I know this sounds like a strange question but today for Fathers’ Day, my wife’s father wanted us all to go to the cemetary to visit the dead grandparents. This was an enclosed above ground mosoleum with four layers of bodies stacked up and hundreds of them to a room.
I should also add it was a Jewish cemetary such that the bodies are traditionally buried in inexpensive wood coffins (i.e. none of that Christian metal coffin with a perfect seal non-sense). This lead me to wonder, why isn’t there an un-Godly smell in there?
O.K. so they obviously seal each space up very well with concrete, marble, and who-knows-what else when they add a body to the wall, but this is California and with earthquakes, foundations settling, and other issues, there must be miniscule cracks and ways for the stench of a rotting corpse to eventually escape despite best efforts. I would ordinarily think they would stick the equivalent of a giant box of Arm-and-Hammer baking soda in there to control the smell, but the Jewish religion is really big on not embalming bodies or doing anything chemically to them, so I doubt that’s the case.
So, what’s the straight dope? Anyone out there work in the funeral business?