# What's the cheapest legal way to dispose of a human body? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 30, 2011, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858 "2011-12-30T18:42:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/61 "2018-04-09T21:21:36Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’d be kind of disappointed if, after I donate my body, the students didn’t make jokes using and at the expense of my corpse. I mean, if you can’t joke around about death, what can you joke about? Yeah. Why would I care? I’m dead. Stack me, mock me, dump me in a landfill. Make no difference to me at that point. I would expect them to be sensitive to my loved ones, but beyond that, anything goes. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/62 "2018-04-09T21:27:44Z")
BTW the professor/founder of the big body farm in Tennessee is donating his body there. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/63 "2018-04-09T22:18:56Z")
As far as burning your great Aunt Edna, I would think there are many, many hurdles to jump through even if was possible. The permitting requirements were somewhat daunting just to make our own cemetery on private land. We have 90acres and there is state owned land on one side. They would never agree to having a area close to them. But the other side is privately owned timberland and they didn’t care. So that’s where we put it. The state did make us a nice sign when the permit was granted. We were required to put a fence up. Plus we don’t have to pay taxes on that half acre. Not that it reduces our taxes by much. Just saying. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/64 "2018-04-09T22:49:36Z")
My idea: Outsource your funeral plans. Arrange to die in Varanasi, India and have a Hindu cremation on the banks of the Ganges River. I’ll bet that it’s much cheaper than the typical American funeral. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/65 "2018-04-09T23:16:06Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > here is a youtube channel with lots of videos about funeral homes and cremations. She does a good job presenting the info . She also has written 2 books on the topic. > > [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5iiEyLwSLvlqnMi02u5gQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi5iiEyLwSLvlqnMi02u5gQ) She’s great! Her first book is by far the better of the two IMNSHO. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/66 "2018-04-09T23:22:27Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > There is no guarantee that donating your body to science will end up at a medical school. Many such donations result in test dummies for products like motorcycle helmets or military land mines. > > [Body Brokers](Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains [Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains: Cheney, Annie: 9780767917346: Amazon.com: Books](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767917340/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Dq3YAbK8AWMY3)) This book, authored by a science writer who writes very entertaining books about things most of us would rather not think about, kicks off at a weekend continuing-education conference for facial plastic surgeons, to update facelift technics. A hotel meeting room has numerous things that look like roasting pans, each with a severed head in it so they can practice their new technics. > **[Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: 8601300104782: Medicine & Health...](https://www.amazon.com/Stiff-Curious-Lives-Human-Cadavers/dp/0393324826)** > > Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: 8601300104782: Medicine & Health Science Books @ Amazon.com ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2018, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/67 "2018-04-09T23:31:30Z")
> [@Beckdawrek](#): > > Don’t some cemeteries require the box be sealed? I don’t think cardboard will meet the requirements. I know there is a limit to how many people can be put in a certain area. Stacking or several people in one hole isn’t permitted in Arkansas. I often wonder what they did during the Civil war or the Flu epidemic. It had to be horrific. The bodies were buried in a mass grave (aka a plague pit). The same thing would happen today if we had a bad enough pandemic/disaster/attack and the funeral industry couldn’t keep up. > [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > There is no guarantee that donating your body to science will end up at a medical school. Many such donations result in test dummies for products like motorcycle helmets or military land mines… Or even at a mortuary school so morticians-in-training can practice embalming techniques and cosmetic restoration. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2018, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/68 "2018-04-10T01:16:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’d be kind of disappointed if, after I donate my body, the students didn’t make jokes using and at the expense of my corpse. I mean, if you can’t joke around about death, what can you joke about? Political correctness has invaded the medical schools. Modern students are taught to respect the dead (!), and believe that old-style medical students were ignorant primitives with a sub-human lack of understanding of the real issues of human relationships. (Based on conversations with staff and sophomores) ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858/69 "2018-04-11T20:18:31Z")
with regard to unclaimed bodies-around here the Coroner is stuck with them. He has several shelves (I took a tour) of boxes of cremated remains still waiting for a final resting place. It takes significant $ to cremate the body even when everyone is working to minimize the cost. There are only a couple of crematoria in the area, owned by funeral homes. The Coroner has to pay to have a body cremated, but the funeral home has a large incentive to help out as much as possible since the Coroner can slow-walk the process and leave the body clogging up the funeral home. The Coroner finds that this is one of his least rewarding parts of his job. By definition there is no one to take control of the body so he is stuck with it and he can’t just add the ashes to a landfill somewhere. He has to store them. He is working with some volunteer organizations to build a “rememberance wall” where the ashes can be permanently interred but there are lots of regulations about starting a cemetery. In the meantime, the shelves keep filling up. Still better than the bodies that can’t be identified or whose cause of death can’t be determined. Those are still lying in the coolers-sometimes for years. The tour was quite interesting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-cheapest-legal-way-to-dispose-of-a-human-body/607858.md?page=3)