In the future, how do you think our dead will be buried?

Question

I can imagine caskets floating in space. Or being buried on another planet, perhaps? Maybe a meteor? I dunno... Silly question, huh? Yeah...you can tell I'm bored... (yawn)

Answer 1

Two words - Soylent Green.

Just kidding. I think cremation will become more common, especially considering the cost of burial plots. No wonder people are living longer.
I think burial in space is unrealistic, it is too expensive for mass usage, and is unlikely ever to be cheap enough to allow it.

Answer 2

Most people have no idea how powerful the funeral lobby is. At least in the USA, just try to have your body disposed of by any method other than burial in a cemetery or cremation. You or your family members will have to go to court and even then you are likely to lose. I suspect the same is true in most western countries.

Surely when it comes to spacefaring humans, there will be strict regulations on the dealing with the deceased. Dumping caskets in space wouldn't be a good idea...at least not without putting them on a clear trajectory to meteoric destruction. Leaving them floating around in the cruising lanes would be suicidal for those still living.

Answer 3

There is cremation, you know?

If people could get over this need to retain a body (which in times of logical thought is quite ridiculous, though I can understand if one has lost a loved-one), and the mistaken belief that burial is putting the person's material back in the gound, then cremation is the answer.

The fact is that the vast majority of one's body material comes from the atmosphere - carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. The carbon comes via carbon dioxide absorbed by plants which are eaten by us or by animals that we then eat.

So, cremation actually puts most of our material back into the atmosphere.

The old adage that right now you have in your body carbon molecules that were breathed and expired by Julius Caesar, is quite true.

In that sense you are closer to a dead loved-one (not Julius Caesar) through cremation than if you bury them in the ground.

No need to send bodies into space. Let's keep the elements here.

PS - in a Yahoo Answers group that has some of the silliest questions I could ever imagine (eg Why can't we see the sun at night?) this is a brilliant question.

Answer 4

i think it all depends on how the person in the family wants the person to be buried or the person itself. For example a old man dies and on his will or whatever he says he wishes to be layed to rest among the stars, his family will hopefully answer his wish and lay him to rest by putting him in a rocket capsule and blasting him into a star system where his dying wish wil be fufilled. Another example is a old lady tell he family before her passing that she wishes to be cremated into a cloud( by that time people will already come up with a weather system that can automatically make weather) so the family goes creates a cloud using the weather system puts her ashes in it and other ingredients and the cloud is made and the old lady finally gets her last wishes. i have much more examples but i wont write them down since the possibilities are endless especially if were talking about the future just use your imagination.

Answer 5

Burying dead people is a colossal waste of space and resources - not to mention an unethical way for people who run funeral homes to take advantage of you and take tons of your money. Hopefully people will be more efficient in the future and allow dead bodies to bio-degrade naturally. To everyone reading this who will will die someday (which I expect is everyone) - make a decision now to not be unnaturally preserved with chemicals and buried in a casket made of dead trees. Allow your elements to be recycled back into the Earth so they can be used by other life forms.

Answer 6

As room for more cemeteries runs out in populated areas, I think either cremation or graves stacked up in high rise burial centers will be the way of the future. Launching bodies into space will probably be too expensive and a waste of cargo room on a spacecraft.

Answer 7

I don't know, but I'll make something up. Maybe they will put people in robotic covens and then there will be a remote to controll then and maybe they'll build a very high building (scince Heaven is up and they hope they're in Heaven) and then they click a button on the remote to make them fly onto the roof of the large building and before the coven gets to high, they'll throw the remote on top of it so no one will mess with it. They might call it "The burry roof" or something. Just saying something. lol lol. But hey that might happen never know.

Answer 8

There's an article in People magazine about the future of burials being "green". As in biodegradable caskets and no giant marble headstones. I don't know if I believe it...but I guess it's feasible.

Answer 9

I doubt they would let the caskets float in space, but they may cremate people and shoot off the ashes

Answer 10

Some giant multinational organization will have found a legal way to get all of this raw material for free and recycle it into profits.