1y ago

Will we eventually run out of graveyards?

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No. Typically you only rent a plot in a graveyard for 10-30 years, and unless you or your heir(s) extend the lease, the graves will be dug up and used again. By that time most of the old casket and body have disintegrated to a pile of crumbling bones. Those will either be taken out and fully incinerated, or if the decay is progressed to a point where not much is left to begin with, a thin layer of soil covers the remnants and the new casket will simply be put on top.
It's also getting more and more "fashionable" to get incinerated right away, so that's really a non-issue.
- There are places in the world with a standard practice of forever plots.
  For example, I don't think it's common in NZ for plots to be a time period before disinterment.
  
  New Zealanders have all that room after the elves left, so that makes sense.
  
  Read the fine prints. Even places with forever promises stipulate something like a maximum of 100 years if there's no survivor to extend the contract. For all practical intents and purposes that is forever for a family, roughly 4 generations at which point people start being forgotten.
  
  tbh I don't care.
  But there's no mention of any sort of time limits on Auckland Council's website about their cemeteries. Only one is an exclusive right prior to burial over use of the plot of 60 years which is intended to allow people to reserve a plot near family members.
  But it appears correct to assume a burial has no specific term length and doesn't expire. Disinterment after even 100 years not being a standard procedure. That said, the country is only about 200 years old.
  
  That's not always the case though. There is a graveyard near me with Graves from the 1800s that are untouched
- Does this apply to military cemeteries as well?
  
  No idea, tbh. I know next to nothing about military stuff.
- Utterly deranged way of dealing with the dead imo; stick em in the ground for a little bit like they're kimchi? Just skip ahead to the incineration part for me, thanks

72 comments