Aren’t they generally in concrete vaults with heavy covers? Not to mention getting it out of the hole isn’t an easy thing to do either.
Or you could use the ones you see in old movies that contain burials at sea, where the coffin has a swinging door at the end, and when they hoist it to the rail and tip it, the body slides out into the water and the coffin is put away until next time!
Or, more possibly, what’s to stop the funeral home from doing it? They can do it in plain daylight and come up with reasonable sounding excuses (“we made a mistake buring him and are fixing it…”).
It’s come up before: http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL&p_theme=sl&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB04CCD88E1D98B&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM (Two Graves Inspected By Officers Cemetery Is Accused Of Reselling Caskets)
But seriously, if someone wanted to pre-purchase a casket and have it around the house until needed would the warranty start from date of purchase, or date of internment? Because I’ve been thinking that one of those Costco coffins would make a pretty cool wine rack, and when needed you’d empty it out for the wake anyway.
Nothing that a backhoe wouldn’t fix with ease.
A very good point. The funerals I’ve attended recently (too many), they’ve waited until everyone left to lower the casket and fill the hole.
I’ve some woodworking supply catalogs that sell plans and hardware to build your own. I wonder how I would feel building my own casket?
Awesome.
Please note this is when you would like to have a warranty.
I ran across this site doing research on adipocere for a Straight Dope thread a few years ago.
Being a morbid pessimist, my father long wanted to order a set of plans for a bookcase that converted into a coffin. He never did get around to it.
Are there any legal issues which would prevent having oneself buried in a box made of quarter-inch steel plate with all 12 seams welded completely closed? I’d think that would put any doubts about coffin integrity to rest for quite some time. Give it a few coats of paint to delay the onset of rust, even.
I don’t think so. There’s a famous English case that I discussed in a staff report that dealt with cast-iron caskets that were closed in a similar fashion in order to thwart body thieves. But that case dealt with churchyard burials, which were free, and involved a very different set of rights to cemetery plots. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mcemeteryrights.html
I always thought the bodies were wrapped in linen, weighed down, placed on a plank and kerplunked in the ocean after a short service. No coffin.
It appears that many methods are employed, including the one you describe.
A few facts, an anecdote, and my insignificant opinion:
Burial rules vary, but here the below-ground dead are 4 feet deep. Proper embalming will fend off most decomposition, but not all of it. If there’s a big delay between death and embalming, it can’t be done right. Around here, buried caskets are encased in vaults, usually concrete. There are two kinds. A tub with a lid will keep anything inside from leaking out if there’s no flooding. A platform with a tub on top will keep outside water from getting in, but any liquid from inside may leak out. The soil over the vault will settle, even if the vault is intact. The diggers have to set aside some soil, because the grass has to be mowed. Backfill adjustment takes a while.
I have ties to the local funeral industry. This incedent really happened, and names have been removed. A dead man was buried, but the lid of the handcrafted hardwood coffin cracked as his family looked on. The funeral director and the casket maker scrambled to make it right. Before the disinterment could be arranged, the skies opened in a very rainy week. When the vault and casket were raised from the muck, a spectacular collision of odds was discovered. The cracked casket was in a cracked vault. The tremendous rains had enveloped the man’s earthly remains in muddy water.
Everything was straightened out in a few days, but those who believe in karma were wondering what the man had been up to before he died.
In my insignificant opinion, we devote too much of our time, money, and real estate to our peculiar traditions about the dead. I don’t plan to be buried in an expensive, beautiful box, in a tiny plot of lawn, forever “owned” by a dead man’s bones in a pretty box.
This shouldn’t be my favorite thread yet but it is.
Then you need to move on to the the Jelly Tot Star System thread. Best premise I’ve seen since Pan-Fried Semen.
I think a cigarette machine would be a better case mod.
“Coffin nail?”
“Yes, please!”
Case mod.
Aww, too bad. He could have had these people do it for them. They were on an episode of Ripley’s from 2001 that reaired just a few days ago. I like the song on the site. I know it’s called “O Death” but does anyone know who’s singing it?