Personal Alarm Systems for Cryonicists Sunday, May 17 2009
cryonics 5:30 pm
See Ben Best’s page on the subject. If I randomly drop dead, it would be nice to get shoved in the freezer, post haste.
As Eliezer Yudkowsky once said, “it still looks to me like it would be better to just chop off the head and drop it into a bucket of liquid nitrogen as fast as possible.” (I’m actually going for full body because it barely costs more.)
For more cryonics enjoyment, see this page of “Who Are We?”
May 17th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
With regards to “chopping off the head and dropping it into a bucket of liquid nitrogen as fast as possible,” has that sort of strategy been investigated by Alcor or CI?
May 17th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Hah, not that I’m aware of.
May 17th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Tattooed on neck: “In case of death, chop head off ( —- cut here — ), drop into bucket. Thanks, have a nice day.”
May 18th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I’m curious how long a body sits on the morgue table say after a fatal car crash until Alcor shows up on the scene. Do they have some kind of rapid reaction team on standby to get to their customers? I’m also curious if family members can prevent Alcor from taking the head or body with any legal cause.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
We really need to do something in electronics to create a personal alarm convenient enough for people living alone. Owner of a lonely heart..
–Jon
August 27th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
To answer Isaac’s questions- there have been cases where Alcor suspended people who had no optimal measures taken directly after death and remained at room temperature. When you sign up, you can specify on what body condition would you not want cryonics to be done. There have even been people suspended who had autopsies, which means there’s virtually no hope that their brains have been preserved in any way, but cryonics in general is hopeful so who knows what the future will bring.
Alcor does have a standby team for extra cost, as does a company in Florida, Suspended Animation, which will do standby if you go through the Cryonics Institute.
Alcor won a legal case on behalf of a member whose hospital refused to allow Alcor on the premises. There was one case in which a preserved body was removed and buried after her husband and sister fought over whether she had wanted cryonics– he insisted she wanted it as he did, and the sister insisted she did not. That has been the only case like that (and of course Ted Williams’ estranged daughter dropped her objections to his preservation when his note saying he wanted biostasis was ruled authentic and she received part of the inheritance she had previously been disinherited from.)