even fewer _ about 1 percent _ are buried at sea.

To try to stretch remaining resources, city officials will reduce the regulation size of graves from 1.5 square meters (1.8 square yards) to just 1 square meter (1.2 square yards), the paper said.

Use rights for graves will also be reduced from about 70 years to about 20 or 30 years, after which remains will have to be moved elsewhere.

http://www.planetsave.com/ViewStory.asp?ID=4888
 
Big Bill Robins said:
Personally I would like to be buried at sea. I'm perfectly serious about this. Seems a sensible alternative bearing in mind the above situation.

Bill Robinson
That's only a temporary solution, Bill. Soon the sea will be filled up as well.
 
And why donate your body to boring old science when it could be donated to cool superstition? Plenty of impoverished voodoo cults and devil worshippers have to make do with chicken and goats, while perfectly usable human carcasses are just buried in the ground as so much landfill.

Nah, forget that. I think my vote, as well as my body, will go to this project.
 
Alaskans begin burying winter's dead

Monday, May 10, 2004 Posted: 1736 GMT (0136 HKT)



(AP) -- As the spring thaw softens ground that has been frozen hard as granite by the long Alaska winter, cemeteries start burying people who died during the past seven months.

Since October, when digging became next to impossible, many of Alaska's dead have been in storage. Now, families are finally able to inter their loved ones in a somber Far North rite of spring.

"It's around Memorial Day when we go down 6 feet," said David Erickson, cemetery manager of Northern Lights Mortuary and Memorial Park in Fairbanks. "We'll start earlier for infants and urns."

Burials started May 3 at Birch Hill cemetery, said Dave Jacoby, public works director for the city, which operates the cemetery. Birch Hill had 22 delayed burials to perform.

Northern Lights, which stored about 15 bodies this winter, begins its burials near the latter part of May because it's at a higher elevation where the soil gets less exposure to the sun.

Winter temperatures can fall to 40 below zero or lower at Fairbanks, in Alaska's interior.

"The ground is so hard we'd be digging a grave for three days," Jacoby said.

Even in places with milder climates, such as Anchorage, many cemeteries close in the fall because of freezing ground.
Winter burials the norm

Delayed burials occur in other frigid climates across the North, including some parts of New England and northern Minnesota.

But in Canada, winter burials are the norm, said Roger Yador, director of Heritage North Funeral Home in the Yukon Territory city of Whitehorse.

And even in Alaska winter burials are still common outside the bigger cities.

"Why wait? We live in the cold and snow and ice. It seems barbaric to store them above ground and wait until springtime," said Shirley Demientieff, an Athabascan who buried her grandmother, Mary, in the village of Nenana in January.

After clearing the snow from her grandmother's grave site, fires were used to slowly thaw the ground, Demientieff said.

Erickson said Northern Lights once tried using steam to thaw a grave site, but it cost more than most families could afford.

Another time, cemetery workers tried digging graves in advance, before the ground froze. "It turned out nobody wanted those graves. They wanted to be by their relatives or in another spot," Erickson said.

Seven months too long

The Rev. Scott Fisher, of the 1,200-member St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Fairbanks, said he disagrees with the practice of storing bodies over the winter because the flow of a service from church to graveside is psychologically important for grieving families.

"The sound of the earth on the casket -- ka-thud -- breaks through some of the shock and the grief," he said.

"Say somebody dies and nothing happens for seven months. By that amount of time -- five months, six months, seven months -- a thin veneer of feeling has begun and it gets ripped off," he said.

Fisher will hold services at two spring burials this year. Other members of his congregation who died during the winter already have been buried in villages outside Fairbanks.

Fisher said he holds a special graveside service because of the time that's passed.

"You've got to go back into the moment. We have to pull ourselves where we were when the funeral service ended," Fisher said

Jacoby said some families choose not to have graveside services in the spring, but ask the cemetery to notify them when a loved one is buried.

"I've seen people worse at the interment than at the actual service, because they relive it twice," he said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/West/05/10/storing.dead.ap/index.html
 
And more memorable ways to preserve a loved one:

Regulators stymie 'human trees'

From AFP
May 13, 2004

A SCHEME by two London artists to take DNA from a dead person and insert it into apple trees to create a living memorial of that individual's "biological essence" has run headlong into problems.

Royal College of Art graduates Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara want to insert a stretch of genetic material from a dead loved-one into the genome of an apple tree.

Their symbolic goal: every cell in the tree will have a genetic echo of that person, and the heritage will be handed on forever in the tree's fruit.

Tremmel's and Fukuhara's idea has proven so successful that Britain's National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) has earmarked 35,000 pounds to help the duo's company, Biopresence, get off the ground.

Their goal is to market the engineered trees at 20,000 pounds each.

Not so fast, the weekly magazine New Scientist reports in its next edition, published on Saturday. Problem No. 1 has been technical.

The two artists have had to water down their original proposal, which was to insert a uniquely individual sequence of "junk" human DNA into the tree's genome. Junk DNA is so called because it is part of the genetic code that does not control proteins.

But, fearing ethical and safety objections, the pair have now backed off, and have decided instead to embed a coded version of a human DNA sequence into an apple gene -- but without changing the gene's length or the protein that it controls.

But the only known way of doing this is extraordinarily complex and time-consuming (and thus expensive) because the sequence has to go through eight coding steps.

The other problem is even more daunting: British regulators.

Every single tree will have to be approved by the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE), a watchdog that vets applications for genetically-modified organisms.

This will require Biopresence to produce exhaustive test result for every order it receives.

"If you are in search of a permanent genetic memorial to grandma, look closer to home," advises New Scientist.

"Her truly meaningful genetic legacy lies in you, your children and your grandchildren."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9550089%5E29677,00.html
 
Talking tombstones to bear message from grave

Thu 8 July, 2004 03:33

LONDON (Reuters) - The dead could soon be speaking from the grave if an American inventor's plan becomes reality.

Robert Barrows, of Burlingame, California has filed a patent application for a video-equipped tombstone that will display a video message from grave's occupant.

"If his patent is granted, Barrows hopes that when people make out their will, they also leave a parting video with their lawyer," New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

The hollow, talking tombstone will include a flat touch screen and will house a computer with a microchip memory or hard disc. It will be powered by electricity from the cemetery's lighting system.

The plan will not be the first electronically enhanced tombstone. An American company has a patent on a gravestone that will display photographs of the deceased and tributes from friends, according to the magazine.

But the Barrows plan will go one further by including contributions actually from the deceased.

"It's history from the horse's mouth," he said.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=5614307&section=news
 
The hollow, talking tombstone will include a flat touch screen and will house a computer with a microchip memory or hard disc. It will be powered by electricity from the cemetery's lighting system.

That could be quite good if you wanted to do Bob Flanagan's proposed final art project, he wanted to have a live cam in his coffin so that people could pay to view him decomposing.

It didn't happen. Quite possibly it's just a matter of time.
 
The ultimate reality show

BRF:
Isn't that how the "Truman Show" ended? :p
 
I don't know, but I'm pretty certain the Flanagan thing pre-dates it.

He did a simulation of it using a slice of pear with a little face cut into it:)
 
Jewels made from Human ashes

Jewels made from father's ashes

The first synthetic diamonds made from the ashes of a man are to be set into jewellery so they can be worn by his family.

Brian Tandy's ashes were sent to the US by LifeGem, based in Hove, Sussex, and turned into gems for his wife Lin and daughters Gayle, 25, and Claire, 21.

Mrs Tandy, 51, from Reading, Berkshire, returned to LifeGem on Saturday for help to get the diamonds set in rings.

The company went with her to a Brighton jewellers to advise on the process.

It is a very essence of the person you have lost - it is a mobile memorial that never has to leave your side
David Hampson, LifeGem

The geologist's ashes were heated and pressurised to produce the gem.

The process produces a raw crystal which is then polished and shaped.

Mrs Tandy's £2,250 pale yellow diamond was the first produced by the company.

She ordered further pieces for her daughters so they can remember their father who died from heart failure in April 2003.

Mrs Tandy said: "It was a very personal memorial to my husband.

"It was a very emotional decision to have it done and it was something we did not take lightly.

"We thought about it for a long time and they (her daughters) just wanted something very personal for their dad.

"Every diamond is individual and unique and that was so appropriate for their father.

"It was something they can keep close to them and be a constant reminder."

David Hampson, chief executive of LifeGem, said: "Cremated remains consist partially of carbon so what we do is extract the carbon, purify it then put in a commercial diamond press and grow a synthetic diamond.

"But it is a synthetic diamond with a specific carbon source which is your loved one.


"It is a very essence of the person you have lost - it is a mobile memorial that never has to leave your side.

"What we have found is that it gives a lot of people a great deal of comfort and solace."



BBCi News 08/08/04
 
I'm going to be cremated, then used in winter to grit t'path. ;)
 
Sir, could you move your headstone? The rest of us could en

Source

L.A. Cemetery Showing Movies at Mausoleum
Fri Aug 20, 3:18 PM
By JESSICA GRESKO, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Amid the mausoleums and headstones at Hollywood Forever Cemetery about 1,700 living guests have unfurled picnic blankets and set up beach chairs, erected makeshift coffee tables with flowers and candles, and unpacked dinners of sushi, fried chicken or pasta salad.

They're here for cinema cemetery-style, an experience shared with the graveyard's 88,000 long-term residents. Later, the night's film will start, projected on a mausoleum wall.


"It's the ultimate L.A. experience," film fan Mark Koberg said between mouthfuls of smoked turkey and arugula sandwiches, washed down with wine.


Six years ago the cemetery, which adjoins Paramount Studios' backlot, wouldn't have been as inviting.


Though at least a hundred Hollywood icons are laid to rest there — including actor Rudolph Valentino, "Ten Commandments" producer Cecil B. DeMille and Bugs Bunny voice Mel Blanc — the cemetery's own fame had faded. Its previous owners had run it into bankruptcy, and a 1994 earthquake left tombstones tilted and cracked, while El Nino rains flooded its lake.


Then in 1998, Tyler Cassity, a cemetery entrepreneur, bought the century-old graveyard for 5,000. He operates seven cemeteries in California, Illinois and Missouri. His first charge in Hollywood, however, was revitalizing the cemetery_ repaving roads, replacing broken stained glass inside mausoleums and righting monuments.


He also began showing movies. And he believes he's the only person in the country to combine classic movies and mausoleums.


"It makes sense when your neighbor is Paramount Studios," Cassity said. "To me it's dependent on the community around you and who is buried there. Is it memorializing them in some way? Showing movies in a cemetery where there weren't film stars — it wouldn't make sense. "


Cassity began by showing a Valentino film on the anniversary of the romantic hero's death, when 200 to 300 fans would come by to pay their respects. Then he was approached by John Wyatt, the founder of Cinespia, a Los Angeles film society dedicated to screening and preserving classic films. The society was growing too large to go to screenings as a group and was looking for a new home, one with history, Wyatt said.


Cassity said the partnership felt right: historic movies in a historic setting. Since then, Cinespia has made the 620-acre park its movie theater on summer weekends, and next year's season is already being planned.


Growing mainly via e-mail and word of mouth, the event (billed as an evening "below and above the stars") has been surprisingly successful, and even as it has grown it has retained a small-group feel — visitors making friends and sharing food with their neighbors.


Wyatt, who chooses the films, says he likes bringing his favorite films to a wider audience, and Cassity attributes part of the series' success to a growing interest in death, pointing to the popularity of the TV show "Six Feet Under" and a recent reality series about a family-run mortuary.


Visitors do keep some distance during the evening events. They don't actually sit on graves, though a few family mausoleums ring the perimeter of the lawn where movies are shown, including those of actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and his father, who helped co-found United Artists.


The crowd of mostly 20- and 30-somethings, some in the movie and public relations industry themselves, seem to recognize they're in a special place. They pick up after themselves, and that's helped keep complaints to a minimum — only two so far.


Visitors say they come for various reasons. Sheila Boyd and Hopper Stone went to one recent screening on a date. Tiffany Borders arrived with a group of friends. Carmonique and Vincent Harris came after being told the experience was romantic.


Some guests acknowledged being a little "creeped out" by the cemetery. But, the time and the location didn't bother Russell Rabichev, who watched a movie one recent weekend.


"After two minutes you forget it's a cemetery," he said.
 
Sept. 11, 2004, 6:00PM

Germans are crossing the border for cheaper funerals

Benefit cuts turn cash-strapped citizens toward the Czech Republic

By JEFFREY FLEISHMAN
Los Angeles Times


BERLIN - The suntanned undertaker slips into his office, lifts six tiny urns and ponders a question few would utter aloud: "If Germans will cross the Czech border for prostitutes and cheap cigarettes, why not to be cremated?"

Hartmut Woite is a maverick when it comes to death. Twenty-four years ago, the Berlin mortician trundled West German bodies into the communist East to save on funeral costs. "All they wanted over there," he says, "was quick cash."

Today, trailing a vanload of coffins, Woite rides a private bus to the Czech Republic, where cremations cost about half as much as in Germany.

Such ingenuity — his critics call it the macabre side of opportunism — defines the man in charge of the perhaps unseemly named, but quite popular, Discount Coffins.

Woite says business is up 40 percent since Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government eliminated the 5 "death subsidy" Germans received for their funerals.

The undertaker's good fortune is tied to the bewilderment and anger sweeping a nation that has been the epitome of the welfare state for decades.

Economic and social reforms pushed by Schroeder to keep the country globally competitive are cutting health and unemployment benefits and forcing union members to work longer hours for the same pay.

Thousands of jobless and growing numbers from the middle class are protesting in Berlin, Magdeburg, Leipzig and other cities. Most Germans agreed that reform was necessary but said they didn't anticipate the sting of the cutbacks.

Faced with a 10.5 percent unemployment rate and a huge federal deficit, Germans are finding they have to pay more for doctor's visits, tooth fillings and caskets.

"People are racking their brains and thinking, 'How do I bury my loved one?' " said Woite, whose brazen capitalism got him bounced out of the funeral directors guild. "It's time to offer people affordability."

Working-class Germans — among the highest-paid in the world — complain that politicians and corporate executives are not even wincing as workers lose entitlements and class divisions widen.

"It's a mean thing to cut the death subsidy," said Lutz Garczorz, who hired Woite to arrange for his father's cremation and interment in an anonymous sliver of land in Vysocany, Czech Republic. "Yes, I would have liked to bury my father in a cemetery close to us. But if you don't have the money, what can you do?"

CUT-RATE CREMATIONS
• Cash-strapped: Germans are getting less-expensive cremations in the Czech Republic for their loved ones.
• Package deal: One undertaker includes bus transportation, lunch and beer as part of his cremation fee.
• Eliminated: The German government has eliminated its traditional 5 funeral subsidy as part of economic and social reforms.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/world/2789408
 
The Yithian said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4215923.stm.

Superb! Where's my giant badger coffin?

page not found
 
Split and merged with the unusual burial thread. The story to accompany those pictures:

Ghana's fantasy coffin attraction

By Nicky Barranger
Ghana

Even Ghana's director of tourism may have to admit that Accra has its work cut out competing with other tourist destinations in Africa. Yet just outside the capital, is the suburb of Teshi and it is here that tourists are coming to look at a relatively new tradition - the fantasy coffin makers.


Drive slowly down the main high street in Teshi, Eastern Accra, and you would probably glance at showrooms and wonder why anyone would want to exhibit a large red fish, or an oversized hammer.

It is as if you have arrived at some strange storage area for a local drama group or even film set.

But, further into town, you will see another couple of "film set" workshops, and another, and goodness, is that really an aeroplane?

On closer inspection each of these objects turns out to be a wooden casket highly crafted and lovingly finished to transport the newly deceased on their journey to the afterlife.

Many of their clients want to bury loved ones in something that reflects their trade - even if that means being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle
Isaac Adjetey Sowah is the manager of the family business his grandfather started.

And at only 22 he has seen it all and he has made it all.

Coffins crafted as hammers, fish, cars, mobile phones, hens, roosters, leopards, lions, canoes, cocoa beans and several elephants.

It seems there is nothing Isaac's company would not consider.

Mercedes and Cadillacs are very popular he tells me.

'Dignity and status'

But if the designs are fanciful, the business of death is taken very seriously indeed.

And the final journey on this earth has to be marked with as much dignity and status as can be mustered.

Isaac and his team of carpenters work with many different types of wood in the open-air workshop.

One employee is crafting a cocoa bean, another is chiselling the fine details of a complicated pineapple design.

Many of their clients want to bury loved ones in something that reflects their trade.

Even if that means being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle.

Perhaps surprisingly, this is a new tradition. It has only been around for about 50 years.

The story goes that in the first half of last century one Ata Owoo was well-known for making magnificent chairs to transport the village chief on poles or the shoulders of minions.

When Owoo had finished one particularly elaborate creation, an eagle, a neighbouring chief wanted one too, this time in the shape of a cocoa pod. A major crop in Ghana.

However, the chief next door died before the bean was finished and so it became his coffin.

Then in 1951, the grandmother of one of Owoo's apprentices died.

She had never been in an aeroplane, so he built her one for her funeral.

And a tradition was born.

Popular designs

When I asked Isaac about his most unusual commission his eyes light up and a big grin envelopes his face.

A Bible coffin, starting at around $400, might represent a year's salary for many of Isaac's clients

"Oh," he says, "An angel, a big white angel".

Now it seems he cannot wait to craft the archangel Gabriel himself.

But for those wanting something more conventional, there is always the Bible coffin which remains a popular design.

Think of a large box in the shape of a leather bound book with the front cover on hinges, and you get the idea.

It is not the most expensive either, although starting at around $400 that could be a year's salary for many of Isaac's clients.

It became a bit of a challenge to guess how each of these coffins actually opens.

To my untrained eye, I had no idea how you would get a body into an enormous snail that would not have looked out of place on the film set of "Dr Dolittle".

Isaac gently explained that the shell came off.

And I felt even more foolish when I had to ask who it was for. A snail seller, of course.

You can buy large fat specimens any day of the week in the market.
One part of the family will come along and decide that the canoe another family member ordered, just is not right for uncle Jo

And that enormous biro?

A journalist of course. I was beginning to get the hang of this.

But even in death there are often disputes.

One part of the family will come along and decide that the canoe another family member ordered, just is not right for uncle Jo.

He should have a much larger boat to represent a lifetime as a fisherman, despite the fact that Isaac's team has lovingly crafted an oarsman to row him to eternity.

Meanwhile, Uncle Jo lingers in a mortuary for a year or so while the two sides fight it out.

And what about Isaac's own casket. What would he have?

He had obviously worked this out a long time ago and decided he had made far too many hammers.

He was going to have a carpenter's plane.

And then the inevitable question.

What about me?

Well, I am hoping it is not going to be for a very long time yet, but having worked in radio for more years than I care to remember, I think it will just have to be a microphone.

---------------------
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 29 January, 2005 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

--------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/p ... 196011.stm

Published: 2005/01/28 20:21:55 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
I think I'll settle for an urban, smokeless wicker man. It's a bit showy, I suppose, but it really brings the community together.

If I'm mercifully dead at the time, the appropriate address will have to be shouted on my behalf. Or I could record it before I go.

"Oh Christ! Oh merciful God no! etc etc" Worth a try, I think.

I'd take the goat-wife along with me but the RSPCA might be watching. :?
 
Well its an interesting way to go - like wrapped supermarket meat:

Coroner Wants to Shrink-Wrap Bodies


Feb 18, 10:34 PM (ET)

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - In the case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack, some emergency officials in Western Washington plan to be prepared - with a large, shrink wrap machine.

The Thurston County Coroner's Office recently won approval to purchase a machine able to shrink-wrap human remains. The process would make it easier to transport a large number of bodies.

After the bodies have been autopsied and identified, they would be zipped into body bags, placed on a plywood trays and covered with cardboard lids.

The trays would then be pushed through the machine and come out in shrink-wrapped packages. The wrapped bodies would be easier to carry than body bags and less disturbing for workers, county Coroner Judy Arnold recently told The Olympian newspaper.

"It's hard to think of people in those terms," she said. "But it's a matter of logistics, and we want to do it in the best and the most respectable way for both the deceased and the family."

The coroner's office has already started a bidding process to find a company to build the machine. A Homeland Security grant will pay for the machine, which will cost an estimated $50,000.

Rob Harper, spokesman for the state Department of Emergency Management, said it's the first plan of its kind in the state. The department administers the federal Homeland Security funds.

Emergency officials around the region began discussing the idea after the terrorist takeover of a Russian school in September and December's tsunamis, which killed more than 120,000 in Southeast Asia.

Photos of both events revealed the dead lying on the ground or being tossed into pickups.

The emergency officials want to avoid dealing with numerous limp and hard-to-carry body bags, especially in a situation where volunteer workers may not be used to handling human remains, Arnold said.

The shrink-wrapped bodies could be moved with forklifts, and the extra plastic covering would seal in biohazards such as anthrax in the case of bioterrorism.

The entire machine could be wheeled on a trailer to other parts of the state or taken by helicopter, Arnold said.

Bette Shultz, Thurston County's emergency management coordinator, said the machine is something that could have been used in the tsunami aftermath.

"You know, it's neat, but it's kind of creepy," she said. "It's one of those things you spend a lot of money for and hope you never have to use it."

---

Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com

Source

When I go I'm leaving instructions for me to be laminated.
 
Last Update: Thursday, April 28, 2005. 8:08am (AEST)

Funeral firm wins stand for vertical burials

After more than 15 years of trying, a plan to bury bodies standing up will finally be able to go ahead in south-western Victoria.

The Victorian Planning Minister has approved land earmarked for a cemetery near Derrinallum, to be rezoned from rural to public use.

The vertical burials will reportedly be the first of their kind in Australia.

Corangamite Shire's Sophie Segafredo says funeral company Palacom has overcome a number of hurdles to achieve the approval.

"It has been a long time coming," she said.

"The people who have been pursuing the project have been working on it for 10 or 15 years, so it's now a relief I'm sure to them that the rezoning is finally taking place.

"I'm not sure when they're intending to start burials there, but there's no further impediment to getting on with the project."

The managing director of Palacom says the company is delighted with the approval.

Tony Duplix says the Darlington cemetery trust will run the new cemetery.

Mr Duplix says he expects the project will now proceed quickly.

"It's really just housekeeping issues now, at the moment the land is effectively a paddock and the trust will just go ahead with fencing, signage, access, issues like that and then they'll be open for business which means that we too will be open for business," he said.

Source
 
Bizarre case shocks minister

P K SURENDRAN

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2005 07:03:18 PM ]

Surf 'N' Earn -Sign innow

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The minister for welfare of SC and ST, A P Anil Kumar, said on Wednesday the family that was forced to cremate in their kitchen two of their daughters drowned in Pamapa river two days ago will be given a piece of a land and home.

The bizarre incident took place in Vembayam, 20 kilometres away, when Gopi and his wife had struggled to get the bodies of their daughters, Asha and Ajitha, cremated. The girls drowned in Pampa river when they ventured in to it for a bathe. Having found no place around and in neighbourhood for cremation as they lived cheek-by-jowl, the household removed the kitchen floor and cremated the bodies.

As the news came a shocked minister announced that the government will take up the responsibility of building a crematorium in the area and provide the poor families land for building house.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/arti ... 143085.cms
 
PROMATORIUM

PROMATORIUM This is in the news because it has been announced that
the first promatorium will be opened in Sweden next year. It's an
ecological alternative to cremation or burial, in which the corpse
is frozen in liquid nitrogen and then shattered into powder by
ultrasonic vibration before being buried in a biodegradeable box in
a shallow grave. The inventor, Susanne Wiigh-Masak, claims that the
process is good for the environment because the powder (which is
essentially compost) breaks down in the soil more thoroughly and
quickly than by conventional burial. She suggests that relatives
plant a tree or bush above the grave as a long-term memorial. She
calls the process "promession", from Italian "promessione", to
swear to the truth; "promatorium" is a blend of "promession" and
"crematorium".
(From World Wide Words newsletter.)
 
I read about this the other day and was meaning to post something:

What is a promatorium?

Hold on to your hats. It's a building where the dead body of your loved one will be frozen, submerged in liquid nitrogen until brittle and then shattered into pieces. The powdered remains are then dried, packed into a biodegradable box and buried in a shallow grave. The idea hit the headlines again this week, and the publicity has created a queue of seven corpses waiting for the world's first promatorium to open next year in the Swedish town of Jonkoping.

Susanne Wiigh-Masak, the Swedish marine biologist who developed and patented the process, said it was more tasteful and better for the environment than cremation or conventional burial: "At 200 degrees below zero the body becomes brittle, so we do not have to use some unethical way to break it up into pieces."

The frozen bodies are shattered using an adapted muscle stimulation machine. Experiments with pigs have shown it takes between one and two hours to freeze the body and then less than a minute of gentle shaking to turn it to powder. "They use the equipment for other purposes that are quite pleasant," she said. "It really goes quickly. There is white smoke and you see it fall apart. It doesn't feel violent."

The powder, from which metal objects like fillings are removed, was easier to break down in the soil than a corpse, Ms Wiigh-Masak said.

www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1582511,00.html
 
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