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This seems like the kind of place where I could get some interesting and possibly even correct ideas about this...
I was talking to a friend about the infamous exploding whale and my brain started running through a series of processes (on which I will not elaborate) to arrive at the following question:
Nearly every society, even the most ascetic, has some form of Burial Rite and violating it is among the deepest of taboos. Where does this, apparently primal, urge come from?
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A> Smell B> Spread Disease (ie: curse from the gods for not following the burial rite!) C> SMELL! D> Remind us of our departed loved one because he's still sitting in the corner rotting away. E> !!!!SMELL!!!!
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What about the people who keep the skulls of their ancestors in cages in their houses? Just curious where they fit into this.
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And here I thought this was going to be a fun murder mystery thread with ways that haven’t been seen on CSI yet.
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We visited my wife's uncle who runs a campground on the Washington coast. He said a dead whale once washed up on his beach and got to stinking. The sheriff came and dynamited the carcass, sending huge chunks of whale everywhere. Of course, the biggest chunk of flying whale always has to land on the sheriff's car.
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There are clearly sanitary considerations... But it seems like there is a drive to deny scavengers access to the body... which almost seems against nature... or perhaps that as an apex predator we are making an effort to get ourselves as far down the food chain as possible (particularly wiht burial/cremtion) when we die. <shrug>
just wondering as I'm wandering
Edit: Yes, Jay, I'm sneaky that way. Skillery, that is the infamous exploding whale story, yes... except I'm pretty sure it was Oregon, and the Oregon Highway Department. Dave Barry did a column on it and there are many websites dedicated to this... google "exploding whale" and you'll find it
quote:Where does this, apparently primal, urge come from?
I think that it derives from the fact that we hold human life as sacred/holy/of great worth. Just like we consider the death of a human as very different from the death of a pig, so we feel very differently about the treatment of the vessel (body) of a human life than of a porcine one.
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The exploding whale incident on the Washington coast took place only a few years ago. I guess the dynamiting idea has gained in popularity as well as infamy.
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quote: But it seems like there is a drive to deny scavengers access to the body... which almost seems against nature
It is against nature. But that's OK. Us humans are always trying to deny nature. We wear clothes and build shelters so that nature doesn't get to kill is from the elements. We make weapons for hunting and plant crops so that nature doesn't get to starve us.
Us humans consistently act as though we believe that our lives are more important than giving nature her due.
The alternative is to have a bunch of grizzly bears and wolves running loose that have acquired a taste for human flesh.
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If you return to me now, I promise no harm will come to you... I doubt you'll get such an offer from the Eels.
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I think Peter has it... the urge to laugh at whale chunks, spontaneously quote "The Princess Bride", and bury or cremate the dead are all intertwined... it's one massive super meme controlling the entire human race! Dude... you're brilliant!
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Throw my corpse out with the trash for all I care. Unless I am rich when I die. In that case, I will require my heirs to have me stuffed and sat on their living room couch for five years before they get a penny.
What does happen when someone dies without making arrangements for their burial? Is it even legal to toss the corpse in the dumpster?
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Huh. Bastards. So what happens when someone has better things to spend their cash on than a casket, cremation, or burial plot? Is it the government's problem?
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Many Native American tribes didn't bury the bodies of the deceased. A common method of.. um... whatever you want to call it... was to leave the body in a tree or on a framework of poles to dry out and be eaten by birds.
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quote:A> Smell B> Spread Disease (ie: curse from the gods for not following the burial rite!) C> SMELL! D> Remind us of our departed loved one because he's still sitting in the corner rotting away. E> !!!!SMELL!!!!
I attended a Bioterrorism/Natural Disaster Conference a couple of weeks ago, and was rather surprised to learn that as a rule, decaying bodies don't spread that much disease. Yes, they smell terrible, and in the past, illness was associated with miasmas and bad air (e.g. Malaria). But today we understand better the causes of disease, and just smelling a decaying body may nauseate you, but will not cause disease. As long as you're not handling them, or eating your meals near them, or allowing small children to play on them, they're not really a health risk.
And despite what you hear on CNN, large scale epidemics almost never follow large disasters, which is surprising considering the common lack of clean water and sanitation.
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Ithought about it a little and I can't see why it would be illegal to bury a body on your own land... at worst it would be a zoning violation...
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I learned about some funeral traditions in my Family History class, and it's pretty fascinating. Burying the dead in most cases isn't really unnatural as you might think. Within 30 years an unsealed coffin and its contents have been taken care of by the decomposition process and the critters that live in dirt. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In some places in Europe they can actually redig a burial plot some 30 years later and, not finding anything, put in a new coffin.
In the US it's much more common to embalm the body, seal the coffin and put cement walls all around the plot, retarding the process to much longer than is natural.
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According to my do-it-yourself funeral book, you have to check zoning ordinances but home burial is usually legal in rural and semi-rural areas. If you register the area as a “family plot” that creates a permanent easement on the property in many states, so you should think about the effect on property values.
Edit: browsing throught the state-by state listings, permits often seem to be required, and at least 24" of dirt over the body and 150' from a water supply seems to be a standard.
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I've been trying to think of the most efficient/least intrusive burial method. Would a burial at sea lead to the quickest decomposition and least lasting residue? What about sprinkling cremation ashes - do they decompose pretty well?
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Muppet, those were interesting thoughts on the unsealed coffins.
Why do you think we're so fastidious about embalming and sealing up our dead? Does the "worms crawl in" song freak us out?
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Ashes aren't so good. Burning people takes a lot of energy which generates a fair amount of pollution and it destroys many of the good compounds in your body. There's a reason nothing really grows in ash but plenty of things grow in a corpse. Burial is actually pretty good, if a waste of space as it's being done now. Ideally you'd be buried in a shallow grave and someone would plant crops over your body that will happily use the nutrients from your corpse to be strong, healthy, and hearty. Burial at sea would probably be easier and there would be plenty of things to make a meal of your body, but it doesn't give back to your community in the same way, y'know?
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Well, you could have your cremains mixed with concrete and made into an artificial coral reef.
Or you could be buried in a low-impact grave that helps to keep a woodlands ecosystem safe from development.
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Dana, that memorial ecosystems thing is the coolest!
I've been bothered by this thing for a long time, since for whatever reason, laws regarding burial are so anti-environmental.
I had pretty much decided to be buried in a jewish cemetery, since they use a plain pine box and no embalming. But they still bury you too deep.
I'll have to see if the local open space presevation people have heard of this.
Also: Zoroastrians have traditionally put their dead in a tower where vultures become accustomed to finding food. Because most cultures find this method, uhh..., disgusting, they use other methods in most of the world, but as far as I know, this is still the preferred method.
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Read about it in a Sandman comic book. Might want to check that out. They have all sorts of burial methods in that one.
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