The future of cemeteries and dead folks
 

Why do we “collect” our dead (cemeteries)? And why do we feel the need to erect monuments to them (headstones, Moslems)? I understand the human desire to be remembered after we’re gone and to feel we’ve left some kind of mark on mankind to be remembered by………but the idea of cemeteries seems archaic. Not to mention the fact that eventually we’re going to run out of space to bury the bodies. Does anyone have any theories as to how we’ll be handling the dead in the future?

I know that I would prefer to be cremated. Makes so much more sense, even if it is a little disturbing to think about.

There was an interesting article in WIRED a couple of months ago about how data storage will affect the living and the dead. Some day our lives will be an endless stream of saved pictures, videos, blogs, calendars, etc. (If they aren't already) With data storage capacities on the constant rise, someday we'll be able to store a life-long memorial of someones life on a single hard drive. This may not change burial for dead folks, but it may change how we remember them. From cradle to the grave people will have left a very long stream of data that people will be able to access anytime they want to remember. Kind of creepy...but kind of cool...
Imagine if you could pull up a DVD-ROM of your great-great-grandfather and read some of his journal from when he was your age. It's possible.

I read the same article in Wired, I envisioned a large hall…a futuristic mausoleum, with computer terminals along the walls. Type in the person your looking for and you’ll be presented with a wide variety of options, perhaps even a full sized hologram of the individual making his great final statement to mankind…..it’s Kinda bizarre but I bet it’s not to far off.

I just wanna be toasted and dumped in to woods somewhere, no service, no fuss, and at minimal financial burden to my family…it’s really getting expensive to kick the bucket these days.

hmm. i already have a blog online. both on tfp and on a website. kind of creepy. :-D i never imagined/intended it to be read for future generatons.

I've never understood our post mortem needs. I've been to funerals, and in all honesty I would never want one. Why would you want people to stand around talking about you in past tense? Saying whatever they want because you aren't there? Trying to be nice, spouting euphemisms and bullshit in copious amounts.

If I'm dead, what does it matter to me what happens to my body, or whether anyone remembers me? It's not like I'll be able to enjoy it. Whether you string my naked body up in town square for everyone to see, or bury it in an elaborate funeral, I'm dead - I don't know what happened, I don't care, and it can't possibly affect me. Being remembered is similar.

Funerals are for the living. For most its a chance to collectively gather your thoughts on the death. Its part of the healing process for most people. In my opinion they aren't for the dead. But I'm not all that religious about death.

Heh you know what's funny? Long ago funerals were done so that the dead person had a chance to wake up since the person could actually be very sick or something and sometimes during the funeral service the body just rose up from the casket and everyone went home.

I've heard this as well. It is pretty interesting. There were several inventions that were available as a warning system to alarm people that you are still alive if they buried you. I believe they still sell a system that can do this today. Lots of people were buried with oxygen tanks, and a special telephone that would allow them to dial out. Pretty wild. Being buried alive could be one of the worst things imaginable.

I don't know ... I can imagine quite a lot. For those that can't, just consider being burned at the stake or being crucified ... I'm not sure either one would take a back seat to being buried alive. There are a delightfully uncountable number of ways to die.

And you're right, funerals are for the living. Hah. So stupid of me for not seeing that, thanks :).

Start sending them into abandoned mines... after a nice service for the family though... send em on down..... takes a lot of dead people to fill in a used potash mine... it's like little cities under there!!!
Each month seal of another section, start filling the next partition up with dead, seal repeat as necessary.....

"you will be fired"......."out of a canon, into the sun"

Yea back in the day some people who were in comas and stuff would get buried alive. How much would that suck? Get hit in the head and next thing you know you've woken up in a casket underground. And thats if you haven't run out of air and really died.

I've heard of those alarm things too. One i heard of was a little tube that would run up from the casket with a rope inside (and for air). The rope would connect to a bell above ground. If you were buried alive you would tug on your rope until someone heard you (or you died).

Don't worry, the ones we've already buried eventually turn into mud and we bury more underneath them. It's all gonna be OK. As for the headstones, that is part of our denial that they're really dead. Without that denial, we just drag them out of the way and carry on working.

How about borrowing from the space launching dead people. WE could launch the ashes of our loved ones into a constellation of their choosing. As for a memorial for them here on earth we wold have a star chart of where exactly in the constellation they are.

Sure you go ahead and launch grandma to Sirius, if you're willing to foot the bill. Personally I think she'd make a great stew.

the problem with putting things in space is that they gain an orbit capacity after a while, space debris can reach speeds surpassing bullets. NASA doesnt want that shit tearing through thier shuttles. Its just too dangerous for them to say "OK" to launching foreign matter.

not really a good reason to answer why, but my reason is because if not I wouldn't have my job. But yes it is a rather outdated system. The massive amount of money that is made off of it is sick.

It's all about respect for the dead and some people cannot distinguish between the soul of their loved and lost ones and their rotting corpses. A dead body is useless to a dead soul, by all means harvest the organs if they are in a fit state, help the living. As for the rest of the body you can grind it up and use it as pet food for all I care, or throw all the bodies onto a pyre and let them burn. As for the cost, well I'd have to be dead to pay funeral directors prices, they'd not get the money out of me any other way.

If western society have a problem with dedicating large amounts of land to cemetaries that is not solved by reusing plots; then western society will quite simply modify it's customs to something more appropriate. If the diamond industry can convince newlyweds that buying their product is customary, then the funeral industry can convince relatives that cremation is a far better option than burial. Personally, I don't think space will ever be a crucial issue anyway.

Hmm.. I wouldn't mind being made into a Diamond. That'd be cool. Besides it would be nice knowing that when my Unbreakable mind goes... my body then becomes unbreakable :):) I'm not sure I'd want to be on a ring though. It'd be kinda freaky. I mean if you had a ring on of a parent or someone... would you feel a little weird doing some things? But yeah a Diamond would kick ass. If not, take my carbon and make Oil outta me. That could be my last gift to the world.. a gallon of juice.. hehe.

Hmm, It seems I'd be a prostitute after death.. Diamond or Oil, people would be paying for my services.. hehe.. ah well, that'll keep me laughing until I enter the gates of heaven :)

My folks decided on an above ground masoleum. Me? I'd prefer to be stuffed and put by the fireplace. Maybe with a surprised look on my face :eek: and my hands outstretched. So far, the wife won't go for it. I'll be buried and then probably dug up when the land becomes more profitable as condo units.

Cemetaries and Golf Courses, the two biggest wastes of land EVER.

That used to be the case, back in the day of wooden caskets, modest headstones (often wood) and no embalming. A few hundred years ago, your average graveyard essentially recycled itself every century or so. The old bodies and caskets become one with the soil, the headstones weathered away, and new bodies were buried in the soil. At the church I go to, we have a charming remnant of this, in that people who die and are cremated can have their ashes scattered in the rose garden if they wish. And many do.

Problem is, today's embalming techniques, cement lined graves (to reduce moisture), and built-to-last caskets provide a grave installation that just doesn't go away in a hundred years --- or even several hundred. At some point it's all going to become impractical, and those graves will have to be torn up -- either that, or we take a state like South Dakota, which is emptying out of live people, and make it one huge graveyard.

I'm geussing in the future we'll have messed up the ecosystem pretty badly and will need some way of helping things, which leads me to this question, how good are humans for fertalizer?

I would rather die off in the woods somewhere and have nobody mess with my body. I figure that's how the first of us died, so it can't be wrong religiously

I could answer that question, but I'd have to kill you...

Only kidding..

I believe most animals make good fertiliser because they break down into the nutrients plants need, so that should include us

I think you meant "mausoleums"

As for why, it's a way to remind us of them. If someone was special to you, you would want to remember them.

I wonder if, hundreds of years from now, people are just going to decide that they don't care about these people from the year 2000 that no one remembers and pull them out of the ground.

Or if archaeologists of their time pull us up for research purposes.

If our land was filled up with gravestones of people from 1700, I imagine that one of the two above things would be happening all over the place, although some people would certainly complain about it.