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Comment by Asdfbla | Hacker News Reader

Although I don't like the thought of my body rotting somewhere, I do think it's probably just fair if my available biomass is turned after something useful after I'm dead, considering how much I will have consumed during my life. It's still only a symbolic gesture, but in that sense I'd prefer being liquefied and used as fertilizer to just being burned to relatively useless ash.

I wonder what the most ecologically useful way of disposing of a body is.

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Zoroastrian funerals[1] are pretty eco-friendly:

> Instead of burying the corpse, Zoroastrians traditionally laid it out on a purpose built tower (dokhma or 'Tower of Silence') to be exposed to the sun and eaten by birds of prey such as vultures.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/ritesrit...

That sounds like a receptor for spereading disease maybe even something like Kuru

And I don’t actually think it’s very eco friendly. They only do that because the altitude doesn’t allow for enough microbial activity to break it down.

What altitude? This is a tradition that started in Persia and still exists in parts of India. I don’t think altitude has much to do with it. There are social issues when the Towers of Silence that used to be away from the population centers become surrounded by the growing cities, carrion eaters aren’t always the tiniest of creatures

I recall reading there is a problem with doing this in India because the birds of pray population has decreased by like 99% so there's often not enough birds to pick the body clean.

EDIT: there's another comment down thread saying the same.

Also Tibetan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial

Turns out to be logistically challenging in many ways (and fraught with the socio-cultural complications one would imagine in a tradition going back thousands of years):

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/26/death-city-la...

There's an interesting concept I saw a few years back of the mushroom body suit: http://grist.org/living/mushroom-burial-suit-turns-dead-bodi.... It's essentially a bag laced with mushroom spores. You put it on an unembalmed body and bury it and the mushrooms use the corpse as fuel. Something like that and a backyard burial is probably the most ecologically friendly way of disposing of a body.

My body is pretty beat up and should probably be treated as toxic, hazardous, or medical waste (or all three).

I don't want to be buried, burned, or donated. I'd prefer something like dipping into molten steel (or lava) like in Terminator 2, for everyone's safety.

If fungi can mitigate, neutralize all the bad stuff in my body, I'd be okay with that.

(The right kind of) fungi is incredibly good at neutralizing all sorts of bad stuff. There's a great deal of untapped potential in this space.

I recommend reading this article in it's entirety:

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/13-mushrooms-clean-...

Sounds like being jettisoned into space orbit after death is right for you!

I was thinking Yucca Mountain.

I'd very much like to be feedstock for magic mushrooms which my friends and family could use to commune with me.

There's an eco-friendly cremation process that was developed within the past two decades, where the body is flash-frozen using liquid nitrogen, and then pulverized into powder with vibration. Whatever happened to that? I'm finding articles on it from 1997, but it looks like it never gained much popularity.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-burial-machine-that-...

Ecologically useful is leaving it out to be broken down in a warm biologically active wild. Minimum energy spent, and it will provide energy throughout the local biome.

I suppose donating one's body to a forensic anthropology facility ("body farm") would be one way to go a out that.

http://forensicoutreach.com/library/5-places-to-leave-a-body...

In Sweden, it's increasingly common to contribute the heat from crematoria to the municipal heating grid: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/294963

You could look at "green burial", a small but growing option in the US. All natural materials for the casket, no embalming, a more or less natural site for burial. You can also be buried green-ly on your own land in certain more rural/wild jurisdictions.

http://www.us-funerals.com/funeral-articles/directory-of-gre...

> I wonder what the most ecologically useful way of disposing of a body is.

There seems to be a lot of TED talkers focusing on this question:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jae_rhim_lee

https://www.ted.com/talks/katrina_spade_when_i_die_recompose...

https://www.ted.com/talks/caitlin_doughty_a_burial_practice_...

I think I will ask my survivors to plant a tree over me. I'd be good fertilizer.

It used to be common for French vineyards to bury deceased donkeys in a pit of lime and grow a vine on the site. As you say, excellent fertiliser.

"normal" burial is pretty eco IMO. Your body goes back to mother earth, especially if the Jewish /Muslim tradition of just wrapping the dead person in a cloth is adapted.

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