hey there all, this is my first post after reading this board for years. I had to ask about one of the weird urls from the straight dope main page that linked here , and i wondered if this could be done with a person. Is there something illegal about it?
imagine never having to really say good-bye to grandpa !
I’m sure you could freeze-dry a person. Freeze-Drying is used for taxidermy all the time. There are certainly chambers large enough for the purpose. Just be sure to put glass or plastic eyes in, because the eye is mostly water, and without the eye, Grandpa’s face won’t look right, even with closed lids.
As for whether you’d get in trouble, I don’t know. I have no idea what federal, state, or local regulations you might run afoul of, and what requirements are. Also note that, even though freeze-drying is a great way to preserve things, once you stick freeze-dried Grandpa in moist soil he’ll rehydrate, and interesting decay issues will arise, which might be subject to those ordinances I noted above.
How do you feel about plastic?
Using this technique, you can pose the bodies or slice them up like canned cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.
Can I freeze dry a person? No, I don’t have the equipment. I do have a regular standalone freezer though, if you want me to just regular freeze someone.
Of course you can freeze-dry a person! You didn’t think the freeze-dried ice cream they sell in the gift shop of the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum was really freeze-dried ice cream, did you?
I’m getting images of Han Solo here…
I seem to recall a news story a couple of years ago, about a company in Scandinavia that would freeze-dry cadavers, then grind them into mulch that you could plant a memorial tree over. They claimed that it was more eco-friendly than cutting down trees for cemetaries.
That’s fantastic! Hopefully this idea catches on in more places.
Well, that bronze-age fellow they found in a glacier in (ISTR) Switzerland sure looked freeze-dried to me. He had been frozen for millenium, but was pretty well dried out into the bargain. What was his name again?
I find that it’s generally best to send them through a woodchipper first.
Ötzi, and he was found in the Alps between Austria and Italy.
Not too long ago, I saw a show about an expert taxidermist that invented a freeze drying technique for animals even bigger than humans. The process takes a few weeks but it looked like it worked great.
um ew… i’d refer grandpa 6 feet under… that’s just a bit creepy
I keep hearing a deviant version of the Folger’s commercial, where they substitute Grampa for the coffee the normally serve in Taven On The Green…
Flay him and tan his hide and make a grandpa skin rug to frolic about on in front of the fireplace.
What?
Watch episode 1 of Eerie, Indiana.
o/ "Tan me 'ide when I'm dead, Fred. Tan me 'ide when I'm dead..." So we tanned 'is 'ide when 'e died, Clyde, and that's it 'angin' on the shed! o/