Best ways to preserve a body?

[Cauliflour]

I think the idea of people thousands of years in the future being able to see my corpse still intact is a cool idea and I'm paranoid about wasting my life and not leaving a legacy long enough for the sands of time to make all this remaining on Earth thing worthwhile, so what method should my corpse be stored? I know bogs preserve bodies very well but they have a habit of looking all rasin-y and squished in places (and also bogs wouldn't make a pretty grave). If you can preserve gherkins in vinegar then could you preserve bodies in like a big pickling coffin? Would roses still be able to grow on top of it? This is a weird question, I'm sorry. I'm vain about if I still look pretty in death.

 

[Wolf Girl]

The issue is the legality of it, I think. There's a lot of laws about what you can do with human remains. Where I live they just passed a law to let people have their bodies composted.

 

[Cauliflour]

The issue is the legality of it, I think. There's a lot of laws about what you can do with human remains. Where I live they just passed a law to let people have their bodies composted.

Huh, didn't think about that. Well, I'm in Britain and I'll probably be kicking the bucket in like 15-20 years time once I've finished my bucket list.

 

[psp3000]

I think if you were to preserve a body like a gherkin/pickle it would bloat like the experiments in the infamous classic RPG Mermaid Swamp

I think because salt brings out moisture?

one alternative I can think of is cryogenics but its very expensive and is usually used by people who hope to have their loved ones reanimate sometime in the future like John or Phillip J. Fry if technology advances that far

or maybe whatever they did to Lenin or the pope or various nuns (don't have much info on this kind)

or the coolest would be the way mummies and various religious leaders are buried and adorned in gold and in jewelry many of those skeletons are missing though to my knowledge (the adorned ones that look awesome I mean, not the mummies and scarophaguses as far as I know)

 

[Cauliflour]

I think if you were to preserve a body like a gherkin/pickle it would bloat like the experiments in the infamous classic RPG Mermaid Swamp

I think because salt brings out moisture?

one alternative I can think of is cryogenics but its very expensive and is usually used by people who hope to have their loved ones reanimate sometime in the future like John or Phillip J. Fry if technology advances that far

or maybe whatever they did to Lenin or the pope or various nuns (don't have much info on this kind)

or the coolest would be the way mummies and various religious leaders are buried and adorned in gold and in jewelry many of those skeletons are missing though to my knowledge (the adorned ones that look awesome I mean, not the mummies and scarophaguses as far as I know)

So like, theoretically I could tell whoever's reading my suicide note to put me into one of those meat lockers or a block of ice in Greenland and I would still be nice and fresh?

 

[psp3000]

So like, theoretically I could tell whoever's reading my suicide note to put me into one of those meat lockers or a block of ice in Greenland and I would still be nice and fresh?

maybe...

I would refer to this interesting video on the topic (discussed cryogenics in the middle of the video I believe) + the wiki if there's a Wikipedia page on this and the various organizations





as far as I know there aren't any facilities in Greenland who have done this

also a catch is that since they need so much funding there is a chance that you will need to eventually go into the ground or need to be cremated if they run out of funds or resources (I think this happened to one of the facilities mentioned in this video / the hidden head of someones mother story)

 

[Forveleth]

The way to preserve our body is to prevent bacterial growth and the degradation of tissue. There are a few things that we know of that will preserve humans:
-Chemicals. Like formaldehyde, these are usually highly toxic to living things, but they do a fairly good job at preserving dead tissue. They don't perfectly preserve everything, though. Things like hair and parts of the eyes will not survive.
-Cold. Cold prevents things from decaying, so cryogenic storage is a great way to preserve a body. However, this is very expensive, and it definitely depends on the cryogenic company staying in business. You could go die somewhere extremely cold, but you will most likely be out of nature and if animals find you, then the cold is not going to help.
-Peat bog. Because of the acidity and the soil of bogs, bacteria cannot grow, so decomposition is nearly halted and anything buried in a bog will be preserved for a very, very long time.
-Dedication. Bacteria need somewhere moist to grow, so if you were to dry yourself out, i.e. turn yourself into jerky, you could be preserved for a very long time.

Unfortunately, none of these are really methods you could do by yourself, but these are the ways that we most often have recovered remains from people or animals that have died a very long time ago.