Cost-cutters can have a head-only preservation for around $80,000.
Prices vary depending on the procedure, preservation company and payment plan, but can range as high as $200,000 for whole-body preservation. According to the Cryonics Institute, there were just over 200 people in cryonics storage in the U.S. Despite the numerous barriers to this, including the toxicity of chemicals used in an attempt to prevent damage to cells from freezing, advocates have promoted cryonics since the late '60s.
For people with that attitude (and large pocketbooks), there's cryonics.Ĭryonics is the process of freezing a person's body in the hopes that later medical science will make it possible to revive them, personality and memory intact. "It's a terrific opportunity not just to return to an aquatic environment, but to produce new life under the sea," he said.Īnd then there are those who would prefer to hang on to their old life, thank you very much. These heavy concrete orbs are then placed in areas where reefs need restoration, attracting fish and other organisms that turn the remains into an undersea habitat.Ĭremation isn't as green as natural burial due to the combustion process, Harris said, but he is a fan of Eternal Reef burials. Georgia-based Eternal Reefs creates artificial reef material out of a mixture of concrete and human cremains (the crushed bone left over from cremations). "You're allowing the body to rejoin the cycle of life."įor those who prefer to nourish a more aquatic environment after death, there's also the Eternal Reef option. "You're actually benefiting the environment," he said. In addition, Harris said, many natural cemeteries double as nature preserves, and many people like the idea of contributing to the ecosystem after death. "They can't believe the cost, which is outrageous, and then there is this growing concern about the environmental effects of all of these procedures and of all of the goods and resources devoted to this modern method." "Most people, when they find out what happens in the embalming room, they're pretty horrified," said Harris, who blogs at. The movement is driven by dissatisfaction with typical funeral rites. Today, Harris told LiveScience, there are at least 50 natural cemeteries in the country, and "scores more" regular cemeteries with sections for natural graves. The natural burial movement started in1998 with the opening of the all-natural cemetery Ramsey Creek preserve in Westminster, S.C., said Mark Harris, the author of "Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial" (Scribner, 2007). Bodies are wrapped in a shroud or placed in a biodegradable casket, the idea being that they will decompose naturally. Not so much a new invention as a return to old ways, natural burials are interments that take place without embalming and without the concrete vaults that line graves in most modern cemeteries. The base price for cremation at Anderson-McQueen is $550, McQueen said, and resomation costs $650 (transportation, handling and other fees bring the prices for both procedures to about $3,000). "It breaks the body down to the very basic amino acids, so there's no DNA, nothing humanly identifiable, left," McQueen said. In addition, fillings and other medical implants can be removed from the bone before the liquid - now sterile - is dumped into the municipal wastewater system. Resomation requires water of only 350 degrees F (176 degrees C) and takes the same amount of time as traditional cremation, McQueen said, so it's less energy-intensive. Three-quarters of Floridians currently opt for cremation over burial, McQueen said, but the natural-gas-fueled fire, which reaches temperatures of 1,600 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (871 to 982 degrees Celsius), releases carbon dioxide as well as trace chemicals such as mercury from dental fillings. This is a more environmentally friendly process than flame-based cremation." "And we do have more and more families every year that are interested in cremation but also in reducing the carbon footprint that they leave behind. "We like to give all of our families various options," McQueen told LiveScience.
The funeral home's resomation device is still being installed and tested, but calls are already coming in, said John McQueen, the president and CEO of Anderson-McQueen.
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