whats the cheapest legal way to dispose of my dead body so i can stick it to the funeral industry?
fuck thousands for a coffin. or hundreds for an urn. can i legally be burried in butcher paper?
can i donate my body to science and skip burrial all together?
i want my final action to be a big middle finger to the funeral industry picking on people in their weakest moments.
Donate your body to science. My mother did that. She used to joke that they would put her body in a car trunk in the desert, or some other location, and see what time and decay did so they could measure the process. For all I know, that's literally where her body is right now. They also do other experiments. Then, after a few years, they return cremated remains to you.
Try to find an institution that will take your body. I've looked into it. There's a place in a neighboring state that will take mine, but if I die more than 100 miles from them, someone will need to arrange to transport the body to them. There's not much more to it for me.
Edit to alter link to a better site
Word of warning though, check out the company before you do so. My mother in law was in the medical field and had a coworker that did this. The company ended up refusing the body because they had too many bodies. I've also heard of your body being used to test munitions, which is pretty much the opposite of what a lot of people would want.
Hello Mythbusters? Hehe
Also keep in mind if this is your wish you can't be an organ donor. Having a rotting corpse without any organs is a pretty unrealistic scenario and the data isn't as useful.
Among the other warnings here, if getting the cremains is important to you, be careful; my mother did this and we never got anything back. We almost didn't get anything of my father back, but my sister was tenacious.
Just so you're aware, it's my understanding that during cremation you're likely getting first only some of the remains back and second likely not only theirs. I don't think it matters, but I wouldn't be surprised if the remains of your father was some other ashes entirely. It doesn't really matter though. It's just a bunch of carbon at the end of the day.
John Oliver did a story on that one for people in the US. Donating your body to science doesn't mean it'll end up as dissected cadaver for medical students.
My son is in his water bottle. Never bought an urn from the crematorium.
This is a very sad two sentence story.
Yeah had to read it twice 😑
I'm sorry for your loss.
I didn't realize there was a choice not to buy an urn. When my uncle passed we paid for the urn just to immediately empty it and spread his ashes the next week. This is good to know for the future, thank you. I'm sorry for your loss.
The cremains came in a bag inside of a box made of corrugated plastic. His mother and I split the cremains in the parking lot of a seedy motel. My half went into a big gulp or similar cup until I got them into his water bottle (it is a nice metal one, not like a plastic disposable bottle).
Direct cremation is the absolute chespest way to handle it. They'll try to sell you a fancy urn, and may even say it's illegal to use another type of container, but you could literally do what they did in The Big Lebowski and use a coffee can if you wanted. The guy who invented Pringles had his ashes put into a Pringles can. The ashes themselves come in a sealed plastic bag, anyway.
My mom's are just in a wooden box I made for her when I was in highschool woodshop.
Cremation is fucked fir the environment tho.
TIL
It takes 285kWh of gas and 15kWh of electricity to cremate a single person. The CO2 this generates is roughly the same as an 800km car journey. Cremation also accounts for 16 per cent of the mercury pollution in the air, from dental fillings. (link)
In response to the environmental impact of traditional cremation, alternative methods such as alkaline hydrolysis, also known as water cremation, bio-cremation, or green cremation, have emerged as more eco-friendly options. Alkaline hydrolysis is a chemical process that uses water, heat, pressure, and alkaline chemicals to break down the body, resulting in a sterile liquid that can be safely released into the local wastewater treatment system or used as fertilizer, and bone residue that can be returned to the family. (link)
Guess I'm signing up to be goo!
Is there a Ralph's nearby?
Or just flush'em down a toilet, Captain Fantastic style.
I want my body dumped on the front steps of my least favorite living politician.
When they return my body to my next of kin they will dump it back on the politicians' doorstep
I didn't have a funeral plan but now I do.
Quite the game of hot potato
There is a German song with this theme called "Ne Leiche".
A big part of your question hinges upon where you call home. Some countries have strickt restrictions.
Pay a local taxidermist to stuff you so your kid/friend/partner can have you hang out in their living room. I told my mom I'm gonna have her stuffed and posed like a bear.
Thinking about this now it makes sense why my mom picked my sister as the executor.
The one idea I have is to be taxidermied; doing an obscene gesture,
I want to be turned into a drone. I'll be just like this cat. It will be a much larger version. Used for deliveries or emergency services. And I will be completely naked.
Regardless of the final resting place after the funeral - DON'T EMBALM. They'll pressure your family into embalming to 'ensure the dead look their best on the day of the funeral', but refrigeration does the exact same thing. You might think it's more 'dignified', but just do a quick google at what the process entails. It's ALL smoke and mirrors, and I'd rather have people at my funeral actually understand what my body is doing at that point - not the image of what a 'body at rest' looks like from Hollywood.
i will donate my body to a necrophilia foundation
What in the fuck did I just read?
Anyway the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is gold
Dude takes his kinks seriously. Let your freak flag fly over your grave.
But which one would you choose there are so many
Holy shit, can those even exist anywhere? You got me thinking. It feels like a potential rabbit hole.
My family has some experience with this
My mom's cousin was a wonderful person, her husband, however, was an enormous piece of shit in just about every way you could imagine.
She got sick and died, he never had a funeral for her.
Then he up and died maybe a year or so later.
My mom was still listed as the executrix of their wills, so it fell on her to decide what to do with him.
And she decided on nothing. Let the coroner haul his body away and never claimed it.
After a while they cremate the remains, they hold onto them for a while to see if any other next of kin wants to claim them, then after a while they bury or scatter them somewhere if no one does.
I'm sure the exact specifics of how that all works varies a bit from place to place, but in general that's gonna be an option. They can't exactly force you to pay for a funeral you don't want, and the local government has some plan on dealing with bodies no one wants to pony up for a funeral for (otherwise there'd be a lot of corpses of homeless people and such piling up in a freezer somewhere)
They can't exactly force you to pay for a funeral you don't want.
Where I'm at that's exactly how it works. Even if you don't accept the inheritance, funeral expenses are owed by the next of kin (jointly if there's more than one in equal lineage).
They might not be able to force you to conduct the funeral, but they will enforce the costs regardless. If there's an estate left, the next of kin can claim it back from the estate though, if somebody further down the line accepted the inheritance.
Depending on your jurisdiction, the State will act as the Estate Administrator. The State will liquadate all assets and deduct any expenses (funeral, taxes, etc). The money will then sit in a trust account waiting for be claimed.
interesting. im guessing the parties that op has beef with still get paid in this scenario, though. they get paid with state money
Would the bodies really be at a funeral home though? Maybe like during covid when they were running out of space in some locations but generally I think it only gets sent to a business if the paperwork is done. Would be weird to just start sending random bodies to different funeral homes across the cities every time someone dies. (I have no idea btw)
My body is going to a medical school, to be used for student dissection. Once they are finished with it, it will be cremated. My relatives can have the ashes if they want, otherwise it will be disposed of. My name will go up on a plaque in a special memorial garden. It was pretty easy to organise, just a matter of signing consent forms with a witness. Family are ok with it.
There's a chance my body will be rejected - infectious, too mangled, whatever - and in that case it's bounced back to family to deal with. I favour forest burial wrapped in an old bedsheet.
Yo how did you get that set up. I've been wanting to for years
I searched the university website for "body donation" and got a phone number and email address (dept of biomedical sciences).
There was a lot of info to read about what will happen. I had to let my doctor know so it's on my medical record, and my best pal is down as the contact person. He has a phone number to ring so they can come and fetch my body asap, and decide if it's suitable.
What inspired me was a documentary I saw years ago that interviewed a man who'd signed up for donation, then showed the process after he'd died, including dissection (from a distance). They also interviewed the students. It was very moving.
2 things that piss off the funeral industry
Both are legal in my state. You should join the fight if they aren't legal where you are.
Both are cheaper than burial. With aquamation you get back a bag of cremains just like with cremation. The only difference is instead of fire they boil you in an alkaline solution.
With composting it turns people into literal soil. You can take that back or donate it to a charity that is repairing a forest.
I second the Lemmy user who suggested Caitlin Doughty and the Order of the Good Death.
Edit: spelling
I never expected Caitlin Doughty to be mentioned here. Anyways, if you want book recs read "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs" by her.
You can shop around for crematoriums near you. Most of them in the US pick up the body as part of their fee. $300-800 to cremate a body. They mail you the ashes in a plastic bag. Some will offer urns, but that's an extra charge you can skip. Most states don't consider burying ashes the same as burying a body. Different laws. You can prepay, and have a card in your wallet with the company's info on it in case someone stumbles upon your body.
My wife and I have spoken about what we want done. My plan for her is to cremate her, then go to a local nursery and find a nice hearty, long living, low-maintenance flowering tree she would have liked and plant her and the tree in my back yard.
Please note the larger/heavier you are the more it can cost. Also most medical programs don't like to take overweight bodies for dissection programs as they are harder to keep/work with.
Only half-jokingly, my suggestion te my wife is to have me cremated, then mix my ashes in with some concrete to make a life-sized statue of me.
Stick me on the front lawn and dress me up for holidays, put a pointy hat on me and make a giant lawn gnome, stick a bowl on my head to use as a bird bath, or dump me at a cemetery and let me be my own headstone, doesn't really matter to me, I'll be dead, I won't care, but I figure she might as well be able to get a chuckle out of it, and maybe ruffle the feathers of some HOA Karen while she's at it.
She actually really likes the idea. She wants to have my statue posed like Buddy Christ from Dogma.
And maybe go ahead and do the same with the ashes of any dogs I've had and stick them right next to me. Better than having them take up space on the mantle forever, and they're more deserving of a monument than I'll ever be.
Bonus, she'll think of you and visit you way more often than if you were shoved in a back corner of a cemetary.
If you really want to stick it to the funeral industry, and you're including crematoriums and all other aspects in that, I think the only option is burial at sea.
Put it in your will that you want your friends and family to go on a deep-sea fishing cruise. Specify they must bring you along, and once they reach the approved and legal dumping location and have you naked and weighted so you sink, they can raise their glasses, make a toast, and pitch you over the side.
Meant to include this link:
Out of all the options, this one seems like the best to fulfill OPs intentions, although if you dont know someone with a boat, it does not make it cheaper.
Plus. funerals are for the living, not the dead. Some families may want more than GPS coordinates as a headstone (or they will need to put one elsewhere).
I personally would be fine with this disposal method for myself, assuming it was not too inconvienent or costly for others.
My family tends to be less concerned with our remains. My grandfather used to say that when he died we should just "jam a ham bone up my ass and let the dogs drag me away."
Never quite understood what the purpose of the ham bone up the ass was, but I don't judge. No kink-shaming.
Edit: I should add, we did not shove anything up his ass and let the dogs drag him away. He was cremated. His instructions were to proceed with the cremation immediately with no time for family to say goodbye. However, my grandmother and my father (only child) decided to ignore that. We met at the funeral home before the cremation and just sat in the room with him.
To this day, he's still the best looking dead person I've ever seen. He was dead, and he looked it, but he looked like himself. Just dead. He looked normal, not some plastic, uncanny-valley version of himself that someone thought he should look like.
That sounds like a good way to stick it to the funeral industry given that deep-sea fishing cruise is probably not cheap 👏
Probably not cheap, but it can be a fun time, and if you do it right, you can save money on chum.
The cheapest method is to abandon the body. People die without family all the time and the State has a method to dispose of unclaimed corpses. Cost $0
Left in the woods for dog walkers to find.
Or dropped in a peat bog dressed in medieval knights armor clutching a modded gameboy color.
OP's clearly trying to get tips on getting rid of a body so I feel this is the best advice
There are burial grounds that are basically natural parks, where you have to be buried in something biodegradable, like a shroud or pine needle basket, and no grave markers are allowed besides something like a tree or uncut rock. (Burial locations are recorded by gps.) I'd like to be buried in one of these places. Not sure what the cost is, though.
Wouldn't that also be funeral industry
Depends on who owns the land, I guess. But they specifically mentioned wanting to be buried in just a wrap or something, which places like this let you do.
Ironically enough, it sounds expensive because it sounds like someone bought a bunch of land for that purpose to appeal to people who want to be buried naturally. Big money Maker for them.
Could be. Being buried in one of the old, forgotten cemetaries that dot the woods in some places might work. You might be able to just add an extra body there and no one would ever see or question it.
Donation to a hydraulic press and/or hispeed cam YouTube channel
WILL IT BLEND!?
Vot de fuk!?!?
Where I live the cheapest is to donate your body to science but it depends entirely on if the local university needs bodies or has storage capacity at the moment of death.
it depends entirely on if the local university needs bodies or has storage capacity at the moment of death.
The problem is the solution: just die when there's capacity 👍
a MD and I had an arrangement where he'd get my body in the event of my passing so he could take me apart and try to figure out what the fuck went wrong, but he retired a decade ago (i was optimistically expected to have another 5 years in the early 2000s). I'm pretty sure I'm too mutilated for a normal med school to want.
Also a good video about body disposal. Good channel for death related things.
Donate your body for medical students to dissect
This is harder to do than you might think. First of all you have to have it all arranged beforehand. You can't do it last second. The bigger problem is a lot of places don't have the facilities to come get a body from random places. On top of that they don't want every body. Most places are looking for bodies that exhibit certain criteria. Certain diseases or certain disorders or anything that makes the medical useful for study.
When one of my grandfathers died, none of his children or ex-wives wanted anything to do with a funeral or burial arrangements. My parents found a place that accepted his alcoholism-ravaged body, and they took care of things. I'm not sure of the details, and seems likely it wasn't a medical school, but some organization took the body "last minute".
Seconded. Many schools have programs that will help with funeral costs if you donate.
I agree with this sentiment. It's insane to me that people need to cough up thousands of dollars to see their loved one off. It's so wrong, although I do accept that funeral providers can't simply give away their services for free. I would support a taxation that had a provision for funerary needs for all citizens. Universal death care. I mean, we're all gonna die. It's not like you can say "oh boo hoo I'm paying all this tax just for some other cunt to die on my dime??" because your day will come soon enough and you don't want your family having to blow their savings on putting you in a hole.
I wanna be harvested for organs like a Chinese dissident, and whatever is left can be mulched and used to grow trees or something.
But if we're talking "cheapest", in the UK and Ireland there's a pauper's grave thing where the state will put you in a very basic grave and with a very basic marker. Not sure if you need to be poor to qualify, or if they'll just do it when asked.
There are burial aid programs and such in the US, but they're typically religious charity and allowed to dictate their own requirements. A lot of congregations have a church-specific fund for helping congregation members only, for instance. Some states offer financial assistance, but not all of them.
If there's no family to claim your body when you die, the state will typically cremate you and claim your assets to cover the cost.
Become entirely homeless and cut off all contacts and remove all identification so no one will be around to care when you die.
Do you have access to a woodchipper?
I have a wood chipper and an anatomy degree. It'd be a real bother to feed a body through a chipper. It'd all have to be chopped down to about the thickness of my wrist. Limbs sure, but head and torso would be so much work.
You'd want an industrial meat grinder like what they make dog food out of.
You'd want an industrial meat grinder like what they make dog food out of.
I don't know how well it will hold up but the book Wilt by Tom Sharp covered this in, what I recall being, quite hilarious detail.
Caveat: This book is from the 70's and a product of its time. While I recall enjoying it when I picked it up (decades later) as a teenager, a comedy about a depressed man who hates his wife and regularly fantasises about killing her, just sounds like misogynistic bullshit to me now, no matter how funny it is. But maybe it holds up somehow, idk.
Water cremation can be pretty cheap IF it's legal where you are
Live with cats. They will take care of it.
I'm getting planted as a tree
I think the cheapest way here (the Netherlands) is around €750-900 and you are burned in a (fairly strong) paper bag or cardboard coffin I think.
But to be fair I don't care, i'm dead anyway, I don't have insurance for it, and if there is anyone left around me by then they can do whatever they want or not do anything. I don't have kids so they can't stick the bill to anyone.
I don't know the cost but I kind of want to be composted. That's a thing.
I'll compost you bro.
Slightly more expensive than aquamation but still cheaper than burial.
In Illinois you can get buried on your own property, I told my kids to claim my skull for the mantle and compost the rest.
When I die just throw me in the trash
That's against the law lol
To praphrase Diogenes and Frank: Just throw me in the trash!
Get eaten by a shark
Science Vs. did a great episode on Human Composting a few years back. It's really touching and highlights a fantastic way to convert your death into life.
Here is a link to the episode. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6reXXkhnvGxpSvnCz8wP2c
Is it a luxury option for the rich?
No. As far as I know, its the cheapest legal option. The only hurdle is that only like 10 states allow it as a legal option.
“It is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.”
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Ethics for Tomorrow”
Donate to science?
Do a viking funeral. You know, that ceremony where you are sent out in a boat and a fire arrow is fired into the boat so it burns down while floating into the sunset.
But skip the boat. Have someone chuck you into the ocean and shoot arrows at you until you sink.
Thank you so much for the info! I want to donate my body so I can be useful and help folks a final time. I have been getting awesome tattoos so my corpse looks dope as fuck
Native American pyre
"Sky burials" are probably cheaper.
Why Native American specifically? I'm thinking of Darth Vaders pyre and wondering if there's something different that the native Americans did, and also, what nation specifically if you know. They didnt all follow the same rituals/ceremonies
Check out https://funerals.org/about/
You ever see those old videos and photos of the monks protesting the Vietnam war…or you could do a sky funeral.
what is a sky funeral?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial It’s the most metal thing ever!
Check Caitlin Doughty's "Ask A Mortician" videos, in addition to some of the other suggestions.
Donate everything still working and the rest goes to a medical school for practice.
Do that and your organs will get sold from the back of a van
Who pays if you get so irradiated that you need to be buried in a lead casket, like the firefighters at Chernobyl?
Walmart.
Have nothing of value left when you die and make sure your relatives refuse ownership of anything. Leave it as a problem for the state to deal with.
Have nothing of value left
Debt with scummy companies is much better.
Max out all your cards or tell your kids to do so. Buy stuff that is consumable so there are no assets to reclaim.
No lie, i want a sky burial. Your body is split open and left on a mountainside populated by vultures, after a few days the villagers return and collect your bones, the only thing left. They grind your bones and mix them into crackers, which are then spread around the fields for birds to eat. Your entire body goes back to the birds, i love it. My wife isn’t taking it seriously but I mean it, i want one of those
No idea but I love how you think👑
There's a book called "Stiff" by Mary Roach where she looks into all the various ways to (legally) dispose of your body.
You can donate it to scientific research (my personal preference) and they will use it as a very accurate crash test dummy (usually).
Things like the glass in car windows and car crumple zones were invented with the help of such donations, and she claims that on average 14 lives are saved by every body donated.
I think you can just not claim the body and the government will bury it in a pauper's grave or something, but there might be some downsides to rejecting the body entirely.
have your homies smoke your ashes in a blunt
Ashes don't burn any further. That is why they are ashes.
so ull be inside ur homies forever
I didn't realize that there were any illegal ways to dispose of a body, as long as it's in their will and sanitary
There's definitely some limitations. There was a bit of an issue in my state when a Mosque wanted to install a cemetery on their lot, but they were too close to the aquifer and weren't allowed.
That's kind of what I meant by sanitary. Idk what the appropriate word would be. "Safe" I guess?
Certain types of burial allow the body to potentially contaminate nearby soil. Others can leave behind a void that can either collapse and disrupt nearby graves, or in some cases lift the body back to the surface in heavy rain. (Extremely uncommon now because essentially nowhere allows you to use those methods)
Funeral pyres or other forms of open air cremation are generally not legal due to concerns of fire spreading.
Whole body water burial is probably not legal in a body of fresh water in the US due mostly to the complexity of figuring out which law applies to that circumstance in any of the bodies of water that could be used that wouldn't be grossly undersized and unsanitary. (Basically that means the Great lakes, which are the only ones with the depth and size sufficient, but are shared between multiple states and also Canada. Usually the rule is that if it's not forbidden it's permitted, but body disposal is more complicated)
Funeral pyres or other forms of open air cremation are generally not legal due to concerns of fire spreading.
That's why you set up your OWN funeral pyre! Got a terminal cancer diagnosis, looking to go out on your own terms?
I mean, sure, it's illegal as Hell. But who are they going to prosecute? Are they going to put your ashes on trial?
I probably should have said "safely" rather than just "sanitary", I was thinking about water burials and ground water contamination when I said that.
\
And also just like... Leaving the body out in a public area.
As long as you're not putting people in danger, and you're not disrespecting the deceased, what would be illegal?
I suspect it's different in different countries, but things like desecrating a corpse are often illegal. I expect if you carved it up and started throwing chunks around, that would be illegal even if it's what the deceased wanted. Probably storing the body away and not telling the authorities of the death would also be illegal
I wonder, if you could throw the chunks around safely without sanitation issues, would it be illegal if that's what the person wanted? Is it defiling a corpse if thats what they wanted done?
Sky burial.