That’s pretty much it, though I’m sure I had read of it taking place in a special neighbourhood in a city along the Ganges. Expat Tibetans, maybe?
Those of you who advocate putting bodies in trees to be picked free of flesh by the birds, you have obviously never hung around a dessicating body in the process of being consumed by critters.
You have not hearkened to Sunspace who says that it smells a bit. Smells a bit is a bit of understatement. Gag me with a maggot is an understatement. Moving out of your house to Florida is a not inappropriate response. Except it might not be far enough.
The crows, of course, would not be alone in feasting. The bluebottles would arrive first - they home in on a dead body before fifteen minutes are up. Crows naturally don’t mind eating maggots along with decaying flesh. Masses of fly eggs and then the beetles. Picturesque.
Do bear in mind that in countries where this is practiced it is likely much hotter. Decomposition proceeds much faster in the presence of heat. This, plus the fact that there is likely an ancient tradition in such places of not being as averse to bad smells as the effete First World.
But I’ll still bet no rich people live near the trees where the sky burial is practiced. Only the poor. The very poor.
My dear Chez, if I may address you familiarly,
Naturally said body in a warm place would decompose far faster than beneath the earth. Decomposition is utterly dependent on temperature. This is at the root of our current inability to diagnose TV-accurate times of death. Temperature and insects are behind virtually all decomposition. Retard either, you retard decomposition. Anything beneath the earth takes longer to go than anything above. This is so well known we don’t even need to page Osip (our board forensic anthropologist) to talk to you about the Body Farm’s experience.
There is a classic photograph in Spitz and Fisher (our “bible”) of a dead husband and wife, lying side by side on the medical examiner’s slab. They were both killed on the same day, at roughly the same hour, by a schizophrenic son in a psychotic break. They were not discovered for a day and a half. The father was killed in the basement where it was cool, the mother in the attic where it was hot. The father looks barely dead, pale and cold and well preserved. The mother is a black and green, decomposing, bloated corpse.
At 72 degrees F it takes about 72 hours for rigor mortis to come on and pass off, so that real decomposition can begin; a bloated, putrescent corpse is usually more than a week old; a skeleton, several weeks. But I have autopsied a man shot at the edge of a cotton field in a hot Southern state in August, who was found the next day - less than 24 hours after he was shot. From head to hips he was skeletonized. From jeans on down he was merely a bloated and putrescent corpse.
No one can tell you how long exactly it will take for your 200 pounder to go away because you have not specified temperature.
But if you want it to go faster, why don’t you cut him up? Cutting up freshly dead bodies is good healthy fun.
Absolutely. Your shuddering sensitivity to corpse locations is simply inexplicable.
I do want to add, though, that besides the grass-is-longer-and-greener point for the lawn, the additional problem is that your lawn surface would no longer be even. This is one reason why graves are mounded or bodies buried in coffins with vault liners. A body that is not protected collapses as it decays. One of the things lawmen look for when hunting for a body interred without benefit of legality is a depression in the ground covered by long, fresh, green grass. If it hasn’t been months since the interment then they can use infrared to pick up the heat. Or just a good dog. Dogs love decomp. You’ll have every dog in the neighborhood scratching and whining at your lawn or your peony bed.
No, I think if you’ve got this weird intent to keep your corpse intact, the compost heap, stinky as it is likely to be, is the way to go. Do start putting dairy products into the enlarged compost box months before you add the human so that the neighbors will get used to the smell and its explanation.
Have you considered a wood chipper?
Not only does the body collapse, but it is darn difficult to fill a trench without it collapsing.
You can use a pounding machine, but you’ll still get a dip after a few months.
That can be temporarily avoided by building in a roof structure about 18" below the surface, for that I would use iron sheets, or at a pinch numerous sheets of corrugated iron.
(when I was a kid I had a penchant for digging tunnels, that is the cut’n’cover method)
Gabriella’s wood chipper reminds me of something from a Carl Hiaasen novel, quite effective, but difficult to explain for a 20’ x 20’ garden.
While I am firmly in favour of the ‘maggot farm approach’, I can see some alternatives
a) Gabriella compost seeding - use pork chops rather than dairy products
- with luck you’ll get a rat colony
b) Air drying, oddly we are mostly water, you could reduce your 14 stone corpse to pemmican in the cellar ( or attic ) by gently wafting cool air over it ( I recommend a cage of muslin - but a perforated Muslim might do )
c) We are coming up for Bonfire Night, a little unexpected generousity could allow you to lay the foundations of the fire, in essence a sort of wigwam.
If you do go in for air drying, then consider a daily application of creosote, it prevents decay and makes the residue more flammible.
increase in plant growth. I would suggest roses, they seem to thrive on such things. Mulching once or twice a year will also help conceal the depression that will form after the body starts to decompose and collapse on it’s self. This I would be important as you do not want an eyesore in your well manicured backyard.
Option 2: same rate of decay as under the plants, your yard WILL sink at the site, this would be a larger hassle to you since you would have to refill over time (and resod) now THAT would be distressing for you.
The only way to salvage this option is to plant a tree and a mulch border around it.
Option 3: The fastest way of decomposing a body. mild heat is always the way to go. Insects and bacteria will thrive in the heat, and thriving Bacteria love to eat and reproduce. Naturally the bones take longer than any to break down. 130 Degrees composting will break down tissue quickly, then the bones will start to become brittle over time.
On preview:
I see someone has Mentioned Mary Roach and her book “stiff” If your going to read one book about corpse disposal, this is it. I found it well written, explains details without getting technical, and quite hilarious in parts as well.
Nitro freezing works wonders in breaking down the body into smaller pieces. I only suspect it might take a lot of Liquid nitrogen to get there. Since I have never studied the technique. Bonus, small pieces in a compost heap will not smell as long.
The compost would be the fastest way, but would stink a good bit.
Random facts I remember.
The main things that affect the rate of decay: Heat, Vermin (insects and rodents), burial, trauma to the corpse, moisture content, humidity, prior embalming, clothing, size and weight.
Excluding environmental variables. A adult body buried 6 feet under in normal soil in a temperate climate excluding the above variables: will take about 10 to 12 years to become fully to a skeleton. Imeerse the body and the decay rate is 4 times faster. Expose to air, it can be up to 8 times faster.
Hope that helps a bit
Osip
As far as this goes, I’m not sure about the tree burial of the Lakota, but in “Tibetan sky burial,” I think it’s done at a monastery, and the body is completely gone within an hour or so. The vultures are remarkably fast at stripping away everything but the bones, and then the professional bone-hammering guys come and pound the skeleton to powder, which is then mixed in with some kind of butter or something and fed to the crows that wait on the sides.
You’re probably thinking of air-burial (in walled open-sky compound) as practiced by the Parsi (and other groupos) in India. There was recently quite a crisis, because the vultures were dying off, and without them, the rotting corpses posed any number of offensive nuisances and public health hazards.
You might find other body disposal tips in that article. IIRC, the Parsis, whose supply of corpses was more constant that of vultures, began using solar reflectors to speed decomposition. I don’t recall if they had any other tips (I read it years ago, but didn’t have time today)
I believe the vulture die-off was traced to diclofenac, one of the newer NSAIDs, but I’m not sure that this applied specifically to air-burial vultures. I do know it was a major problem in wild Indian vultures in general, due to (often pointless) overuse of diclofenac in livestock, pets, etc.
Of course.
I know you by reputation only which, I am assured, is impeccable. A pathologist is my dream date. If you ever want to visit you are more than welcome. Just make sure your affairs are in order, buy a one-way ticket and don’t tell anybody where you are going. We can take a stroll round my garden if you like. I’ll show you the peonies.
I can’t be exact about this but a properly constructed compost heap can attain a temperature of 130 degrees F. in the centre after two or three days. It will cool when the material available for composting diminishes.
(I did say this in the OP, but I’m not going to complain to a woman who has access to a plethora of sharp instruments on a daily basis.)
It’s alright for you to talk. You’ve got dissection facilities. Please try to remember that not everyone is as fortunate as your good self.
If a body is placed at the centre of a 20’ x 20’ x 20’ bin and surrounded by other organic matter, would it really give off unpleasant odours? There would be a distance of 10’ between the corpse and the top of the bin, give or take.
Have you seen Fargo?
This has given me an idea.
If I had two bodies at my disposal instead of a mere one, I could place the first in the compost bin and the second under the roses. When the bin body has fully decomposed I could use the end product for mulching.
It is indeed true that every problem provides an opportunity to innovate.
This confirms my own expert opinion.
This is gabriela’s view as expressed in her third post. It surprises me no little but I must now defer to two professional opinions on the matter. Fortunately my local branch of Tesco is running a special offer on air freshener. I will doubtless avail myself of their generosity.
Excellent news.
I think I will take up your suggestion of using two bodies, henceforth known as the Multi-Corpse Disposal & Mulching System, and perform some tests. I will present my paper to your annual conference as soon as is reasonably possible.
Many thanks for all the replies.