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‘Horrific’: 189 bodies found and removed from Colorado ‘green’ funeral home
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Funeral homes are parasites. Families should prepare and bury their own, unembalmed with no casket. A dead body is the most biodegradable matter in nature. Why pump it full of formalin and doll it up like a tart? Mourn the life of the dead, not their physical body.
This is the answer. It's a pollution issue as much as a mortician issue.
There is this clothing donation dumpster thing by my work that has a couch infront of it. It's pretty clear to me what happened. Someone brought it, noticed the sign that says no furniture donations, and decided that it wasn't his problem.
It would be pretty much like that. Find random bodies everywhere.
This couch looks comfy, let's put grandad there. No one will notice, put some sunglasses on him.
Or just plain old burying a person too shallow. Not a huge problem now, but it'll be a problem when coyotes and vultures and other scavengers dig the corpse up.
Preparing and burying your own is a recipe for cholera outbreak
Easy fix: don't bury people, just leave the bodies out in the open so scavengers can do their job.
Sky burial!
I unironically would love a sky burial. Vultures can digest anything. Chop me up, drive me out to the mountains and let the vultures shit me out. Seems better than the alternatives.
Great, now we have prions
We already have microplastics coming down with the rain, what's a few prions on top of that.
braaaaaiiiinnnzzzzzzz 🧟♂️
Idk why this killed me
Yeah prions do that
scavengers would die of toxicity from NSAIDs, chemo drugs, and whatever else modern humans load up on before their death. This already happened in places known for sky burials
Cholera more requires the living and untreated water. Palestine is a recipe for a cholera outbreak. You'd need some spread among the living before the corpses become a real vector.
E coli maybe, but once again, only with untreated water.
For the most part, corpses don't really spread a lot of disease other than whatever killed them.
It's illegal almost everywhere in the US to have a "natural" burial. There are laws on containers, treatment, and where the deceased can be buried. Dead bodies, while very biodegradable are also toxic and tend to get dug up and parts drug around by animals, up rooted by trees, or dug up during construction after the property is bought out. I do agree that funeral homes are soulless vultures who fleece people in mourning though, the last "fuck you" from capitalism.
I've looked it up years ago. In my state, you don't need embalmed, a vault, or anything really. You can throw a fresh body into the ground in a handmade pine box if you want.
I think the only restriction is an approved site for burial.
What constitutes a natural burial? At a cursory glance there are only about 5 states that don’t permit home burials and many of those just say it has to be in a cemetery, but you can apply for a family cemetery on your property and it’s completely legal.
In Virginia and West Virginia at least there are no requirements whatsoever that you use a casket or bury them to any specific depth. I’d suspect that if you were disrespecting grandma and threw her in the garbage you would be breaking desecration of remains laws but doing a legitimate burial at home is completely fine.
I can only speak to the laws of my state and those around me, and I suppose local municipalities might have differing laws, but it’s pretty open ended. You do not need a funeral home involved at all and frankly given how expensive these things are I totally support families that go that route.
I wish I could have a sky burial but I'm pretty sure theres nowhere in the US that could happen. And it would freak my wife out. I think the best option is aquamation (or hopefully recomposting since it was just legalized in california), since I can't have a sky burial
I’ve said the same thing for years. One day my wishes will be honored!
Well, you coild probably arrange for the soil/compost, resulting from that teconposting, to be used to grow some grain (or other native plants that might appeal to the local wildlife) , and then those could be fed to some birds 🐦 🐦 🐦, perhaps on a mountaintop 🌄, even. (i remember a story told at, I think this wasduring kne session at the 'body composting conference', about some peo friend and family who were left soil depositing some of it some quite remote places.) You could make a wole ceremony out of it, if that was desired.
It's a few extra steps, but maybe somewhat of a similar result, in a certain sense. And then the extra steps could give extra time for the grieving orocess, and link with the whole cycles of life thing, you know.
Anyway, that's just an idea. Hope you, and everyone, can find one that works for you, and find a way to have itgise wishes fulfilled later on. The option thts offered by recompose is cool, more options can certainly be good.
Are you sure natural burial is illegal?
Yes and no, it's not a black and white issue. I didn't really want to go all in on the topic because it's Googleable. My grandpa recently passed and it's very expensive, we were looking for alternatives. On a federal level natural burial is allowed. The states take matters into their own hands. Some require burial vaults, some require embalming, some require that natural burials only happen in very specific places, and some require a mix of those things. It's doable but if they can squeeze money out of you through laws or extreme inconvenience, they will. It's not as easy and just picking a spot and burying a loved one, in a lot of cases.
First of all, sorry to hear what you're going through.
In regards to natural burial, my understanding is that it's more legal than not, just that there's regulations depending on where you live. It's very rare that embalming is required by law. Burial vaults are typically required when embalming fluids are used to slow the spread of the fluids to waterways. Neither of these are considered part of a natural burial.
There's a lot smoke and mirrors in the funeral industry that has led to wide misconceptions and outright misinformation. I asked if you were sure because the points you made are generally what a traditional burial funeral home would tell a client to steer them more towards their products. It's awful that it's become common for funeral homes to prey on those that are grieving. Absolutely despicable.
I hope y'all find a way that honors your grandpa without causing additional stress.
They are wrong. One of my family members works in the industry. Wood biodegradable caskets are perfectly legal in all states.
I’m not the guy that you’re responding too but I’ll add my anecdote.
There was a somewhat off his rocker dude in my hometown that lived with his mom, she died, he didn’t notify anyone, buried her on his land (owned 15-20 acres or so, nothing large) and didn’t tell anyone. A few months go by and she obviously misses doctor appointments, church, etc so police check in. Then the guy says “oh yeah she died, I buried her, no biggie”. Turns out he violated a few laws doing this so he got some light jail time, she got exhumed, investigated to make sure she wasn’t murdered, then buried in a graveyard.
I lived fairly close to all this being in the same county and learned that in Illinois at least, you can’t just bury your dead, you have to go through some processes.
That's right, there's is a process. You can't just bury people without reporting the death and going through some sort of process. That's a good bit different from an actual natural burial even if at face value he did bury her naturally lol. That's wild. I've heard of that happening in my region in the southern Appalachians too.
Are you out of your mind?
Fun fact. It’s completely legal and ok to take possession of your loved one, provided you are their legal next of kin, and you can effectively bury them yourselves. Find someone on Craigslist that can throw together a pine box and rent out an excavator for a weekend and you can bury grandma for a fraction of the cost.
I have loaded a corpse into the bed of a pickup truck. We have sat bodies upright in the back of a suburban. All of this is completely legal so long as you don’t cross state lines and even then you just need a permit.
Each state handles it differently but largely this is the same wherever you go.
Spend the 5k to 10k on a nice trip to Vegas, Grammy would have wanted it that way.
Is it legal to have a Viking funeral where you're set adrift in a longboat and someone fires a flaming arrow at it and it goes down on fire? Asking for a friend.
No. Not an any state when I looked into it a decade ago
That being said, sometimes it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission, if you get me.
My dad helped with a 'burial at sea' thing. I'm sure they had some sort of permit, because it was a real to-do with a big casket weighted down so it would sink and such. The story goes that the weights weren't enough to sink it, and the casket ended up being air tight, so they shot a few holes in it to let air out and water in. I'm pretty sure they did it in international waters.
That’s actually a great question and I don’t know the answer. It might not be permitted because of concerns about disposing of remains and whatnot but again each state is different with their laws.
Personally I want a sky burial but I don’t think I’d be able to sell that to my family.
Your friend is not the first to ask this xD
What happens if you don't own land?
Wait..You... You are saying to only bury your dead on your own land, right?
Padme_meme.jpg
If you don't own land then you're not a real citizen /s
It turns out that humans and their pets are horrible for the environment because we’re just filled with chemicals from medication, cosmetics, and food. We’re not living our natural best anymore.
It's actually illegal in most countries to bury a dead body without alerting your authorities and usually there are restrictions on where you can do it.
You can of course just cremate the body, you don't have to go with a cemetery.
Embalming is optional and always has been. You can purchase biodegradable caskets and again that was always been an option. Open caskets are by family request and often aren't even an option.
I also saw Adam Ruins everything.