[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
Burning people smell of roast pork so I would imagine that the taste must be very similar.
[/QUOTE]
Supposedly, a cannibal term for human flesh translates as “long pig”, former cannibals love Spam & people who have been forced into cannibalism report there is a porcine taste.
I’ve always been wondering what occasion would give me cause to use this cite: Butchering the human carcass for human consumption
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
To make the whole question clearer - let’s put it into a context - an interstellar generation ship - it’s a self-contained, closed environment, all resources are precious - and energy is tightly budgeted. It’s more or less essential that the dead are recycled - and as efficiently as possible.
[/QUOTE]
Neat! If your generation ship is something like an O’Neill cylinder, then since you’re running a biosphere anyway, the various biological suggestions make the most sense. Composting or feeding to scavengers. But an O’Neill cylinder as a generation ship needs a substitute for the Sun - it isn’t particularly energy efficient.
If your generation ship is something more restricted, as you imply, you still need a food source for your crew. This is likely to be biological, perhaps based upon fungii or blue-green algae cultures, but still goop in a vat, flowing past lighting tubes with carbon dioxide bubbling through it. It seems to me that all your organic waste is eventually going to have to pass back through such a system in any event. Autoclave your corpses and feed them right back in.
Are you running a game, writing a book or just playing with ideas for the fun of it?
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
The Forums Home screen just said:
Turning human corpses into…
chowder
[/QUOTE]
Ewww…
I hate chowder. I want mine chicken-fried.
[QUOTE=matt]
Are you running a game, writing a book or just playing with ideas for the fun of it?
[/QUOTE]
Just idly curious, as usual.
[QUOTE=matt]
I’m not so sure about that. Prions are only an issue if you eat the CNS tissue (brains and spines and such.) Even then, they might not be that big an issue unless the people you eat have themselves been eating CNS tissue over a few generations, in which case you end up with kuru like the Fore tribe. If you’re selective with your victims and your cuts of meat, and cook it well, I’d guess simple cannibalism could be about as safe as eating farmed or wild animals.
[/QUOTE]
Human jerky would be delicious, tastes like pork!
[QUOTE=Szlater]
I don’t think cooking has any effect on prions - although there are probably other ordinary diseases that it would eliminate.
According to wikipedia, prions can be denatured by subjecting them to a temperatures of 134 degrees Celsius (274 degrees Fahrenheit) for 18 minutes in a pressurised steam autoclave.
[/QUOTE]
This will completely work in my human jerky process.
Now I wonder, are obese people nicely marbled? Are there any med students around here that can confirm the appeal of aged fat American?
[QUOTE=Darryl Lict]
This will completely work in my human jerky process.
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t jerky made by air-drying raw meat? If so, I would imagine that you’ll have all sorts of prion and viral issues because they will most likely survive the manufacturing process.
[QUOTE=sqweels]
Ewww…
I hate chowder. I want mine chicken-fried.
[/QUOTE]
Why do you hate me so?
::sniff::
Yeah, statements like that belong in the Pit!
If you’re using them as fertilizer, can you actually get much more efficient than just burying them under your fields?
I like the woodlands burial thing, but with a twist.
Like the old ‘plant corn with a fish’ method, we can recycle bodies in an Orchard method. Plant the body, plant a fruit or nut tree above it. Rows and rows of trees, just like a cemetary, but a lot more productive.
[tongue in cheek]
Then instead of “May contain Nuts” or “Contains Peanuts” warnings, we can label them “May contain Bob Smith.”
[/tic]
[QUOTE=Chimera]
I like the woodlands burial thing, but with a twist.
Like the old ‘plant corn with a fish’ method, we can recycle bodies in an Orchard method. Plant the body, plant a fruit or nut tree above it. Rows and rows of trees, just like a cemetary, but a lot more productive.
[tongue in cheek]
Then instead of “May contain Nuts” or “Contains Peanuts” warnings, we can label them “May contain Bob Smith.”
[/tic]
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s Granny Smith.
[QUOTE=Hypno-Toad]
No, it’s Granny Smith.
[/QUOTE]
:eek: 
All glory to the Hyno-Toad!
Even if I did give you the perfect set-up.
OBEY.
As to the OP, I’m not hot about using dead folks as food since they DIED. I mean, there was* something wrong with them*. Do you really want to ingest something that was in such bad shape that it DIED? fertilizer seems like the best use. We need fertilizer anyway and if the body isn’t embalmed in any way, it’s pretty much good organic material. But I just remembered someones concerns about the medicines in bodies. So THAT may be an issue.
[QUOTE=Triskadecamus]
Bio diesel. In third world countries, not so much, though, too skinny. Render out the lard on the average 'muriken, though, and you can seriously cut dependence on oil. Gives a whole new meaning to fossil fuel, eh? Then you have to use the non lipid residue for fertilizer for non edible crops, like biofuels, or fiber sources. Flowers would be OK, too though.
Once around the cycle should bioremediate even prions.
Tris
[/QUOTE]
My thoughts exactly. Sort of a “When You Pass, Turn into Gas” philosophy. Needs a religion though. “Gas God”? Maybe a church of the ethonol saints?
Boggles the mind, it does.
[QUOTE=Jake]
Maybe a church of the ethonol saints?
[/QUOTE]
You mean spirits?
[QUOTE=WF Tomba]
If you’re using them as fertilizer, can you actually get much more efficient than just burying them under your fields?
[/QUOTE]
I would imagine that grinding them up to a powder would be far more efficient than burying whole - I use fish, blood and bone meal on my vegetable garden - if I just buried whole dead animals and fish, some patches would be too putrid for anything to grow, plus I think more of the nutrients would tend to be lost by soaking away downwards that way. Finely ground dead people could be applied quite lightly to the top few inches of soil - and they’d go quite a long way.
But the lipids are not so good for that - so I think you’d have to render the corpses first - use the fats to provide or contribute to fuel for rendering the next batch, also to run the machinery that dessicates and pulverises the remains.
[QUOTE=Hypno-Toad]
OBEY.
As to the OP, I’m not hot about using dead folks as food since they DIED. I mean, there was* something wrong with them*. Do you really want to ingest something that was in such bad shape that it DIED? fertilizer seems like the best use. We need fertilizer anyway and if the body isn’t embalmed in any way, it’s pretty much good organic material. But I just remembered someones concerns about the medicines in bodies. So THAT may be an issue.
[/QUOTE]
But the medicines would cancel out whatever pathology they had, so no problem.
[QUOTE=Mangetout]
Yes, but how are we going to serve man? It’s the cookbook that I’m interested in.
[/QUOTE]
Now this is a man Hannibal Lecter would be pleased to have over for dinner with fava beans and a nice chianti.
[QUOTE=Szlater]
Isn’t jerky made by air-drying raw meat? If so, I would imagine that you’ll have all sorts of prion and viral issues because they will most likely survive the manufacturing process.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I think you are right. I’ll have to toss in a post processing heat cure to destroy the prions. My human jerky will probably be a little bit tougher, but less likely to cause mad human disease. Avoiding any human meat near the brain or spinal cord will surely mitigate the danger.