Cremation or Burial?

[Bob The Skutter]

If everybody keeps getting buried, someday the whole planet will be one big graveyard.

Isn't it already with the amount of dead people and animals from over the past billion years or so?

Interesting question actually. There are many different estimates on how many people have ever lived since Homo Sapiens is believed to have first existed, but most seem to come in at around 100 billion, with 6% of them being alive right now. So in fact only around 94 billion people have ever died.

I think those are very rough estimates, but it's not so hard to believe when you consider the massive popuation explosion of the last 100 years.

No it's not hard to believe, I mean I remember when the estimate of world population ticked over to 6 billion, and they're already estimating 7 billion within the next 3 years. And isn't there an estimate that the first group of modern humans on this planet would have to have been around 100 people, to account for the lack of genetic diversity?

But how many other human and proto-humans species, as well as other animals have died in the existence of this planet? I'm sure there's more than enough to call this planet one giant graveyard already.

 

[RJDiogenes]

"Behind every man alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time a hundred billion beings have walked the planet Earth." - Arthur C Clarke.

Of course, he wrote that over forty years ago.

If everybody keeps getting buried, someday the whole planet will be one big graveyard.

Isn't it already with the amount of dead people and animals from over the past billion years or so?

Heh. True enough. But I meant a literal graveyard, with no place left for the living.

 

[JAG]

I want to be cremated, as does my wife.

 

[SPOCKED]

note to self: never ever buy Cremora again

 

[nevermore]

So enough ranting, which would you guys and gals prefer cremation or burial?

My family cremates and generally buries the ashes, which I guess is more for the living members to have a place to go to remember the dead. Since a bad experience with my uncle's funeral (They read from the bible! To a family full of atheists! It was terribly inappropriate.) we have dispensed with the whole viewing/memorial and now go straight to the wake and burial/scattering per my late grandfather's decree, with which we all wholeheartedly agreed.

I would personally prefer scattering, maybe in the Chesapeake Bay. Followed by a massive party, on a boat or at least someplace on the waterfront, on said Bay.

 

[jim hadar]

Rycher, I saw something on tv a few months ago about a place that does that. I think it is a university somewhere that actually buries the the bodies with no caskets and then study the effects of the soil and how plants react to the decomposing bodies. I forgot where it was, I think in Colorado.

The University of Tennessee has a "body farm" where they conduct this type of research.

 

[trekkiedane]

"Behind every man alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time a hundred billion beings have walked the planet Earth." - Arthur C Clarke.

Of course, he wrote that over forty years ago.

If everybody keeps getting buried, someday the whole planet will be one big graveyard.

Isn't it already with the amount of dead people and animals from over the past billion years or so?

Heh. True enough. But I meant a literal graveyard, with no place left for the living.

But there is a more than thirty years old solution to that problem and it's called Soylent Green

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Mmm. Tastes like chicken.

note to self: never ever buy Cremora again

Doesn't she fill in when Elvira's on vacation?

 

[Samurai8472]

On one hand I shudder to think of my body being eaten by what is in the ground

On the other, I've always imagined future humans reanimating buried bodies back to perfect health

 

[Holdfast]

Burial. In a giant echoing mausoleum with crypt guards wearing dramatic ceremonial uniforms. And sphinxes. There have to be sphinxes.

 

[Lowdarzz]

I'm currently trying to buy my great uncle Gordon's plot in Beaver Utah as he is going to be buried in Tooele.

 

[kissthestar]

After the useful organs have found a home, it's the crematorium for me. I feel I've urned it. Also, I have read that cemeteries used to be popular spots for Sunday strolls and picnics. That's before the City Beautiful concept of city planning inspired many cities to create their own park systems, oftentimes involving areas formerly used for burials. Cheesman Park here in Denver is one such park. It is notorious for still containing unclaimed remains. I suppose the living can continue to take the "high road," even if there's some body on the "low road" right below!

 

[Deimos Anomaly]

Ordinary burial or cremation is for people with no creativity or imagination.

Now, I'm gonna have it this way: I shall have a massive labyrinthine tomb built, and be enclosed in a sarcophagus deep within the heart of the structure.

There will be assorted horrible traps, flesh-eating creepy-crawlie hordes lying in wait, a few t-rexes ready to be unleashed upon intruders, cursed objects of priceless value, a thousand slaves buried alive within the very walls of the place, a giant robot... and a giant bomb, should that robot ever be defeated.