Why do we even have graveyards? Embalming chemicals leach out and poison water tables, carbon footprint is horrendous, land is wasted for superstitious nonsense. Just cremate and scatter the ashes.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/cemeteries-drinking-tap-water-pollution-aquifers-dead-bodies.html , among others.
I want to be cremated, and then have my ashes condensed into a diamond. I want that diamond to be embedded in the hilt of a sword. I want everybody in my family for generations to be put in the same sword and then in the distant future when the zombies arise, my great great great great grandchild can break the glass and weild the blade honing the power of generations of ancestors in their hand and start lobbing off heads.
Uhh… Is it too late to change my answer?
Well, at least you’ve got dreams
Or just bury people without embalming them first? As a non-American I find it super weird that it’s the norm in the US. Why would you still do that anyway?
I think the idea is so that the empty meat vessel looks tasty and fresh for the funeral.
It can look fresh enough without embalming if kept cool right? Maybe a little makeup?
Embalming? WTF?! I guess I should have watched Six feet under to learn something
It has to do with Christianity. Many Christians believe that Christ will come back raising the dead and restoring their bodies
I’m pretty sure most denominations of Christianity bury their dead without embalming them first and have done so for most of history.
I’ve been a Christian all my life; I’m really, really sure that Christ can not only “restore” a body from nothing but make it much better than it was before. At least, I hope He plans to make it much better 😃
Prove it.
That is a question of faith my friend.
I have faith that you can’t be restored.
It’s a legal requirement.
I know, but other than manmade laws, why?
As far as I know, it’s a US thing right? In the Netherlands embalming has been expressly prohibited up until 2009 I think. Granted, Dutch laws concerning what you can do with a dead body are pretty strict but embalming just seems weird to me.
Other than laws? Probably, to a degree, like an unfortunate number of things in the US, money. As of 2019, the death industry was >$20 Billion industry.
Over here in the US, we’re stuck in a neoliberal hellscape where profit is more important than any human being and grief-stricken families are fair game for exploitation.
I actually don’t think that is true. Caitlin Dougherty on YouTube has a video on it though. It’s pushed by funeral directors because it’s a big money maker for them.
Nah don’t cremate. Bury the body with no box and no preservation. Get those nutrients right back into the soil as fast as possible.
Yes please. This is how I want to be buried. Back to the earth asap.
green/natural burials are cool.
Heres some resources, links anyway, that might be helpful with planning, if you wnat to and havent allready, for a green burial,( ahead of time, and ensuring that thise wishes are carried out later) , : 💀🌳 🌳🌲🌳🌲🌲🌱 https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/resources/green-burial/ https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/interactive-maps.html
and, for another jurisdiction, :http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk/index.php?page=find-a-natural-burial-site
💀🌳 🌳🌲🌳🌲🌲🌱 also worth mentioning,: if the intention is to go back to to the Erth as soon as possible, then the! not yet as widy avalable, but becoming more avalable repidly) ‘natural organic reduction’ could be a way to do that, similarly to that green burial, but often more quickly. they can make the whole decomposition happen o a highly controlled environment, conditions monitored and adjusted of needed for ideal decomposition conditions…
if that sound interesting see https://recompose.life/, for the company that started the practice, and offers the service.
And green funerals, a more widely avalable, and also very cool, option.
💀🌳 🌳🌲🌳🌲🌲🌱
Thank you for the detailed information.
Reminds me of something that happened when I was a gravedigger. The indigent get no embalming so we get them in the ground quickly, 2 or 3 days. Even then the smell is powerful sometimes. Anyway, an indigent guys funeral was held up for some reason that escapes me, so they froze him, while his arms were above his head. The story of getting him in that cheap cardboard casket the funeral director told me had me rolling. I don’t know how that cheap casket stayed together but when we got it it was in baaad shape. Wish I took a picture.
Fucking bullshit that I can’t have my relatives eat my corpse when I’m dead. Land of the free my (glazed and roasted) ass
If you amputate a bit beforehand you can enjoy some with them.
yeah. like that peron who had, it would seem, -( for medical reasons, a and by a mediacl professional) a part of their… I think foot, amputated. They decided to keep the remains, and then… well, there’s a thought process, aintrestomg discussions, and a banquet, in the story. There’s a vice news interview about it, from some years ago, if I recall.
edit: this seems to be it https://www.vice.com/en/article/gykmn7/legal-ethical-cannibalism-human-meat-tacos-reddit-wtf might need to scroll doa bit to get to the story.
Exactly what I had in mind!
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The concept is that you get a spot on a graveyard permanently as a muslim, but it is custom to give back the spot when noone is alive, who remembered the deceased relative, so usually in the third or fourth generation.
But why wouldnt a graveyard last “forever”? We have many church graveyards that can be tracked back to early medieval times, so easily a thousand years, in Germany.
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Just bury them together with nuclear waste. Two birds sealed under one stone and the radiation might give them superpowers in the afterlife
and hell even a hundred years ago graveyards in cities started becoming problematically full, that’s literally why cremations was invented.
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He’s still alive, he’s 75 but he’s still going strong.
But muslims don’t embalm their deceased bodies, right? They also don’t use coffins, so eventually the remains will decompose with nothing remains? How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
That is very dependent on the temperature, soil, humidity etc. E.g. a regularly wet, huminose soil at moderate temperatures will decompose anything much quicker than dry desert sand.
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No. Typically you only rent a plot in a graveyard for 10-30 years, and unless you or your heir(s) extend the lease, the graves will be dug up and used again. By that time most of the old casket and body have disintegrated to a pile of crumbling bones. Those will either be taken out and fully incinerated, or if the decay is progressed to a point where not much is left to begin with, a thin layer of soil covers the remnants and the new casket will simply be put on top.
It’s also getting more and more “fashionable” to get incinerated right away, so that’s really a non-issue.
There are places in the world with a standard practice of forever plots.
For example, I don’t think it’s common in NZ for plots to be a time period before disinterment.
Utterly deranged way of dealing with the dead imo; stick em in the ground for a little bit like they’re kimchi? Just skip ahead to the incineration part for me, thanks
Does this apply to military cemeteries as well?
No idea, tbh. I know next to nothing about military stuff.
As many other have stated, grave spaces are often rented or leased. Then the remains are buried in an ossuary or given back to the family.
Quite a few western graveyards are semi-permanant. Only being dug up and moved if the space is to be reused for something else.
My city, for example, moved its early graveyard as the town expanded and now the area is a parking lot.
There is a cool fact as well with churches and graveyards that haven’t moved. Generally the church building itself loses height because of the the bodies buried raises the ground levels by a few feet. This has been observed in the UK and America.
I highly recommend checking out the catacombs in Paris. It gives you a very clear understanding about what humans do to graveyards when they want the space. There are literally millions of skeletons just thrown down there. Some are stacked in interesting ways, like walls of femurs and piles of skulls. But the vast, vast majority are just heaped into big ass piles of random bones.
Personally, visiting them sold me on the idea of cremation. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before your graveyard is getting dug up and they’re throwing your remains in a pile with some randos.
Being part of a big pile of bones that can freak out tourists is actually convincing me that being buried is better than being cremated.
of that’s an idea youre keen on, you could put it into a… loving will, or equivalent, and your will, anyway dwaath and end of life related documents. also appoint an exuctioner for those that you trust to make those bone post death art poecehappen, or anyway to try their best to make those wishes for coming part of a future grand skellie pyramid arform, or something along those lines, happen.
yiu never know, it may well be possible to make those dreams sooner, after a nk doubt long on the Future and death, than anticipated., and making some arrangements ahead of time can improve your chances, and possibly be a fun exercise in itself. ‘tge order of the good death’, has some useful resource on the whole planning and documents thing, espially on a North America context.
anyway. happy for you future artistic and collective bone combination ambitions for ’ your future postmortem bones. rip. ☠️💀🦴🦴💀💀🦴🦴💀☠️👻👻👻👻👻👻🦴👻
Yeah fuck randos. They smell.
Eventually even bones decay, unless fossilized, and fossilized bones are just, well, fancy rocks. So it’s not like human remains stick around forever.
It’s not even THAT long. 30-100 years, depending on the environment
if we cover the planet in them yea but otherwise we would use other methods instead
There was a panic here in Vancouver (known for it’s out of control real estate market) this year and burial plots were going for like $90,000 IIRC.
Don’t be too poor to die.
rocks break. humans biodegrade. so no.
So my rock hard abs won’t save me from Time?
No, because most people are cremated these days, and over time bones deteriorate. Plus, we can always make new graveyards.
But the big thing is that old graveyards are often “relocated” — the marked graves are dug up and the contents stacked/put closer together with any gravestones or markers stuck closer together above ground.
Even if we fill every bit of earth with dead bodies, we still have other planets and the empty vacuum of space itself to put them. So no.