The inventor of the screw-in coffin | Hacker News Reader

The inventor of the screw-in coffin

kottke.org

96 pointsrafaelc113 comments

A lot of people are pointing out flaws like the difficulty in screwing it in - although the original patent includes the use of a post-hole digger as a pilot hole. Nobody has mentioned the fact that - in the video at least - the deceased's head would be in the above-ground portion. Entering a cemetery would expose you to a large field of head-boxes. The idea of this on a hot day also concerns me: hermetically sealed is one thing, but steam pressure is pretty intense.

I propose an alteration: the unit be built with a large slot in the top, instead of the current capstan device. Then you could use a standard gravestone as a screwdriver...

"Phillips head"

Robertson's head turning in his grave

There will never be a funnier comment on HN than this one. Thank you for bestowing the phrase “large field of head-boxes” upon an undeserving world and for passing the baton so elegantly to /u/tantalor.

Second place for "Then you could use a standard gravestone as a screwdriver..."

Agreed. You almost never see that much comedy packed into such a small space.

Mentally picturing 2 men using a grave stone as a 1/3 meter socket head is too funny, the ratchet making the chk-chk-chk-chk! as they wind up for another turn.

Assorted thoughts:

- My wife's aunt was buried in a gravesite where multiple coffins were stacked (at least three deep, maybe four). That allows for more efficient use of space than does this screw-in design.

- Historically in Europe, you would only be buried long enough for the flesh to decompose and then bones would be removed to an ossuary. There are assorted "bone chapels" that show the artistic uses the bones were put to.

- Culturally, at least in the west, there is a desire to make it look like the dead person is asleep (although things always end up looking a bit off because, well, they're dead. At the last funeral I attended, for a high school friend, his skin had a distinct greenish tint to it).

For these reasons and countless others that I'm not going to come up with, I would expect sales of the screw-in coffin to total in the middle two digits. Maybe fewer.

> - Culturally, at least in the west, there is a desire to make it look like the dead person is asleep (although things always end up looking a bit off because, well, they're dead.

This is not true for most of the West, open caskets are a bizarre North American thing.

There is usually a 'viewing' in mortuary chambers where people/close family can visit the deceased a few days before burial.

There is no open casket during the ceremony though. That part seems to be fairly specific to North America.

I assumed the "viewing" was to bring a sense of closure. Maybe that's silly. Does it help to see them dead? The last viewing I went to the person's hands and face were bruised because of IV lines and such. It wasn't nice.

Well, death in general isn't very nice.

I don't know if it really helps; needs a controlled study I suppose :-) I just enjoyed being there with the family. That part did help.

In the North American (Catholic) funeral masses I've attended, the coffin was at the front of the church but closed. Only the wake at the funeral home (usually the day before) had the open casket. Funeral services at the funeral home have had an open casket.

In Orthodox Christianity, the customary funeral has an open casket and a point where people can come up and venerate (kiss) the deceased. From what I understand this is a very old practice. There's not much emphasis on making them look asleep though, often foregoing embalming and just getting them in the ground pretty quick.

You just reminded me of a funeral for a high school friend who was killed in the 9/11 attack on the WTC. The coffin was closed the whole time until at the grave, the Greek Orthodox priest opened it a little for some anointing ritual. There was an audible gasp among those present (most of us present weren't Orthodox), and I remember his mother trying to get a peek inside. Someone who had a better angle said that inside the coffin was another coffin since presumably his remains were in no shape to be seen.

Open caskets are (at least in some parts) an European thing as well. When open caskets were temporarily forbidden in Bavaria because of Covid, there were loud and vocal voices about robbing family of their final moments with the deceased.

Every funeral I've attended to in the Netherlands there is a wake or viewing the evening before the service, where the deceased is in an open casket and you can come and "say farewell", so to speak. Usually only family and close friends attend this. The next during during the actual service it's a closed casket, and has far more people attending.

My only information from North American funerals is from the Six Feet Under series, which I've been told is a fairly accurate portrayal. It's not really all that different, except that bodies are embalmed.

I've been to two Mexican funerals and one had an open casket, but it was arranged in such a way that one had to choose to see the body (I chose not, I preferred to remember him as he was alive). In the other, I assume that the casket was kept closed because of the brain surgery that had been done before she died.

> Historically in Europe, you would only be buried long enough for the flesh to decompose and then bones would be removed to an ossuary.

At least in Greece (not sure about elsewhere in Europe), this is still the normal practice in urban areas. You rent a grave, typically for 3 years, then the bones are dug up and moved elsewhere, commonly a shared family ossuary.

I was hoping this was about spacious, softly upholstered, two-person coffins for live people with vampire fetishes to screw in.

I am looking forward to your Medium post. Except I hope you post it somewhere without a paywall.

Don't you still have to excavate though? The dirt has to go somewhere...

Also, if you were a daredevil type, maybe you could go in head-first. That's called skeleton right?

Yeah that thing would not be easily screwed in by two people by hand. You'd need a machine

This. The friction must be enormous. The corpse plus the coffin. And all that surface area.

It's in the patent, you have auger out most of the dirt first. Think of like one of those plastic dry wall anchors that you drill a slightly smaller hole and then screw (sometime hammer, depending on style) in the anchor.

I want to see a prototype of a hammer-in coffin.

If anyone has tried digging a deeper hole in the ground, they'll understand that this hand-operated screw-like coffin can't work at all, due to the forces involved. You need to displace a huge amount of dirt, I don't see that happening without digging a hole first.

You still dig a hole for this coffin: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/US7631404B2/US07...

> To prepare a grave site for this screw in type of Easy Inter Burial Container installation, a drilling auger, such as those commonly used on a power-take-off attached on the working arm of a tractor backhoe, is used to bore a pilot hole in the direction of the intended Easy Inter Burial Container installation (See FIG. 28). The depth of this hole is usually about half the length of the Easy Inter Burial Container and approximately half its diameter, depending upon the type and condition of the earth or receiving material in which the burial is to be made. Adding an amount of water to the hole aids in causing the earth or receiving material to displace and more readily pack around the Easy Inter Burial Container as well as helps lubricate the passage of the hull and threads or fins during installation.

Aren't there certain customs from various religions that dictate how followers are to be buried. I know some are supposed to lay facing east, but maybe I'm forcing the "lay" part in there. Would this work as long as the last twist had the person facing east?

So many questions. Like, why do we bury anyways, blah blah, but don't want to dig that hole.

Could you screw it in at an angle? Must the body be horizontal or is 45 degrees fine?

These are the pointless religious debates that just seem comical to me. Similar to the recent thread on if it was okay for Catholics to partake in chocolate. The fact there was continual debate throughout history is just so funny to me.

> Similar to the recent thread on if it was okay for Catholics to partake in chocolate.

Intriguing. Do you have a link?

search for theology of chocolate

The patent does say it can be installed at various angles, illustrated in figs. 25 and 26 (also of interest is fig. 27, which shows it buried in the bed of a shallow lake with a duck decoy affixed to the lid).

I mean from a religious adherence POV.

find a cliff face and i'm sure this would work side ways... might even double as walkway anchor points...

At the foot of the walkway could be a plaque reading along the lines of "Special thanks for the individuals literally holding the supports in place: Bob, Jane, ..."

This would be a neat way to control errosion and stabilise the Earth.

In a thousand years a religion will dictate that one has to be screwed into the ground to a certain torque specification...

… and the Saint Peter equivalent will check that your torque wrench calibration was still valid before letting you into heaven.

the Saint Peter equivalent should be the official name for the torque.

"When installing the screw-in coffin, be sure to set the torque to one Saint Peter, and one Our Father for good measure"

Hope the ground isn't too hard otherwise you are mostly left standing out of the ground.

I see a new above gound mausoleum of rectangular shapes filled with dirt so the screw can still be used into the medium filling the structure

Then the religion will need a soil composition and density specification too.

In Islam, the dead should be buried on their right side facing towards Makkah, but that’s somewhat of a moot point since it should be in a shroud (not a coffin) allowing their bodies to return to the earth (not for spiritual reasons celebrating unity with Mother Earth or for reincarnation like some religions or cultures, more that the body is just a vessel that has served its purpose and should be allowed to decompose back to its source materials).

This coffin-less burial was largely forbidden by western laws and customs so Muslims have typically opted for the “plain pine box” option but there has been a new, secular resurgence of interest in this for ecological reasons and some zoning laws/cemeteries are beginning to allow this in the USA and elsewhere.

My god dictates that I'm to be buried in a standing position on frictionless bearings, so that I face East in the morning and West in the evening... so this gets us pretty close. Like my religion, this invention is a solution in search of a problem.

Jesus was a carpenter right, I bet he would have loved this thing!

Having used an auger of much smaller size, I can’t imagine how difficult this would be to screw in to compacted soil.

It is not a bad idea footprint wise for coffins to be standing up. At first glance the screw-in capsule sounds like a revolutionary idea too, it could save some time and effort with digging as well as burial space. In practice it wouldn't work so well and a pre-hole would need to be done with some machinery. Second, the cost of the capsule, considering it would be made out steel would add up quickly too. Still, coffins standing up to save space would not be a bad idea though I would rather be cremated so as not to contribute to funerary industry. I'm trying to picture the whole burial process with the capsule and find it somewhat comical. Would the family of the deceased have a ceremony before the capsule is screwed in, after, when it's half way in?

Steel costs 50 cents a kg. You could probably make do with a rough casting of cast iron. It might cost US$100. By contrast current coffins commonly exceed US$5000 in rich countries.

I think the ritual and symbolic concerns you point out are a much more serious issue.

How are you going to get your corpse cremated without involving the funerary industry?

Inventor: "No more trouble than putting a fence post in" haha. Something about being buried in the upright position instead of laying down seems... not very restful. I shudder to think how a corpse in the upright position would decompose differently.

Phrases like "ashes to ashes", "dust to dust", or "worm food" seem so out of place now with people being buried in coffins that don't allow for the worms to feed or the ashes and/or dust to mingle with the rest of the ashes/dust.

The whole being buried thing just seems so illogical to me. I know it means different things to different people, but I just can't wrap my head around its purpose.

> but I just can't wrap my head around its purpose.

Cultural: To have a place to visit the deceased that is strongly associated with them, as their body is literally there (especially for ancestors).

Sanitation: To keep the rotting corpse away from people and avoid spreading disease or attracting predators and vermin.

Both aspects are still there when you incinerate the body (arguably ashes will stay longer there than when they’re taken away in the soil)

And? They asked why bury. Those are the main two reasons. That there is an alternative that offers similar results doesn’t invalidate those reasons or the choice to bury.

I should revise my question. I get the burying part to an extent as the body does need to go somewhere, and being able to build funeral pyres isn't always an available option. However, I never understood the part of the coffin that prevents natural processes to occur. It all sounds like someone came up with a solution to a problem that didn't exist. Even for religions that believe in resurrections, do people think their corpses are going to be reanimated a la Lazurus or that an all knowing all powerful deity couldn't just create a new something? It's all just so logic defying.

> do people think their corpses are going to be reanimated a la Lazurus

Literally, yes. This has some info on it from a company selling cremation services, so obvious bias: https://www.greencremationtexas.com/what-does-the-bible-say-...

How do you know the ashes you receive are anything related to the original body and not just some random ashes meant as memorabilia? At least with a physical coffin you can inspect the insides and track it visually until it's buried.

People don't like to see bodies go through decomposition, especially not loved ones. It's also bad for sanitation to leave bodies lying around.

Burial rites are also a way to create a wedge to separate your culture from those that cremate bodies.

Cremating bodies doesn't leave "waste" lying around either though. Can't get to ashes to ashes without fire.

And yet, we know the people have been burying people for as far back as we can go. Are we too removed from it now that it seems strange to us? Maybe death has become too sterile and removed from our everyday existence. And modern medicine has made it so we don’t die as quickly as we used to.

But in the days of "as far back as we can go", the non-Pharoh common people weren't buried in air tight sarcophagi like just about everyone is today. Back then, it was dig a hole and lay the body in, fill in the hole. Nature took care of the rest. Now, we're arrogantly thinking that someone's bones are going to be something someone some day wants to care about, so we better preserve them in a metal box.

Yes, I'm being deliberately obtuse to try to demonstrate just how odd it is.

In ancient Egypt, the hole they dug was within their own homes. That is, they didn’t go out into the desert and bury people. It’s like everyone in your village was living and sleeping directly above their own personal graveyard. I find that to be odd.

It's a ritual, a ceremony. Being arbitrary, expending effort on something quixotic, is part of its effectiveness.

You end up a pile of bones either way. The dead don't care. It is the living relatives that will balk.

Guy has obviously not put up a lot of fence posts.

I don't think a corpse cares how it rests

Burial ceremonies and the idea that the body is "at rest" is for the benefit of the living, not the deceased.

Yes, I think you've got a point. It doesn't exactly fit my own image of the word "repose", and there are probably plenty others who will feel similarly... It feels more like "waiting", like the imagery of the Terra Cotta Army.

I would've loved to have been there for the original pitch. I bet he wore his nicest threads to garner investors. And his business plan was tight! He'd found an untapped market. The unveiling of the prototype made his partner Phillip's head turn in awe.

I read that the screw-in coffin was stripped of its patent after the USPTO found prior art. The inventor's life ended in a downward spiral.

The idea seems like a winner but a big flaw is that you need to dig a pilot hole. If that's the case then just dig the hole a bit larger and burry a regular coffin standing up. Or, for that matter, a tightly wrapped body can just be placed standing up. If somehow you could skip the pilot hole then it would be a great solution. I don't know enough to give an educated opinion but the screw in solution is certainly a creative one. I suspect that it has other uses.

This would definitely not work here in New Hampshire, which has very rocky soil. The state's motto, "The Granite State" is as much a farmer's lament as it is a description of the steadfastness of its residents. In fact, many 100-year-old cemeteries are built UP from the ground, since it's so hard to plant a coffin six feet deep here using just a shovel and a pick.

Considering how difficult it can be to install a fence post in glacial till, this sounds like a less than exciting proposition.

A number of flaws in the basic design but the most important one is how do you push through rocks in the ground?

Depending on how rocky it is, perhaps something like a large powered impact driver could be used to push through. I'm not sure how it would be any improvement over just excavating a large enough hole to begin with though.

There are what 300 M people in the US today? This is 9 B Sq Ft or 300 + sq miles of burial space, about 12x the size of Manhattan, every 100 years or so…

We shouldn’t be thinking about burying people, or doing so in a sustainable way

The rate of cremation has been skyrocketing and is currently over 50%. The problem is solving itself.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251702/cremation-rate-in...

I've noticed this too. My hunch is that it's a consequence of greater mobility.

Getting buried in a cemetary has much less appeal when it's either in a town you haven't been to since you moved away decades ago, or in some city you moved to as an adult and where none of your family live or are likely to visit.

When cemetaries have no real sense of meaningful permanence to people, there's no point in leaving your body in one.

This but also I would assume cost. Increased urbanisation means grave sites near where people live (so they can visit) are expensive.

> My hunch is that it's a consequence of greater mobility.

Most people nowadays just think it's creepy to be mummified. I think your point is also relevant, but less so.

I mean, it's creepy to be incinerated too.

Hmm, in modern units 9 billion square feet is 840 million square meters. Wikipedia says the US is 9.8 million square kilometers. By your numbers, then, the USAns would run out of space to bury their dead in 1.2 million years if they were perfectly preserved.

I might be misinterpreting, but it sounds like you're saying that not only shouldn't we bury dead people, we shouldn't even contemplate burying them, or we should contemplate burying them in a sustainable way. (Your writing also admits the interpretation that we should bury people without thinking about it.) But I think your numbers clearly show that burying people in the US is sustainable at its current population. If there were 30 billion people in the US they'd run out of space sooner, in only 12,000 years, which is maybe near enough to be concerned about whether the cadavers would degrade fast enough. Even then, though, I don't see this as a serious problem.

It’s not a matter of running out of land, it’s considering this land could be otherwise used as a productive asset for agriculture, industry, or environmental preservation…

There's no particular difficulty in planting corn, sputtering wafers, or conserving native grasslands on top of coffins, but even if there were, your numbers show that it would take 12000 years for coffins to reduce by 1% the land available to be "used as a productive asset for agriculture, industry, or environmental preservation".

The total number of humans who have ever lived is estimated to be north of 100B (this number blows me away). I’m guessing that a significant fraction of the 100B have been buried and it seems to be fine.

https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived...

no way this works, not in typical soil - and probably not even in sand. First of all, much too hard to be done by hand, so then you need a big piece of hydraulic equipment, which I am quite sure could handle the force necessary (think post haul auger that telephone companies use).

But that coffin is not going to be strong enough to withstand those forces - and who wants to watch that think 'snap' when you are trying to screw it into the ground and you end up snapping gramma or grandpa in half...sorry, but no thanks.

Take a look at Figs 38-43. There are sure to be theological debates about whether one can -- or should? -- be buried with a proprietary "tamper proof" screwhead.

Just put a Security Torx on it!

I heard Steve Jobs is buried in a pentalobe screw-in coffin.

The design would make more sense if it was scaled down for use as an urn. Cremation is less of a financial burden on families who might still want a grave site to visit. Plus the smaller design makes the remains portable in case they ever have to be relocated.

The full sized coffin makes no sense to me.

Would it be possible to make a version of this in of some kind of biodegradable material?

I would like to convert my physical form into a tree or similar after death (rather than something inefficient like burning, or horrific like being mummified in a lead box). This seems like it could be an interesting option for that.

reminded - very popular Ukrainian message these days, on TV and everywhere, to Russian soldiers is to carry sunflower seeds in their pockets so at least sunflowers will grow when the soldiers die on Ukrainian land.

I did this with a pet dog weighing about 80 pounds. I think this device would just get in the way honestly.

Tips: Don’t start with seeds. Use a tree farm sized tree (I think mine was 100 gallon container). Or something established. Growing trees from seed is time consuming and the slightest thing can kill it. Now, since you already have the need to dig, toss yourself into a burlap bag and jump in the hole before placing the tree and backfilling.

A few years later, the tree is looking great and occasionally I talk to it when I’m missing that dog.

I don't know why "hermetically sealed" is anything remotely desirable for someone to be buried in. As if you're protecting yourself from some gross fate of being in the ground. Who cares?

More gross (if that's your concern) is being a sealed capsule full of goo that can't escape anywhere for a millennium. Wouldn't you rather be absorbed back into the earth to be one with the elements?

My guess is that if the top of the casket is close to the surface, decomposition gasses would leak out and attract carrion-eating animals. Not to mention the smell.

If it's hermetically sealed, where are those decomposition gasses going to go? A field full of dead bodies in pressurized cans waiting to go off for decades doesn't sound like a great time.

Grandpa would be pleased to know that his gas made grandma furious and horrified one last time.

In standard, central-european graveyards, there is a particular "graveyard smell", which lingers for decades even after burials are stopped. I always figured that is created by decomposition gasses escaping the ground, mixed with wet soil and standard funerary plants (often conifers).

If anything, an hermiticaly sealed body is much more interesting to scientists. See the St Bees man. His 14th c. corpse was still fresh as his lead casket remained sealed.

Mebbe something about whatever diseases you had leaking into the water table?

A good portion of you goes down the drain and the sewers probably leak into the water table.

I actually just commented on this very issue in reply to a tangential question about the direction/orientation of burial [0]. In Islam, burial should be in a shroud and not a coffin specifically so that the body may decompose quickly; this is actually rarely an option due to specific laws and regulations in Western countries, but it’s changing due to ecological interests.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30547984

> Wouldn't you rather be absorbed back into the earth to be one with the elements?

Yes, but this will happen anyway. I doubt the occupant has a preference on timing.

I should patent a coffin bullet that can be used to fire bodies off into space.

Or into the ground.

There's prior art: see Spock's burial in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

Or, something like a powder-actuated nail gun, but scaled up so it could drive a coffin into bedrock.

we can take that a step further, and produce a screw-in survival bunker; it would be a lot like boreing a caisson into position then making a suitable doorway and overburden.

The slogans could be fun.

"Got a screw loose? Get a screw in!"

It's not just for crazy people. It's a good way to survive a tornado in regions that don't typically build basements.

Cute idea, though I think I'd just dig a slightly larger hole a bit deeper and then stick a more conventional casket (round, perhaps) into it.

Human composting or burying and planting a tree on top seem like more sustainable options these days.

ZOMG great idea, take my (VC) money!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com