It is my personal opinion, not to be undertaken as a dispute while we reisde here in GQ, that when I die I may not be entirely dead. I don’t believe in this afterlife stuff, I mean that I may actually still be “alive” in my body after modern medicine declares me dead.
My wishes, considering my belief as such, are to be frozen in a block of ice and set adrift in the arctic. My hope is that this will both A) protect me from the trauma of being eaten by bugs (as I am deathly afraid of bugs, especially spiders) and B) allow for the possibility that I will be discovered in the future and thawed out, whereupon I shall be healed of the condition that had killed me and thus resurrected.
If this goes according to plan, will my main objectives succeed? Will I be free of insect attack by this plan? And how should I prepare to arrange this, so that it is carried out appropriately when I die?
Eventually, that block of ice is going to float out of the arctic and melt, and your corpse will sink to the bottom of the ocean. Then it will be nibbled to pieces by crustaceans, the insects of the deep. Food for beetles, food for crabs, either way you’re going to be gnawed on.
Now, if you want to make your earthly remains almost indestructable, consider plastination. After processing, all the water and fat content is replaced with silicone; soft to the touch, dry and odor free, and completly unappetizing to bugs, worms or critters of any kind. Sound better?
You could place your body in the middle of the antarctic. That eliminates the crustaceans.
But the key is to have the willingness of 1) the next of kin, who technically own your body, not you and 2) all the people in the morgue, any one of which can stall until it’s too late, as they can do and have done to thwart “odd” requests if they themselves find a certain burial format required by their own faith. They will not give a body up if they know it will be left on a hillside, in certain ancient Greek and Amerind traditions, for example.
Also, your body may not be found. Not a pleasant thought, but one faced by families involved in fires, accidents, and floods.
If you are adrift at sea, the ice block will almost certainly melt rather quickly (icebergs drift south and melt). I suggest the coldest and safest place would be in Antarctica, on the land mass as close as you can get to the South Pole.
Will your objectives succeed? I dunno, what are they?
Preserving your corpse? I 'spose so.
Being thawed out and healed? Not a chance – freezing ice crystals will expand and rupture most every cell in your body, so there’ll be a lot more to fix than whatever killed you.
Though I personally would “second” that Antarctica suggestion-they’ve found mummified seals there that were tens of thousands of years old. And on the plus side, even if the people of the future who find your body aren’t able to reanimate you, you’d get a nice place in a museum somewhere.
Isn’t there an outfitin UTAH, who will give you a complete Egyptian-style mummification for around $20,000.00? That should keep your corpse around for a few thousand years!
I want to be dumped in the woods somewhere. The Earth can have me back when I’m done with me. Maybe wrapped in blankets and hammocked in a tree like I’ve heard some of the native North American burials are done.
