Environmentally friendly ways of dealing with the dead (not for the queasy)

Are there any special dangers to eating human?

Higher cholesterol. I hear it's pretty greasy too.

KrazyTacoFO wrote:
Are there any special dangers to eating human?

Higher cholesterol. I hear it's pretty greasy too.

That you come to enjoy it... too much.

Paleocon wrote:

We may not like the way we treat our animals, but there are clear standards on how the meat product is treated for safety. The same, obviously would not be true of eating your grandpa who died 2 days ago after going code blue and a 3 month battle with cancer.

Yeah, I don't think I'd want to eat anything that died of natural causes.

Paleocon wrote:

I much prefer to have myself sky buried.

Tower of Silence seems environmentally friendly too... circle of life and all that.

KrazyTacoFO wrote:
Are there any special dangers to eating human?

Higher cholesterol. I hear it's pretty greasy too.

Are you calling me fat?

I'd like to be frozen and shot into space just prior to my death in hopes a passing alien race will revive and cure me. In three million years, the crew of the Red Dwarf will find and revive me only to tell me they are the last people in existence, and they're sorry but they can't do anything for me. In a rage, I'll die almost immediately, whereupon Craig Ferguson can flush my bits into space.

Jonman wrote:
KrazyTacoFO wrote:
Are there any special dangers to eating human?

Higher cholesterol. I hear it's pretty greasy too.

Are you calling me fat?

Hey baby, what we have is special! I don't want to put labels on you.

KrazyTacoFO wrote:
Jonman wrote:
KrazyTacoFO wrote:
Are there any special dangers to eating human?

Higher cholesterol. I hear it's pretty greasy too.

Are you calling me fat?

Hey baby, what we have is special! I don't want to put labels on you. :kiss:

You could put labels on me if they were sweet labels that said stuff like "Kiss here", or "Warning - contains dangerous levels of awesome"

At the very least I would avoid human liver, especially if they lived in a city, smoke, or drank.

Yonder wrote:

At the very least I would avoid human liver, especially if they lived in a city, smoke, or drank.

Unless you have some fava beans and a nice chianti.

I'm hoping for a green burial: no embalming, just wrapped in cotton and dropped in the ground so my carbon and nitrogen and other bits can be recycled in the earth. I've read there's land in Vancouver where that type of green burial is legal, so I gotta stay here.

Gravey wrote:

I'm hoping for a green burial: no embalming, just wrapped in cotton and dropped in the ground so my carbon and nitrogen and other bits can be recycled in the earth. I've read there's land in Vancouver where that type of green burial is legal, so I gotta stay here.

I'm with you. I don't want my body to take up energy, space, or resources after I'm gone. I do enough of that while I'm alive.

That said, my wife explained to me that the way you treat your body after death isn't about you, but about folks you care about. I told her that's why we have cameras.

I saw this over on TED and found it quite interesting.

Jae Rhim Lee goes a bit beyond the usual green, coffin-less burial. She points out that our bodies are still polluted and as we decompose, those toxins seep into the ground. So she's been breeding a fancy mushroom that consumes some of those toxins, to be buried with the body.

How's that for green? It's even better than just keeling over in the woods.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I saw this over on TED and found it quite interesting.

Jae Rhim Lee goes a bit beyond the usual green, coffin-less burial. She points out that our bodies are still polluted and as we decompose, those toxins seep into the ground. So she's been breeding a fancy mushroom that consumes some of those toxins, to be buried with the body.

How's that for green? It's even better than just keeling over in the woods.

I just showed that video to my wife and she said "stop watching that strange stuff".

Paleocon wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

I saw this over on TED and found it quite interesting.

Jae Rhim Lee goes a bit beyond the usual green, coffin-less burial. She points out that our bodies are still polluted and as we decompose, those toxins seep into the ground. So she's been breeding a fancy mushroom that consumes some of those toxins, to be buried with the body.

How's that for green? It's even better than just keeling over in the woods.

I just showed that video to my wife and she said "stop watching that strange stuff".

Sounds to me like someone just talked her way out of some of your delicious toxic corpse-mushrooms.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Paleocon wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

I saw this over on TED and found it quite interesting.

Jae Rhim Lee goes a bit beyond the usual green, coffin-less burial. She points out that our bodies are still polluted and as we decompose, those toxins seep into the ground. So she's been breeding a fancy mushroom that consumes some of those toxins, to be buried with the body.

How's that for green? It's even better than just keeling over in the woods.

I just showed that video to my wife and she said "stop watching that strange stuff".

Sounds to me like someone just talked her way out of some of your delicious toxic corpse-mushrooms.

Seriously. No Paleochanterelle pasta for her. Jeez.

There's a pretty good episode from Stuff You Should Know on the pros and cons of cremation:

http://castroller.com/podcasts/Stuff...

My grandmother passed away this year. It was the first time I had been so close to funeral preparations, so I learned a few things as I helped my parents, aunts and uncles with whatever had to be done. I'm just a grandson though, and so I was only involved to a degree.

I had never seen/heard of the big cement shells that are used to seal the coffins underground before. I understand why it is done, but I wondered if this was a recent development in city codes / ordinances around burial.

There was a little bit of burial plot drama. I found out that some relatives from Florida had shipped up the ashes of a relative secretly and had them placed in my grandmothers plot. The deed had been purchased long ago and my grandmothers name was marked specifically, where she could be with my grandfather. Turns out the mystery ashes were her mother-in-law, who was never very nice to her in life, so it didnt seem right that they would rest next to each other like that. Luckily, there was an opening in a more appropriate family spot, on my granfathers side, just a space or two over, so... she was moved.

I hadn't really visited this graveyard since I was a schoolkid. Although it's small, it is one of those cemetaries that has markers going back to the early 1700s, eroded and faint from weather and erosion.

My family has a long history in town, going back six or more generations. It was a horribly rainy day when we went to say goodbye to my grandmother, but it was also kinda comforting to walk along a row of markers and see relatives resting together, some of them I had known as a child, some I've only heard stories of.

I'm not sure what I will do about myself. I know I don't want a big anything and I wouldnt want to cost my children anything. I'd always leaned towards being cremated. I'm pretty humble in life and it probably suits me that I would be humble in death.

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This isnt really the thread for that kind for this kind of thing... but it has me remembering/thinking a bit. My grandmother was very sweet to me. She had a horrible agonizing end. An infection went septic and there was nothing that could be done as it ravaged her inside. A day before she passed, she was in and out... mostly out of consciousness. My aunt was sitting in her room with her. She awoke or mumbled asking my aunt if she'd seen the man with the mustache, cane and hat who had visited earlier. Nobody like that had physically been to the room, as my aunt had been there all morning. Later, my aunt asked my mom about who my grandmother might be describing. My mom knew right away, that my grandmother was describing her own father. That was kinda his trademark look.

She was in such tremendous agony, with rare moments of comfort, that I found it somehow very touching. Something had happened for my grandmother, was it psychological, was it spiritual.. I don't know and it doesnt matter. It really seemed she had been visited by her father there as the end was drawing close. For her, I'm glad he did.
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