106 billion piles of stuff

Well, [msg=194217]the Beerlegger fantasy road trip....[/msg] thread is better than thinking,
about 106 billion piles of stuff.

John, I think you have too much time, on your hands.

No . . . I've thought of this for a long time . . . a long, long time.

The earth has only so much energy and natural resources for everyone to use.

We . . . human beings is part of these natural resources.

Virtually every animal in the world reverts back to earth, one way or another.

Even the things we eat revert back . . . one way or another.

How many pounds of energy/resources are lost when it's placed in metal caskets with concrete vaults?

Certainly, a person in 2000+ must understand that E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G is interconnected . . . this includes dead bodies too.

Dead bodies of today, should be the fertile dust that lands in the farms and fields of tomorrow . . . that feed a healthy population of microbes . . . and eventually, us.

A few billion bodies might make the African Sahara a little more inhabitable or make the this topsoil layer of the Amazon, a little thicker.

For certain, the encasement in steel and concrete are of no worthwhile use.

I'm getting a little bit of a Soylent Green vibe here. "IT'S PEEEOPLLLLLE"

Watch "The Walking Dead" tonight. If that happens, gonna be a whole lotta ready to use fertilizer laying around.

Oddly, I was thinking about this very subject yesterday.+o(

It makes a good argument for cremation...

I do agree that caskets, even the super fancy ones, should be disigned with a weak point that will evenutally fail and allow the body to return to the earth.

But that said, I don't think the amount of carbon and organic material being sequesterd is significant. People are mostly water and carbon, and their isn't a shortage of either, and a suspect that most of the water is drained from a body and the rest will eventually find a way to seep back into the ground. As for the carbon, the average person releases serveral times their body weight in carbon dioxide through out their lifetime, so maybe we are doing the world a favor by burying a few pounds of carbon with us we they die.

I'm not sure about cremation. Most of the energy value of the body is converted to heat that will never be converted back to a useable form of energy.

i've never read of any evidence that the earth was short of "fertilizer" before humans came about and started dying.

i would be more concerned about the loss of usable land from the development of cemetaries (sp). i've read that the Japanese are already racking, stacking, and packing the bodies in order to save land.

oh, and let's not forget about all of the new pet cemetaries. don't you love your pet enough to buy it a grave, casket, flowers, and a tombstone? and don't forget the treats to put in the box so that it will have something to eat in pet heaven. what a bunch of suckers. o.O

"But, for the past 50-100 years or so, dead people have been placed in ever more secured boxes and vaults."

Also during this time the dead have been infused with chemicals so they look good and don't smell for all their relatives and friends can come look at them for a few days after they pass. I live in an area of low elevation so the chemicals if not in a sealed container would get to the ground water.

I would go into this more but it is time to watch, "The Walking Dead".

I'm pretty sure the Earth has a way of getting what is hers. She's got nothin' but time. Have you ever noticed how healthy and lush the vegetation in cemeteries looks?

PS - By the time a human carcass gets interred, all the goodies have been removed anyway. Go count the clean-outs behind the funeral parlor...

did a little quick calc for 6 billion dead interred in separate 3' x 7' graves. comes up to about a Tejas county of 30 miles x 30 miles, standard stuff in the panhandle. as big and as dry as some counties in the Big Bend region are, there's more than enough room and they will also be mummified. :angel:

edit: my bad! fat fingered it! no need for another beer.

edit number two: it would take about 5.3 plus or minus of those 30 mi x 30 mi counties. now it's time for another beer!! 😉

Some people are choosing natural burial as an alternative to cremation or a modern burial.

I've thought about this too.

It's irrational.

If someone wants to live in perpetuity, create a scholarship or foundation with the money you'd spend on a mausoleum or other post-life memorial.

> Not to be morbid . . .
>
> But it's estimated that something like 106-110 billion people have died on earth.
>
> For the past couple thousand years dead people have been buried, burned or placed someplace special(out of the way).
>
> But, for the past 50-100 years or so, dead people have been placed in ever more secured boxes and vaults.
>
> I wonder if the numbers of all these piles of resources being locked away will eventually mean less food on the table because of less and less "natural" fertilizer being randomly deposited "on", the earth?

There should be a rotating place for cemeteries. Once a place is filled then municipal should look for another plot.
Estimate is that after 5 generations or so, nobody will remember who was buried where hence you could go cover it up several meters of soil. The new land will then have a new economic purpose.

Kind of like the movie Poltergeist.

In Germany you only rent your burial plot for 20 to 40 years. After that time period, the family can either renew their lease, or it's leased to someone else. The headstone is removed and the body is sometimes disposed of, sometimes the bones are reburied in the same area.

To me, the headstone is the most important thing after a number of years . . . it's the statement that the person was here, died and meant something to society . . . a statement of being(or having been).

I'm amazed at how importantly people appreciate seeing a picture of an ancient relative's headstone. Even in cases where the body is actually buried somewhere else(such as in a war).

> To me, the headstone is the most important thing after a number of years . . . it's the statement that the person was here, died and meant something to society . . . a statement of being(or having been).
>
> I'm amazed at how importantly people appreciate seeing a picture of an ancient relative's headstone. Even in cases where the body is actually buried somewhere else(such as in a war).

In the Cemetery where much of my family has been buried, there is a headstone of a B-24 pilot who died during WWII and received the Medal of Honor. He was no relation to me but I go by his headstone every time I am there.