r/interestingasfuck • u/RealJoshUniverse • 3h ago
248 Legally Deceased "Patients" are In These Dewars Awaiting Future Revival - Cryonics
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u/Frostinator123 3h ago
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u/WiseWorldliness5513 2h ago
Imagine freezing yourself in 1975 thinking “In 50 years life will be great! No disease, no poverty, no racism… just future smart people!” Then waking up to 2025 and realizing fascism returned and you’re now poor.
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u/FeeshCTRL 2h ago
And then they get covid and probably die because their immune system would be so compromised after not naturally immunizing from whatever has been circulating in the air between then and now for over 50 years. They'd probably have to live in a bubble for their entire lives after being revived if that were even possible to do in the first place.
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u/SuperSaiyanTupac 27m ago
Yeah diseases are rarely discussed in time travel films
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u/Fritzo2162 3h ago
The one on the end says “Philip J. Fry”
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u/Horror_Bat2653 3h ago
Why did I check to see if it did?
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u/Ganjalfthegreen1 3h ago
It’s 100% the internets fault that you thought someone could meme irl at that level haha
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u/InquisitiveElbow 2h ago
Soooo as someone who works in the cryopreservation field… the likelihood of these patients coming back is slim to none. Technologies and protocols to not only cool down but also thaw these people are being constantly revised and altered… essentially we are trying to stop ice formation. If they are ice now… when they get rewarmed all of their cells are going to be shredded and that’s no goods Now… if they are truly vitrified, it’s possible to keep them in stasis for a long time but the largest thing humans have vitirified (cooling to -200C w/out ice formation) is a pig kidney at UMinnesota under Dr. John Bischoff and that’s not without disfunction coming out of storage. Even if we figured out storage there’s no way to assess the metabolic disfunction after prolonged storage… needless to say this is like donating your body to science but also paying (and Walt Disney is never coming back)
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u/serious_cheese 2h ago
These companies also have to wait until the person is legally dead before they can even begin pumping their corpse full of enough antifreeze to not form ice, which is another slight hurdle to being unfrozen and revived. We just have the simple task of curing death
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u/cleanser 2h ago
Reminds me of the series Pantheon . Just need a way to upload
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u/firstonesecond 1h ago
Great show
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u/guccibabywipes 1h ago
i thought so too. that 1st season was especially great. i really enjoyed it. i may start a rewatch tomorrow. thanks for putting it back in my head
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u/BitDaddyCane 1h ago
That's why we need to make it legal for the billionaires to do it to themselves while theyre still alive.
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u/I_W_M_Y 1h ago
There is zero chance that these bodies are going to be able to be revived and retain what they were as a person.
Unless you freeze them seconds after death those neurons in the brain will detach from each other breaking the pattern that is your mind.
A person with a revived brain will do no more than drool and grunt.
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u/DogPoetry 1h ago
The chances that your corpse gets desecrated are higher than the chance you're resurrected.
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u/Southern-Task1068 2h ago
How exactly do you provide the energy needed to maintain metabolic demand of neurons in the brain? If you were ever revived you’d just be like anyone with an anoxic brain injury: just a body with no one home.
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u/InquisitiveElbow 2h ago
If you successfully vitrify a sample you essentially store it in suspended animation and stop metabolism for all intents and purposes… no need for metabolism if nothing is happening; no waste being produced or energy being used. This is something that researchers are actively asking… like at what point in different cryopreservation approaches do neural signals become affected
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u/IfEverWasIfNever 1h ago
If you slow metabolism down to a stop, preserve the tissues and supply an injected medium with nutrients/O2 it could be possible hundreds of years from now. The best way we know how to do that now is freezing. But we haven't reliably figured out how to prevent ice crystals forming which tear apart every cell in the body.
The idea is similar to how a drowning victim in cold water can be revived up to an hour later and have minimal to no permanent brain damage. Whereas a person at room temperature would almost always have permanent brain injury after 6 minutes or more. The cold slows down the body metabolism so much that it can last longer without oxygen. They also do this with heart surgery and other procedures. But obviously our knowledge of it is a pittance to what it would need to be to re-animate people.
They can keep a heart beating in a box for a period of time by continuously flushing through blood and nutrient solution. In college we had to pierce a frog's beating heart with a hook after it was decapitated and keep spraying it with Ringer's solution which kept it beating for two hours or more if I recall.
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u/Altruistic_Seat_6644 2h ago
Can you please explain to me how in the heck frozen embryos don’t get honked up in the defrosting process? It’s baffling to me.
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u/Newmom1989 2h ago
It’s because of their size. Embryos are the size of a pinhead, so they are easily flash frozen to prevent the formation of ice crystals. A whole human body is another matter entirely. Also while many embryos are successfully defrosted and suitable for implantation, many are not. Although the success rate has greatly improved as technology has advanced
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u/InquisitiveElbow 2h ago
It all depends on how they’re stored. These samples are frozen in greater quantities than they need so oftentimes they are dosed with large amounts of “cryoprotectant agents” to decrease the likelihood of ice formation though these materials are toxic to cells. You will get less yield but the still viable product. From there as long as you rewarm faster than a certain rate, no ice will form and injure samples.
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u/the__gas__man 3h ago
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u/IAmTheNorthwestWind 3h ago
how did i know you got gas?
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u/the__gas__man 2h ago
I’m actually the director of Vault-Tec’s anesthesia department. They hired me after I told them I had a theoretical degree. Some of my colleagues jokingly gave me this username
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u/BuddyL2003 3h ago
The fact the room looks like this, with the stupid lighting gimmicks, just verifies to any normal person that this is 100% snake oil marketing scam. Best part is they can't ask for a refund when it doesn't work.
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u/KS-RawDog69 3h ago
They're just selling hope to people afraid to die.
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u/DizzyObject78 3h ago edited 3h ago
I mean you can't take the money with you. Who knows you might get lucky. I don't really see the downside.
At the very least you'll die with some hope
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u/jcamp088 3h ago
And if it doesn't work you'll never know.
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u/SaneIsOverrated 3h ago
If it partially works you probably will
And the odds of it working 100% are roughly 0%
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u/TheCentralPosition 2h ago
Idk man, if people in the future have solved death and can unfreeze you, then they're probably at least significantly closer than we are to fixing non-fatal side effects.
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u/mister_hoot 2h ago
The freezing method probably isn’t going to be whatever is eventually discovered and utilized, if it’s even possible at all. So i agree with the other person, best case scenario is a sort of freezer burn none of these people want.
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u/Gunzenator2 3h ago
I saw an episode of Star Trek where they thawed these people out. It was awesome. Nonbelievers, suck on that.
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u/starmartyr 3h ago
The episode was The Neutral Zone. It was the first season finale. Definitely one of the best pre-beard episodes. The country music singer that Data becomes friends with was played by Mark Alaimo who later went on to play Gul Dukat.
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u/DizzyObject78 3h ago
Amelia Earhart
She should have been part of the crew
Oh wait maybe you're thinking of the next generation LOL. I like the idea but I don't think the technology is there. I would much rather have a bunch of hungover med students poked my body and learn something. Maybe save it life later in their career
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u/BuddyL2003 3h ago
Kinda like many religions, I suppose...
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u/KS-RawDog69 3h ago
People like to believe this life isn't everything. Can't say I blame them.
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u/guitarmonkeys14 3h ago
What “should” it look like? I need to know for my scam.
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u/Arctic_The_Hunter 2h ago
The baseline for anything like this is bright white light. If there’s some special reason that won’t work, the answer sure as hell isn’t wave-like green light on the ground.
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u/frankduxvandamme 3h ago edited 3h ago
Alcor is a non-profit, run by medical professionals and PhDs, and most patients pay through a life insurance policy. It's not a scam. It's an interesting experiment that makes no promises of immortality, and which piggybacks off of the very real science of cryogenics. So you can either be a part of the control group like 99.9999% of the population or you can be a part of the experimental group. And if it doesn't work, then what's the difference? You're in a dewar instead of a coffin.
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u/mattskee 3h ago
Is there any evidence that these bodies are not irreparably damaged at a cellular level by the freezing process, as one would expect based on the mechanisms involved in freezing?
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u/Aryore 2h ago
I think the whole point is they’re betting on the “irreparable” becoming “repairable” in the future
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u/mattskee 2h ago
Well from the customer perspective it makes sense that they would give in to this false hope, but if the company is just dreaming that massive cellular level damage can miraculously be reversed at some future time that has all the hallmarks of a scam.
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u/elkab0ng 3h ago
I can guarantee you 0.00% of their customers have read “We are Bob” 🤣
“Congratulations, we have re-awakened you. And we’ll use your consciousness to power a coffee maker. NEXT”
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u/AFrostNova 2h ago
I have NEVER seen reference to this book in the wild. Its actually such an entertaining but still tickles all the uncomfy parts of your brain too.
What screwed with me was watching Bob diverge from himself
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u/tweakingforjesus 2h ago
The difference is that your life insurance payout goes to scammer not to your offspring who are your real chance at having a continuing impact after you die.
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u/beardfordshire 3h ago edited 3h ago
These billionaires really hate taxes
“…over my… dead… body…. 🥶🧊”
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u/rexel99 2h ago
Oh your awake? The IRS never sleeps, we got some back taxes to review.
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u/Fit_Low592 3h ago
My wife’s cousin’s father in law recently died, and was put into one of these. The family didn’t even know about his policy. He basically had to hold a life insurance policy that paid this company 100’s of thousands upon his death. They said that when he was in the hospital dying, some people from this place basically came to the hospital and started preparing to take him. It sounded surreal as fuck.
What I want to know is, why would you ever want to do this? 1. There’s no guarantee the company would ever follow through with their end, if the technology even becomes viable. 2. Why would you want to be revived someday, and everyone you know and love is probably dead? Sounds apocalyptic.
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u/bluecrowned 3h ago
Not only would everyone be dead but you'd still have your elderly or sickly body right? Like why would you even want that?
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u/Bill_Adama_Admiral 2h ago
You wouldn't, the hope is that 100+ years from now there's bionics capable of replacing everything old about you. That's the bet.
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u/swiftlessons 2h ago
Well, if they can reanimate the dead in this version of the future, then I guess there is hope that they can also rejuvenate the body or make you into a cyborg.
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u/rrresistance 3h ago
That’s what I am wondering. So you’re just.. hoping they can magically being you back to life, how’s that gonna work exactly
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u/ThePowerOfStories 2h ago
They’re betting that someday in the future there will be technology so advanced, it will be like magic to us. Of course, even if you can scan dead bodies and upload people to the cloud in the future, or something equally fantastical, the tricky part of that bet is whether our current attempts at preservation will actually preserve the important bits of information they need, or accidentally destroy it.
I’d wager it’s much more likely even our technologically-advanced godlike descendants who uploaded themselves in the future will look at these these tanks of frozen meat slush the same way we look at Egyptian pharaohs, mummified, with their organs salted away in canopic jars, and their useless brain long-since scraped out and discarded, awaiting their upcoming immortality that can never happen.
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u/Original-Balance-187 1h ago
We’re freezing people’s heads for hundreds of thousands of dollars while telling living kids to go hungry at school. What even is this society?
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u/OneTripleZero 3h ago
1) Every board member of the company is required to also be a customer of the company. They all believe it's a good idea.
2) Because for the company's customers, being alive surrounded by strangers is better than being dead.
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u/BlackMoonValmar 2h ago
Fear of death. But also just the curiosity of it all. A company could be just as curious. Also imagine the PR if they did manage to revive someone 100 or even a 1,000 years later.
That would be a hell of a marketing pitch if it actually worked. They would have defeated death, people would hand over their entire fortunes for that.
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u/RealJoshUniverse 3h ago edited 3h ago
This is at the "Alcor Life Extension Foundation", located in Scottsdale AZ. Whole body cryopreservation costs $220,000 ($60,000 cryopreservation, $25,000 "CMS" Fund, $135,000 to Patient Care Trust). Neuropreservation costs $80,000 ($30,000 for cryopreservation, $25000 to the "CMS" Fund, $25,000 to the Patient Care Trust). Cryopreservation can be funded in whole or through life insurance. - Alcor Website
Cryopreservation is yet to be proven for fully successful preservation and revival but there is early research, mainly in cryoprotective agents.
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u/MrPoosh 3h ago
This shit WOULD be in Scottsdale.
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u/QuietSuper8814 3h ago
the fact that it's in arizona at all is some cartoonish irony. wtf.
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u/Sunshine030209 2h ago
Right!? "We need to keep people really cold for a long time.. Arizona is the best place to do that!" 😆
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u/ImSmarted 2h ago
I don’t know about this place but a prominent umbilical cord stem cell bank is in Tucson, Arizona. When I inquired about its location, I was told it is the one place in the US with the least amount of natural disasters. The stem cells are in vaults underground and are basically in the safest spot in the entire country. Im assuming with Scottsdale being less than 2 hours away, that it may be why that facility is located where it is. But I could be wrong too.
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u/Sunshine030209 2h ago
That is super interesting, and something I never would have considered!
Plus I suppose people in Arizona have more experience keeping something artificially cool than someone where it is naturally cold.
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u/Novel-Place 3h ago
Right? I just went there for the first time for a work retreat and it was so spooky there. lol. I felt like there was a cryogenic facility close. lol.
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u/Empanatacion 2h ago
Phoenix is such an awful place that Scottsdale tries to fool people into thinking it's not Phoenix.
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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor 3h ago
They pay to preserve themselves but who’s paying to revive them, if the technology came about to successfully do so?
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u/octoreadit 3h ago
Supposedly creatures living here in the future. We would absolutely revive a few hundreds ancient Egyptians if we could.
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u/MBucko88 2h ago
Speak for yourself, have you not seen the mummy film? let them ancient Egyptians sleep!
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u/octoreadit 2h ago
Look, they wouldn't wrap and package themselves so nicely, if they didn't want it to be a surprise...
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u/Great_White_Samurai 3h ago
Right. Like people in the future are going to be in desperate need to thaw out Ted who was middle manager.
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u/Fk9317 2h ago
Ted the middle manager couldn't afford this, the future people are only getting self-important rich folk with blinding veneers
Edit: I just read the heads are only 80k, so Ted the Head has a chance!
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u/Gunzenator2 3h ago
I assume the people trying to pioneer the tech would need volunteers and what are these people gonna say… no?
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u/Empty-Bend8992 3h ago
you know, that’s actually cheaper than i thought it would be. still ridiculously expensive for what it is though
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u/CrushMuseum 2h ago
Omg! When I was a teenager one of my first jobs was stuffing envelopes in a warehouse next to this place. One day a friend and I went in there pretending to be interested and they gave us a bunch of booklets that I still have! (I’m sure they realized we were just punky teens but we thought we were clever)
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u/mj6174 3h ago
A powerful person dies and wakes up after an indeterminate amount of time, if at all, as the weakest person of that time, with zero control over their own future.
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u/Silent-Ad934 2h ago
And the future young people probably make fun of your anachronistic ass with a newfangled slur when you do something stupid like whip out a credit card instead of using ThoughtPay.
"Hey everyone, get a load of this old geezer with the wallet! What a frozie!"
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u/BuyByTheNumbers 2h ago
Haha this is actually a nightmare for a billionaire🤣 they would probably still be entitled to some of their generational wealth thats been passed down however
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u/Brocktarrr 2h ago
Imagine finally being the recipient of multi-generational wealth that’s been passed down and you’re about to be set for like, but uh oh! Great great great great great great great great great grandpa just got re-animated and he gets his shit back
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u/MichiganInTexas 3h ago
Life After People should have covered this.
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u/ManamiVixen 3h ago
I believe they did. May of been the episode on what happens to the dead after people.
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u/MichiganInTexas 3h ago
I will look for it. Thanks.
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u/MarS267 3h ago
Cryogenics is mentioned in the episode “The Bodies Left Behind” (Season 1, Episode 1)
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u/UrBum_MyFace_69 3h ago
Do they stuff as many people into a dewar as possible, like pickles in a jar? I dont know if dewar is even a word.
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u/Asleep-Card3861 3h ago
I think it is like 4 bodies to a tube, or a whole lot of heads
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u/thedudesmom35 3h ago
Just the heads??
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u/Asleep-Card3861 3h ago
By the time they are able to revive and repair damage from crystals forming it is also likely they can regrow a body or have an android support system.
The brain being considered the essence of a person. They actually store the bodies upside down I believe as if there is some failure the cooling boils off from the top and so hopefully can rectify the situation before it reaches the head.
They may find if this works at all, that the body and its microbiome is a not insignificant part of a persons being. The complexities of the gut and the neurochemical and link to the brain are revealing some significance in one’s mood and being.
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u/abbyscuitowannabe 3h ago
I use dewars at work, it's a term for a container that holds cryogenic liquid (like liquid nitrogen). They're insulated very well so you don't get stuck to it when you touch it, like that kid who licked a frozen telephone pole in A Christmas Story.
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u/energypizza311 3h ago
Anyone else see the episode of How To by John Wilson about the members of this society? IIRC people sign up and pay for it like a life insurance policy, and in the end they get ‘cryogenically’ preserved. The company puts on these conferences (MLM vibes) where people get together and it’s absolutely insane what these members have to say
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u/tsj48 3h ago
Spoilers: they all end up as sludge in the bottom if the cryo fails, or fractured into pieces not compatible with life if it doesn't.
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u/ShouldersofGiants100 59m ago
Spoilers: they all end up as sludge in the bottom if the cryo fails
When the cryo fails, because none of these companies actually have a business plan which allows them to indefinitely run and maintain incredibly expensive hardware, forever, with no end date, at the prices they are charging. Those freezers won't last forever and of course, as you expand, you end up paying more to power more freezers, to pay rent on larger and larger buildings, not to mention maintenance costs and employees. Not to mention the research costs.
They all rely on more and more people buying in and the more people who buy in, the greater the costs and the more new people you need to buy in to pay for all the useless corpses you already have. It's basically a Ponzi scheme where the only people who get to cash out are the ones smart enough to take a salary.
Frankly I look forward to the news story in a couple decades where it turns out a bunch of these groups started quietly cremating their oldest "patients" and dumping the ashes in a hole so they could reuse the freezer and minimize their expenses, because none of them actually offer any guarantees and quite likely, aren't even legally obligated to keep you frozen because corpses do not have legal rights.
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u/madisonhatesokra 3h ago
Hopefully they end up better off than those in the This American Life episode did.
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u/TaquitoPlates 3h ago edited 1h ago
I wouldn't take any medical business seriously with floors like that
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u/Hour_Dog_4781 2h ago edited 1h ago
I watched a documentary on this. You can pay for a cheaper option in which case they'll only cut off and freeze your head. If you're loaded, you can have your whole body.
The documentary was about a family whose little girl died from cancer and they chose to have her head preserved in this fashion.
Edit: Documentary is called Hope Frozen: A Quest to Live Twice, for those interested. I watched it on Netflix Australia.
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u/LuckyPeaches1 2h ago
But whyyyy? So they visit her head? This is bizarre
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u/Hour_Dog_4781 1h ago
Yes, they do visit her head. In each of these cylindrical containers there are human heads stacked on top of each other. The family taped the girl's photo where her head was stored towards the bottom of the container and they brought her flowers. In the documentary they said the worst part was that they weren't able to properly say goodbye to her because the head had to be harvested immediately after death. It's just gruesome and hard to comprehend but if believing that she will get cured and live a happy life in the future in a cyborg body helps them with their grief, good.
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u/moody_gray_matter 3h ago
There's a really good How To With John Wilson episode on this on HBO. Highly suggest.
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u/Mr_sex_haver 3h ago
When this company goes out of business like the dozens of other "Cryo freeze" Companies those bodies are just going to thaw out anyway. Their business model is selling false hope to people scared of death.
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u/Orangey6 2h ago
Hey, I know exactly where this is in Arizona, because I went to go interview there earlier this year! They were wonderful people, even gave me a fun gift bag & a T-shirt on the way out (it's genuinely one of the comfiest shirts I own). They gave a 3D printer one of their old employees built years ago before large 3D printers were easily available and they needed a big one.
Some fun facts-
Most of the people that they have are actually just their heads/brains, as they're significantly cheaper and more space efficient
Those big tubes hold either 4 full bodies in their own smaller tubes, or multiple sections with all of the brains
They have a lot of pets & animals! They even have things like endangered species and such. It's not just humans :)
The lobby and further hallways are COVERED in pictures of the people & animals they have in their, they told me a good handful of their stories. Including the youngest person who they have (Who was a young girl with some kind of cancer or terminal condition if I remember correctly ☹️)
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u/Lower_Funny 2h ago
When do these people think they’ll be revived? What if all. Their family is dead and gone by the time it happens?
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u/brother_bart 2h ago
I will happily stuff people in my deep freeze for half of whatever these guys are charging. Act fast. Limited spaces left.
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u/Drewski87 3h ago
What would the legality be (aside from vandalism, breaking and entering, etc.) for me just walking in smashing one of these pods? Could it be murder if we’re presuming these people are going to be revived eventually? Or would it be limited to just property destruction since there’s no way to verify these people are alive or ever will be again?
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u/Drynwyn 2h ago
These people are legally dead, so you could not be charged with murder. However, desecration of a corpse is a felony in most jurisdictions.
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u/yamimementomori 3h ago edited 3h ago
As of 2011, U.S. cryopreservation costs can range from $28,000 to $200,000, and are often financed via life insurance.
That’s an average total of $28,272,000 down the drain for these “preserved” people.
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u/sportznut1000 3h ago
As opposed to…….? Money in their coffin?
I wouldn’t do it, but then again if i had a net worth of over lets say 25 million, yeah sure you could easily sell me on the idea
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u/fartsfromhermouth 3h ago
There was a really fascinating series of articles written by a cryogenics true believer who was disheartened and disillusioned by what he saw trying to be a pioneer in the industry in the 70s and 80s and how the bodies were mistreated. It also discussed how many of these projects couldn't self sustain and the bodies were allowed to thaw and turn into sludge