One day you’ll die.
And when you do, something will have to be done with the body you leave behind.
So, why not plan for it?
Centuries--even decades ago--you didn’t have all that many options, but now you do.
So today I’ll be talking about a bunch of them--and hopefully by the end of this video
you’ll have enough info to rest easy.
If an open casket funeral is up your alley, look no further than embalming--temporarily
preserving your corpse using different chemicals.
Embalming has been around for millennia, and has undergone many iterations.
For example, the ancient Egyptians used herbs, oils, resins, and sometimes even tar to keep
their dead in tact, but today, formaldehyde is often best suited for the job.
When you die, your body will literally start to fall apart because the proteins in and
around your cells will start to degrade.
Formaldehyde can be pumped into your body to temporarily prevent that.
It’s a fixative--it essentially stops time by connecting proteins together--a process
called crosslinking.
One way it does this is by interacting with an amino group from a protein.
That leads to a series of reactions that creates a methylene group, and that methylene group
acts as a bridge between the original protein’s amino group and another amino group--from
a protein or even your DNA.
But formaldehyde itself doesn’t stick around all that long, usually only a week or so when
it’s in a corpse--it’ll dissolve or evaporate, so those connections will degrade, and your
body will continue to decompose.
The pro with embalming is that your body will stay intact long enough for your loved ones
to see you before you’re buried.
But there are some cons.
The first is cost, which--if you include the funeral service and a coffin--isn’t cheap.
And, once you’re in the ground and decomposing, that embalming fluid will make its way back
into the environment, and that could be cause for concern.
Research on embalming fluid runoff in cemeteries is ongoing, but formaldehyde in other scenarios
has been linked to different cancers in humans and a range of negative health effects in
other animals.
Ok, so maybe you don’t care about having an open casket funeral or you’re not on
board with introducing embalming fluid into our waterways: How about cremation?
Cremation is the process of burning your body until all that’s left of you is a relatively
small pile of remains.
Cultures from all over the world have used this process to dispose of their dead, but
it didn’t become popular in the US until more recently.
In the 1980s only around 10% of the American population chose cremation, but by 2016 that
number jumped to about 50%.
Cremation isn’t super cheap, but it’s a whole lot cheaper than embalming and burial.
Cremation chambers, which are typically made of brick and concrete, are heated to upwards
of 800 degrees celsius.
When your body is placed inside, it becomes the fuel source in a combustion reaction--your
fat quickly burns and soon all that’s left is really calcified bone that can then be
ground down to ash.
Most of what was once your body escapes as gas, and that gas--along with other particles--travels
up a chimney into a filter that’s then heated to over 900 degrees celsius.
That’ll break down any lingering odor molecules.
From there, there’s a lot of different things you can do with your ashes.
Your family can place them on their mantle, scatter them on a mountain top, or... let’s
say you’re hoping to get more creative.
The carbon from your remains could be extracted and crystallized under high pressure, high
temperature conditions to turn you into an extravagant diamond.
Or you could press your ashes into vinyl, or get launched into space, or be stuffed
into fireworks to celebrate your life in a showy display.
But cremation does have some downsides.
It takes a lot of energy to raise the temperature of an incinerator.
And the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere contributes to climate change.
On the “bad for the environment” spectrum, cremation isn’t terrible, but it certainly
isn’t green.
If being eco-friendly is important to you there are some other options you might want
to consider.
Just this year, Washington state became the first place in the US to legalize body composting.
Before you freak out, no it’s not just a pile of human bodies with food waste mixed
in.
The first facility, which plans to open in early 2021, will place bodies in vessels that
are filled with wood chips, alfalfa and straw and enough oxygen for microbes to start breaking
down a body.
That breakdown will release carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, which can then be used by
plants and animals to grow.
If you want to be helpful, even in death, you can donate your body to a body farm to
potentially help solve a murder.
A body farm is a place where scientists study how bodies decompose under a variety of conditions,
like at super hot or cold temperatures, or in water, or in a shallow grave--then law
enforcement will be informed on how to take into account these differences when calculating
things like time since death.
Scientists at these facilities also look at odors that come from a corpse to train dogs
to be able to sniff out a victim, even if that victim has been dead for years.
If you find body farms super intriguing, definitely check out our Orbitals podcast episode about
it--we’ve pinned that in the comments.
Or if you’re more interested in progressing medicine, you could donate your body to medical
schools to be fixed and used as a dissection cadaver to help train our future doctors.
You can also be an organ donor and save the life of someone in critical need of, say,
a heart transplant.
If you want to skip decomposition altogether but would love to do something kind of sciencey--how
about plastination?
Maybe you’ve seen one of these exhibits.
Plastination is a complex process that takes around a year, but the gist is that they pump
you with formaldehyde or another fixative, they remove your skin and fatty and connective
tissues, and then use a technique to get plastic into your cells, turning you into a sculpture
for the public to see and to appreciate how insanely cool human anatomy truly is.
But PLEASE do your homework before donating your body to these kinds of exhibits.
Some of them have a highly questionable ethical past, and maybe present, so it doesn’t hurt
to make sure they’ve cleaned up their act before you make such an important donation.
Hopefully today’s video gave you a few more practical things to think about when it comes
to death.
Still not convinced by any of these options?
There are plenty more--one is cryogenic freezing--check out our video if you’re interested.
I’ll see you next week!