Stuff You Should KnowFrom transforming into a gem to being shot into space, modern technology has created a multitude of possible destinations for the bodies of the deceased. Go beyond the traditional funeral in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know? From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hi, I'm welcome to the podcast this Stuff you Should Know? And I'm Josh. And there's Chuck Nice Chuck good one. Hi Josh, alright, Hi, I'm here. I understand here all right, Chuck. Um My. One of my heroes, one of my idols of all time, a guy named Dr Hunter Wis Thompson. I knew that's where you're going. He actually stole one of my ideas years and I'm not kidding years before. I don't know if you actually stole it, but years before, Hunter Thompson had his ashes um shot out of a cannon at Woody Creek, Colorado. Too much fanfare? Have you ever seen the video of it? Now? I'm really dying to see that documentary. It's awesome. That's really great. Um. I want my body, not ashes body shot out of a cannon like a year I figured human cannibaal yeah, exactly, but a lifeless one that just kind of goes in over on like a prairie or a plane in like Kansas. I figure, all I need is a really good attorney and it really corrupt sheriff and I can get it done right. Well, what's the idea that you get shot out and just land on the ground and then let the carrion crows take care of me? That's nice. Yeah, it's a way to go. Um And you want to hear some other ways again? Sure, okay. Apparently you can do a lot with human cremaines, cremated remains. There's this one company called life Jem and I actually think they're Swiss. Um. They will take a certain measure of you think they're Swiss, like they're not, like they claim to be German, but actually I'm suspicious that they're not Swiss, maybe Jersey or something. Um. They they will take a little portion of your loved ones cremines and they compress it into a diamond. Actually wow, Yeah, and it's actually fairly a real diamond. Yeah, you can do well. I mean it's a synthetic compressed diamond. Real diamond takes eons. This is like I guess maybe Cubics are coming something like that. As far as they say it's a diamond, the um I for a point to nine carrot diamond. UM it's on. You just send them some of your loved ones remains. And it also actually is equally effective, um to keep an enemy in prison for eternity. If you want to do that, you just have to get your hands on some of their ashes. You can wear them around like you own them. Yeah. Um, that's that's another thing, totally totally well. You know what's gonna happen to you after you die, you better not die before me. Um. You can also have your ashes shot into space. Timothy Leary had it done, actually exactly again one of my heroes. Slightly yeah, yeah, I know, slightly affordable, somewhat affordable, surprisingly affordable. How much um for a I think a graham of your ashes to be shot into space and then allowed to burn up in in the atmosphere where you can sivably become part of the carbon cycle or the rain cycle or something. It's not bad. I wonder if they shoot you up there that I'm sure they did with a bunch of other people. Oh definitely. And there's a couple of different flights. One it just goes up hit zero gravity and comes back down and then they return it to you and you're like, thanks a bunch that that would be appropriate for me, because you know how much I hate to fly because of being next to strangers. That would be my ultimate horrible way to go is to be shot up into space, crowded and surrounded by a bunch of other people's creamines. No thanks, yeah, no, So we won't do that to you. No, I don't have to worry about You'll be trapped in a diamond in a ring on my finger. That's that's your fate. I think I'd like to be cremated. It definitely don't want to the old Southern traditional burial view the body type of thing. Well, you know, there's there's some other stuff you can do. You can actually put a dead body to good use. That's what I hear. Yes, bodies can actually be made to generate power after they die. True in theory. Right. And this set up, this one fascinates me the most because, um, it's actually am It's a conceptual art project called the Afterlife Project. But basically, um, these this, these two artists are an artist in a designer I believe, came up with a way where you you can put a microbial fuel cell beneath the remains of a dead body, specifically underneath their stomach, and as the body decomposes, these gastric juices that are produced are eaten up by the bacteria in the anode of this microbial fuel cell. And it's anaerobic, so there's no oxygen, so it can't just be turned into water. So these free floating electrons that are looking for something to bind are basically turned. It converted into electricity. Now that is actually shot up to like a say, a memorial statue of the grave marker. Then the grave marker is actually a battery charger. So you have a battery and it's got like your name and your date of birth and death on it, and your loved ones can power all sorts of weird stuff with it. Normal stuff, but I like the weird stuff better. Yeah, that's crazy. I wonder if that is actually gonna come to fruition. And I don't know, I don't know. Um some looking into it, I didn't find a whole lot, Like you know sometimes when conceptual arts done, it's done, and you know whatever. But they proved it, it it can it can't happen. I actually do think that they created a model for it, and and the science is there for sure, but they were saying that they did this to UM provide proof to people who are spiritually disconnected or require proof that there is a life after death, because really they're taking energy that was there before and putting it out into small, handheld battery powered devices. It really is. It's a great idea, that's the afterlife project. So you can't you can't put bodies to use this. It's a good thing, but that actually is kind of part of a growing trend of green burials, or depending on where you come from, green burials. Yeah, it depends on who you ask. I've got a staff for you. I love you know, I love your stats. I know. Uh. There was a study UM performed by the I'm sorry with the American Association of Retired Persons and in two thousand seven of people over the age of fifty were interested in green burials. That makes sense because that's like, that's my dad's generation, and they're the ones who got like the recycling kai Bosh put on their heads, Like my dad recycles religiously, and I think his age group really bought into that in like the early nineties, So I'm not surprised, not bad. I think the other sevent said get off my lawn, so probably got wicker snapper kind of thing. Well, the thing is, it makes sense. It may seem a little wacky, a little ego conscious to the nth degree, I disagree, but well, you know, traditional burials actually are really harmful environmentally. Yeah, they don't make a lot of sense. It's I think it's a to me, this is my opinion. I think it's a little bit of an outdated thing to load the body up with formaldehyde and put it in a very expensive casket and sink it into the ground. It's uh, it doesn't make much sense to me. That's just chuck talking. Well, I mean it's it's been done clearly because people need that kind of closure. You have to take a few days to really kind of get over it. You know, in the nineteenth century, people used to sit up around their their dead loved one which is propped up on chairs in like the living room for days. That meals around it, that kind of thing. Um, And this is before embalming was used, I believe, So I imagine it got pretty gamy. But so we come up with embalming and now you know, a mortuary putty, and all of a sudden we can you know, hang out with our loved one until we're ready to plan them in the ground. But even when we plan them in the ground, that embalming fluid, you know, it may make cigarettes pop, but really it's not good for you at all. No, it's not, and it's not good for the environment. UM. But you don't you know, if you're interested in green burial that you don't think it has to be some of these more radical ones that were about to mention. UM. If you do want a sort of a traditional casket type of deal, uh, you can get biodegradable caskets these days, um, made of bamboo, sustainable bamboo. You can get an eco pod, which is basically a pod made from recycled newspaper. It's kind of like paper machee. Yeah. Yeah, so you just kind of it dissolves along with you into the earth. Uh. For go the formalde hyde um you can use. Apparently they use dry ice and refrigeration instead, which makes sense to me, and and it makes perfect sense. You just have to You're limited then in where a cemetery can be, right, Like, you can't be near the the watershed or the water table or else some naw stiness could really get into the into the waters and polluted. Although I guess if you're not using embombing fluide or any other kind of hazardous materials, would decomposing body be that much threat? And really, honestly, how much decomposing bodies do we drink every day just from tap water? I don't have that staff probably a significant amount, you think, sure, I guess. So, Okay, a lot of people buried out there, you know, sure, but not me. Think dead fish, dead squirrels, dead um, raccoons, pretty much any woodland animal that's dead. It's a good point. We've probably drank before. Why not humans? And of course there's always good old cremation, which is supposedly a green burial because you know, also the caskets that are usually used used like a mahogany casket that's like an old growth forest wood, and you know it's being cut down so it can be planted in the ground with you, and it's probably laminated using some horrible kind of lacquer. It's not it's it's just not good. So cremation that's great, there's no there's no even though there is a cast get involved, it's not degrading. It's actually being burned up. Um. But the problem is there's all sorts of horrible byproducts from burning you know, a human body. Right. It takes a lot of energy too, Yes, it does. But that energy can be harnessed, can it. Well, yeah, that's one cool thing. And this is in Sweden. Our friends in Sweden are always ahead of the curve. It uh, crematoriums, they're they're harnessing that heat that it takes. I think it's over eight d degrees fahrenheit um, which is a thousand degrees celsius for you in Sweden, right. Uh. So they're harnessing that heat and actually turning into energy. And there's a town in Sweden that actually gets ten percent of its home heating energy from crematoriums from the dead. Yeah, pretty cool heat for the home. Yeah, that is very very cool, very cool. It's also a little creepy, but it's it's very cool, right, But that is not the coolest one in my opinion. Are you talking about alkaline hydrolysis? Oh? Yeah, man, that is awesome. So you want to tell them you want me to go ahead? Okay, So basically all these animals they experimented on, like you know, we couldn't have come up with a bola without sacrificing a few animals. But you don't just toss those kind of things into the into the garbage. This is a biohazard. There's a process that that was created where you dissolve a body in lie uh and heat it to about three hundred degrees hundred forty nine degrees celsius um, and you apply about sixty pounds of pressure per square inch to the body. So I imagine it's in some little kind of box or something with like a card cruncher kind of thing, right, um and uh. After a certain amount of time, the body dissolves and it turns into like this coffee colored good. That's that's like, Um, it's the consistency of motor oil and it's sterile. So what do you do with it? Down the drain, down the drain. I can't think of any less sentimental way to dispose of human body than that, right. Yeah. A lot of people don't like this though, I mean they don't they do this on cadet evers and like you said, research animals, they don't do this. It's not in practice yet. Well, they're trying to personally. I can't remember where the town is chucked. It's in New York. Um. And there was a funeral director who's trying to get it this process legalized because apparently you can't do that with human remains illegal um. And the Roman Catholic Diocese came out against it and and basically got it dubbed the Hannibal Lector bill. I don't get think any bill. I don't get that. What is I think they're just trying to play off the creepiness in the complete disregard for the sanctity of humanity or anything. Terrible example, because it worked because everybody's heard of Hannibal Lector and the bill got sunk. So uh And frankly, I don't know. I need slightly more pomp and circumstances. I need more cannons and Kansas planes, you know, than you can have a ceremony. Um. I don't think it necessarily has to be your wife, you know, in a darkened room, just pouring you down a drain. You have a big party, in a big ceremony, you can still have all the fanfare. And it's true and technically, I guess is not that much different from cremation, right, sure, yeah, or you could put the syrupy goo and into a balloon and drop it from the Empire State Building. That'd be kind of cool. That would be very cool. Canon. Yeah, what is the syrupy goo? I'm covered with some poor guy with like a Fannie pack and the camera and then he's covered with Josh. Ironically he's from Kansas. Yes, So that's there's a lot of things that are in the works that it looks like the funeral industry is going to be turned over eventually. Even even Nate Fisher from six ft Under he had a green burial just wrapped in like a canvas sack and planted in the ground. Well, there's only so much land mass out there and it can't well go to cemetery. What's well, I think is cool about the green burial movement is they use these cemetery plots as land easemants so that they're protected in perpetuity because there's a person there. And basically you rather than getting spending the money on a plot in a traditional cemetery, you um basically buy a piece of lane and it's protected forever. So it's protected land it can never be developed on. So that's another kind of UM. Subtle aim of the green burial movement is land conservation by you know, death, And there's also a burial at sea UM. The new green way to be buried at sea is to have your cremains mixed with concrete and become part of artificial coral reef and be tickled by fish for the rest of eternity. So yeah, that's green burial. And actually you can find more on this uh on the site. It's called can My Body Generate Power After I Die? And before we let you go, Chuck and I wanted to point out another article about death that we think you'll enjoy. It's called the fifteen most Common Causes of Death in the World. Fantastic greed combined with can my Body Generate Power After I Die? It'll have you rolling in stitches. It's a fun weekend. You can find both of those by typing some words into the search bar at how stuff works dot com m For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com m HM brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
