Title says it all really; what would be done with the corpsicles?
Has it ever happened?
Their assets are frozen …
That was my line!
I’d be looking for a melt-down.
Some rash person would probably try to unplug all the equiptment, but cooler heads would prevail.
They file for liquidation.
<groan>
Call up Ray Brent Marsh of Noble, GA.
I think it has happened, and they’ve found thawed out bodies, etc. Too lazy to research for the moment.
This all raises the larger question of what it would even mean for a cryonics organization to cease “proper” operations – there just really isn’t any accepted protocol for how to maintain frozen corpses so as not to jeopardize their “viability” when there is so far no realistic possibility of restoring such viability. Everything I’ve read suggests that tissue damage from freezing and thawing would, alone, make it very difficult to reanimate someone – even assuming optimal storage conditions (and an intervening cure for whatever presumably serious malady led to your initial death).
That said, it probably makes sense that whatever currently-slim hopes there are of successfully demonstrating cryogenic reanimation would be maximized by close control of temperature, humidity, etc., redundant power and cooling supplies, etc.
All of which cost a lot of money and effort. Even assuming that the original cryonics operators act in good faith, there’s just no guarantee that whoever takes over after them will continue to care about the condition of your remains. More to the point – unless you have unusually devoted great-great grandchildren willing to act directly against self-interest by paying ongoing maintenance fees for your body (or unless you’re wealthy and have structured your estate to include an annuity for payment of maintenance fees, and also made sure your great-great-grandchildren didn’t have an incentive to unplug the fridge to preserve their own inheritance), why is a company that received even a large-ish up-front payment 50 years ago going to make an effort to keep pristine the remains of someone long dead, with no one to look out for his interests?
In practice, cryonics entrepreneurs, perhaps not surprisingly given that they are selling a service that at best may never be of use, and at worst is doomed from the outset, seem to have been about as dodgy as you would suspect – an unsurprising mixture of obsessive visionaries/cranks fixated on defeating death, snake oil salesmen, and perhaps a few bumbling but scientifically sub-par types with good but ineffectual intentions.
As the various mortuary scandals demonstrate, it’s taken a great deal of legislation, litigation, and business regulation to make sure that cemetery operators (who have a much simpler task, technologically speaking) continue with the minimal upkeep of graves and cemeteries when faced with the similar problem of ongoing maintenance expenese without an ongoing revenue stream.