Corpse Disposal: Bury Or Compost?

Factual Questions
1

Let us assume that I have a body I wish to dispose of.

To put some flesh on this corpse, he is 5’ 10" and 200lb. For the sake of completeness, this ex-person is unclothed.

I am restricted (by an authority greater than myself) to a disposal location comprising my back garden and nowhere else. I believe I have three viable methods available to me in ridding myself of my deceased fellow man. I consider all of them to be environmentally friendly and I am a firm believer in recycling.

Option 1.

I could lift my peonies from their border, dig a trench six feet down, lay the body in the trench, backfill with soil, replace the peonies, water well and look forward to more and better blooms on the peonies than they have been providing of late.

Option 2.

I could remove a grave sized rectangle of turf from the centre of the lawn, dig a trench as previously described, put the corpse in the trench, fill with soil, replace the turf and pat down with a spade to level the surface.

Option 3.

I need a larger compost bin for this one.

I could construct such a bin of dimensions, say, 20’ x 20’ x 20’* and fill it half full with organic matter, taking care to balance the carbon and nitrogen input to the required ratio. There could be leaves, grass, shredded wood clippings, vegetable waste, horseshit, everything you could possibly want in your compost.

I could then place my dead accomplice in the middle of the heap, fill the bin to the brim with more organic matter, water well and wait.

A well constructed compost heap can attain temperatures of circa 130 degrees F. within a few days, although it does cool when its energy source begins to diminish. Decomposition (of the horseshit etc.) can be relatively swift, perhaps a month or two depending on conditions.

I am reluctant to take option 1, mainly because peonies dislike being disturbed, and the benefits to them provided by a rotting corpse may be outweighed by the peonies refusing to flower for a couple of years in retribution.

Option 2 is definitely out. Mowing the lawn would be too emotionally distressing for a sensitive person such as myself.

Whether I take option 3 depends on a number of of criteria, not least the time factor, hence given the circumstances described above:

  1. Under normal circumstances, how long would it take for the body under the peonies to decompose to skeleton level?

  2. In an ideal composting scenario, and given the impetus of initial heat and the presence of vast numbers of bacteria, how long would it take for the body in the compost bin to decompose to skeleton level?

My thinking here is that if I could successfully compost the corpse, along with everything else of course, I could use the resulting fertiliser for the benefit of the whole garden rather than just the peonies.

*Possibly necessary because the mass of a compost heap reduces significantly from initial activity to a totally composted state.

Many thanks.

2

You should read the book Stiff by Mary Roach. In one chapter dealing with body composting it was found to work pretty well and is less costly than cremating. In the book the body was lowered into a vat of liquid nitrogen and frozen, broken apart, and finally freeze-dried for composting. So that would really solve the time issuecompared to burying a body whole.

3

I’ve heard of the freeze drying approach, it sounds quite sensible, I think someone was pushing the idea for Sweden. Minor problems with mercury from fillings.

The composting idea sounds viable, but I’m not sure that it is optimal, the main consideration is that it could stink to high heaven, also I’m not sure that compost bacteria are that suited to breaking down rotting flesh.

The things that are really good at breaking down rotting flesh are … maggots.

I would consider digging a shallow trench, covering most of it with plywood, with muslin covered holes. Then making a tour of fishing shops and buying up as many maggots as possible - shove them in there and let them get to work.

The muslim is to prevent an outbreak of flies, and to make sure that, all that hatch lay their eggs in your maggot farm.

Stench is still a problem, but I can envisage a form of suction pump at one end, and a water U-Bend at the other end for intake of air.

You could probably experiment with filtering the out take air with a scaled down model, say a biscuit tin containing a few pork chops. I suspect that filtering the out take air through vinegar and maybe a domestic carbon water filter would get rid of much of the aroma.

Alternatively you could use a hose pipe and pump the out take air down a lavatory.

You should land up with some clean bones and a load of dead flies, the flies could be burnt, and you could hire a heavy duty garden shredder to convert the bones into bonemeal.

A further embellishment would be to replace the plywood covered pit with a large polythene envelope sealed with gaffer tape, if you did that you could conduct the operation inside your house, which would simplify the air out take and ensure a little privacy.

I have a little experience with stench, some years ago I asked a friend to bring me back some Octopus from a wholesale fish market. He turned up with an enormous box.

After blanching and storing as much as I could in my freezer, I took the residue and offcuts into the back garden and tried to cremate them. This was only partially sucessful, so I dug a shallow grave for the charred remains.

The stench was mind blowing, I was asked questions like: ‘Is there a corpse out there ?’

I think what you need is a hermetically sealed maggot farm, they are unobtrusive and odourless.

Alternatively, since you live in Stow on the Wold, if you are in a sufficiently rural area you could just buy (or borrow) a pig.

4

Well the problem was with cremating bodies. When you burn the bodies the mercury vapor is released into the air.

5

What about quicklime? I’ve read many accounts of it being used on mass graves, and the graves of rebels and criminals.

6

Most composting guides either recommend against composting meat, or include special methods:

So if Grampa will fit in the Cuisinart, you are all set.

7

Then I suspect that Option 3 would result in some major heebie-jeebies when it’s time to turn the compost heap during the decomposition process. I don’t really understand why you would find mowing the lawn six feet above a peacefully buried corpse more emotionally distressing than picking his bones and teeth out of your peony fertilizer mixture.

8

Unwarranted (ficticous) assumptions and Hare Brained solutions. :rolleyes:
Would you really do these things in the real world?

9

Do nothing illegal. Don’t kill anyone just to try out the advice you get here (hey, it’s a SDMB rule, after all!). Anyway, I’d go with Option 1. Makes the most sense to me.

Slight hijack: I once heard a forensic anthropologist, Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy of KSU (perhaps best known for his work on the Australopithecus “Lucy” project), tell about consulting with cops from a small Ohio town. They suspected that a guy had murdered his wife, chopped her up and rototilled the remains into his large backyard garden. The suspect claimed she’d run away. Police searched the garden and found very little, other than a tooth with a distinctive jagged edge. They consulted dental records and found that wife had such a tooth. Hubby was eventually tried and convicted.

10

The Mary Roach book sounds more than interesting. I like the idea of freeze-drying a body. It seems to offer efficiency benefits.

The hermetically sealed maggot farm might work. Incidentally, I’m not sure that there would be a stench given off by a corpse placed in the centre of a fully utilised 20’ x 20’ x 20’ composting edifice. I once buried a (dead) cat in the garden 4 feet down and there were no problems with unpleasant odours.

I could also use quicklime, but I am really interested in decomposition times as specified in the OP. I am curious to know whether or not the corpse would decompose substantially quicker in the compost bin than it would under the soil. These seem fair questions for the forum we are in.

Naturally my compost bin would be well managed and regularly turned with a suitably long fork.

11

Dig canals in your cellar. It worked for Teddy.

12

Teddy dug locks for the canal, not canals.

I think burying the body in the peonies is your best plan, though you might get something unkillable like iris to cover up the disturbed peonies. Heck, even plant a tree over the top of the grave, if you really want to make it hard to find. You’d see marks on the lawn where the dirt had been disturbed, and the giant composter would be a dead giveaway.

Anyway, I think all this talk of burying misses one important fact- lots of identifiable hard things, like bones and teeth, won’t decay for years. I mean, burying Gramps is fine if it never occurs to anyone to search your yard, but what if someone does?

I think I’d rather just go down to the hardware store, buy some muriatic acid (which is actually HCl, quite concentrated, but renamed so as not to scare anyone or provoke teenagers into burning off their hands) and dissolve the whole body in that. Could do it in the bathtub, without the nieghbors wondering why I’m digging a trench in my backyard.

13

Your compost bin is a twenty-food cube?

14

Twenty-foot, as well?

15

My current compost bin is relatively small.

If I wished to dispose of a body as per Option 3 I would require a larger construction. A 20 foot cube would seem to allow for the diminished mass which occurs in any compost heap, following decomposition of the contents, while still concealing the bones.

Other suggestions are not without interest, but please bear in mind that I am looking for comparative times for decomposition (excluding bones) vis-a-vis Options 1 & 3 in the OP.

Thank you for your interest in decaying flesh.

16

Some muslim! How can his brothers be terrorists?? :dubious:

17

I already knew Islam was quite prescriptive, but this idea is still quite surprising to me.

18

Can I suggest another method? An adaptation of the way some tribe (name I’ve forgotten) routinely disposed of their bodies.
This will probably only work well if you have a full grown tree. And it has to be spring/summer so the tree is in full leaf if you don’t want your neighbors or authorities to take interest. :wink: You’ll also need, oh, six to eight feet of that plastic they sell to gardeners to make trellises for plants to grow on. (The type I’m thinking of has a grid of square-ish holes about 2 inches all over.) Plus some rope and a pulley would be handy.

What you do is haul the body well up into the tree, maybe twenty feet from the ground and secure it to the trunk (or a suitable and convenient branch) by wrapping that perforated plastic around the body and trunk/branch. Maybe use a few twisties to keep the plastic from getting blown open. If you aren’t squeamish, use a knife to make a whole bunch of shallow cuts through the skin all over.

Then you just go away and wait. Crows and other carrion eaters will find your body within hours and go to work. Within a week all the soft parts of the body should be gone and you’ll have just bones and some of the toughest tendons left. The perforated plastic lets the birds get their beaks into the flesh but keeps them from flying off with (and dropping in public locations) any chunk of flesh large enough to arouse suspicions.

Yes, you’ll have a mob of crows, etc, coming and going from your tree, but so what? Crows are well known to roost en masse in trees at times, for who knows what reason.

Besides hiding the process and making it easier for the birds, putting the body well up in the tree means whatever odors are created are high enough to be dissipated in the breeze rather than lingering at ground level to nauseate you.

Once only the skeleton remains, bring it down and dispose of it however you planned with the other methods. Personally I’d burn the bones for a while (to denature any proteins and ruin the DNA, then pound the charred bones into bone dust, sift out any fillings/pins and such, then work the bone meal into the garden.

The metal stuff…well, toss it into a convenient large body of water.

19

I have heard that some people do this in India. I believe it’s called something like, “giving the deceased to the sky”. It might not be the best idea, though; apparently it smells a bit. And the vultures are a dead giveaway.

And the squirrels might get into the act.

20

Are you thinking of the “Tibetan sky burial”?