# Could a human body be completely dehydated?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 27, 2002, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044 "2002-05-27T13:45:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/1 "2002-05-27T13:45:23Z")
Is it possible to build a dehydating machine that would completely dehydrate a human body, thereby reducing it to a pile of minerals, like on an old epsiode of the original Star Trek? Wouldn’t that be a great idea for a serial killer?
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/2 "2002-05-27T14:03:39Z")
Isn’t that what happens when somebody is cremated?
maybe it could be done by freeze-drying, but you’d have to grind up the body first I think; You still wouldn’t be left with a pile of basic minerals; you’d just have human jerky mince.
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/3 "2002-05-27T14:06:18Z")
the egyptian mummies have a pretty minimal moisture count.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Cynical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Cynical)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/4 "2002-05-27T14:06:44Z")
Damn you, Qadgop, I was headed there myself. 😃
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### Author:  [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/5 "2002-05-27T14:42:46Z")
Are you kidding, [these guys](http://showcase.netins.net/web/helling/at/anglers.html#redirect) will send bowser back to you whole! You will have to grind him up, of course.
The barriers to doing it to people are primarily social and legal.
## Tris
“Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.” ~ Ambrose Bierce ~
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/6 "2002-05-27T15:01:48Z")
I reckon (good cite eh?) if you were to analyse a sample of Egyptian mummy, you’d find that it had a certain amount of residual ‘locked away’ water content; I’d bet that it’s at least 5%.
Natural materials are pretty much impossible to completely dessicate by ordinary air-drying (or even whatever artificial processes the Egyptians used); possibly not an entirely helpful comparison, but most softwood that you buy in DIY stores has a water content of something like 14 - 20% (by weight); A figure of about 17% is normal for air-dried timber, 14% for kiln-dried.
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### Author:  [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/7 "2002-05-27T15:50:56Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Triskadecamus \*
> \*\*Are you kidding, [these guys](http://showcase.netins.net/web/helling/at/anglers.html#redirect) will send bowser back to you whole! You will have to grind him up, of course.
>
> \*\*
They have shipping as well. :eek:
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### Author:  [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/8 "2002-05-27T19:01:28Z")
[These corpses](http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_548951.html) have been completely dehydrated, with all the fat removed as well. The water and fat has been replaced with a polymer in a process called [plastination](http://www.anzwers.org/free/chimaera/plastination.html) :
> [@](#):
>
> Generally, the plastination process consists of four steps: fixation (for which any conventional method can be employed), dehydration, defatting, and plastination. After fixation, the specimen is put in up to three bathes of -25°C cold acetone for dehydration purposes. After dehydration it is put in acetone at room temperature for defatting.
>
> Forced Impregnation is the central step of plastination: The specimen, soaked with the volatile solvent, is placed into a polymer solution. When vacuum is applied, the intermediary solvent is continuously extracted in its gaseous state. The evaporating acetone creates a volume deficit within the specimen drawing the polymer into the tissue as its replacement.
The result is a dry, odor free corpse that does not decay, and retains its life-like shape and suppleness (depending on the polymer used).
Note that just because a corpse is dehydrated, it does not fall apart into constituent minerals. You would have to subject it to a process (such as cremation) that would break all the molecular bonds that comprise the tissues of the body…
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### Author:  [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/9 "2002-05-27T19:25:57Z")
Holey crap, I took a fish taxidermy course from Angler’s Taxidermy… but it was in Calgary. They freeze-dried a couple of my (former) pet fish for me too. I got mine done for free, but they said normally they charge $50/month in the freezer. It should only take a few days to get done, but they’ve usually got their freezer so full of road kill at varying moisture levels that it can take months…
On another note I saw a TLC program while ago where a guy researched how mummification was done, found an old man who’d donated his body, and he made him into a mummy, starting by dehydrating the body. They only showed his hands, feet, and other small shots, but he looked like a giant bleached raisin. About getting ALL the moisture out, well… could be done but you’d need some pretty fantastic technology to push a button on your belt and have the person instantly turn back into a normal person :).
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### Author:  [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)
#### Post date: [May 27, 2002, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/10 "2002-05-27T19:39:40Z")
here
[An Egyptian Mummification](http://members.aol.com/egyptart/mummy.html)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 28, 2002, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/11 "2002-05-28T19:37:06Z")
Am I the only one who thought of _Dune_, here?
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### Author:  [@Bromley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bromley)
#### Post date: [May 29, 2002, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-a-human-body-be-completely-dehydated/111044/12 "2002-05-29T09:51:29Z")
On a related note, do bodies subjected to intense fires shrink significantly? My father told me (20 years ago) about seeing the after effects of a helicopter crash in Aden and how the bodies had shrunk. I’d tend to believe him because he seemed pensive/emotional (they were his mates), but he has been known to exaggerate.