Caleb Wilde
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Posts by Caleb Wilde
Nine Things About Human Decomposition
One. Your Body Cannibalizes Itself
“Within three days of death, the enzymes that once digested your dinner begin to eat you. Ruptured cells become food for living bacteria in the gut, which release enough noxious gas to bloat the body and force the eyes to bulge outward.” — Discovery Magazine
Unless, of course the body is embalmed, which drastically slows this process and usually doesn’t allow for the bug eyes to occur.
Two. The Urban Death Project Wants to Compost You
“The Urban Death Project (UDP) utilizes the process of composting to safely and gently turn our deceased into soil-building material, creating a meaningful, equitable, and ecological urban alternative to existing options for the disposal of the dead. The project is a solution to the overcrowding of city cemeteries, a sustainable method of disposing of our dead, and a new ritual for laying our loved ones to rest.”
Three. Embalming and Decomposition
We’ve seen Lenin and other famous embalmed corpses last for years upon years, BUT their bodies have been meticulously cared for by people in the know. It’s possible (although very unlikely) that embalming forestalls decomposition indefinitely, but it would be dependent on the environment in which the corpse is buried, as well as the quality of the embalming chemicals and the quality of the embalming job.
A major consideration in the longevity of an embalmed corpse is the climate it’s in. If it’s in a dry, arid environment it has a longer chance of lasting (example, the Egyptian mummies). Moisture is the kryptonite of an embalmed corpse. I’ve heard a number of funeral directors claim that they’ve seen 70 year old disinterred embalmed bodies that look like they only died last week. But, morticians like to exaggerate the power of their trade, so I’m not sure if it’s a tall tale or the honest truth.
Four. Adipocere Can Slow Decomposition
“Grave wax, or adipocere, is a crumbly white, waxy substance that accumulates on those parts of the body that contain fat – the cheeks, breasts, abdomen and buttocks. It is the product of a chemical reaction in which fats react with water and hydrogen in the presence of bacterial enzymes, breaking down into fatty acids and soaps. Adipocere is resistant to bacteria and can protect a corpse, slowing further decomposition. Adipocere starts to form within a month after death and has been recorded on bodies that have been exhumed after 100 years. If a body is readily accessible to insects, adipocere is unlikely to form.” – Via Australian Museum.
It should be noted that adipocere is very rare.
Soap Woman from the Mütter Museum
Five. If you’re embalmed, put in a casket and buried in a concrete vault …
Let’s make this clear: If you want to do the whole “dust to dust” thing in a relatively short amount of time, DON’T be embalmed, DON’T use a sealing casket and DON’T use a concrete vault with a plastic liner.
If the concrete vault is lined with plastic (as some of the more expensive ones are), it could be 500 years before your dead dust reaches the earth’s dirt.
If you want to become part of the earth, get a biodegradable casket, don’t be embalmed and pass on the vault (if you can find a green cemetery). If you go this route, it will probably only take your flesh a year to become grass, or flowers or a mud pie. Or, you could just be cremated. That’s the quickest way to become dust.
Six. The Body Farm
No, a body farm isn’t’ a place where people are grown. It’s a forensic research facility where human decomp. can be studied in different settings. The goal of the body farm is to gain a better understanding of the decomposition process; and then use that information (such as the timing and circumstances of death) to help in crime solving, etc..
Seven. Exploding Caskets
It’s rare. But it happens. The idea is pretty simple: a body is placed in a sealed casket, the gases from the decomposing corpse become trapped. The pressure rises and before you know it the casket is like an overblown balloon. It doesn’t necessarily explode like a balloon, but it will spill out all the nasty fluids and gasses trapped inside. And when a casket explodes in a mausoleum, this can happens:
(Amanda Shavers-Davis/The Cullman Times)
Some sealing caskets have pressure valves that can “fart” like Tupperware.
Eight. The Mummies on Mt. Everest
There have been over 200 climbers who have died in the area of Mt. Everest known as “The Death Zone” (the area above 26,000 feet). Because of the harsh conditions and lack of oxygen, most of these bodies remain on Mt. Everest in the same position in which they died. Most of the bodies have been mummified by the sub-freezing climate.
Nine. Environment. Environment. Environment.
Via How Stuff Works: Bodies in water decompose twice as fast as those left unburied on land. Decomposition is the slowest underground — especially in clay or other solid substances that prevent air from reaching the body since most bacteria require oxygen to survive.”
This bog man says, “I didn’t decompose like other corpses because I died in a bog where the acidity kills most of the bacteria that would have eaten me”
© 2011 Mark Healey, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio
If you like my writing, you may be interested in pre-ordering my book.
20 Somewhat Awkward Cemetery Signs
One.
Two. 
Three. 
Four. 
Five.
Six. 
Seven. 
Eight. 
Nine. 
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Fourteen. 
Fifteen.
Sixteen. 
Seventeen. 
Eighteen. 
Nineteen. 
Twenty. 
What Happens to Your Body after You Die? A short PG rated video.
Whatever your beliefs, most people seem to agree that the body left behind when we depart this mortal coil is just a heap of bones and flesh. But what happens to those leftovers? Assuming that nature is left to its own devices, our bodies undergo a fairly standard process of decomposition that can take anywhere from two weeks to two years.
Would You Look? If Your Loved One’s Body Was Tragically Disfigured, Would You Want to Look?
© 2009 Adrian Clark, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio
It’s a hypothetical question that few of us will have to practically answer.
I laid in bed last night thinking about it. Like I do so many nights, I think about my own mortality and the mortality of my loved ones.
My wife is off on vacation. And before she left, she semi-seriously talked about her weird features that would help me identify her in the event of her tragic demise (yes, the morbid darkness of my work has crept into her soul).
Despite what you see on TV, you don’t always have to visually identify your tragically killed loved one. It makes for great drama on TV to see the bereaved spouse walk into the morgue and look at their dead husband/wife, only to break into tears and yell, “NOOOOOOOOoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” But in real life, these dramatic identification scenes don’t always play out like they do in Hollywood.
But, the option often exists in the event of a tragic death: Do you want to see the corpse?
Often times the coroner, police officer or even the funeral director might try to dissuade you. “You don’t want to remember him/her like this.” they might say. Or, “If it were my son/daughter/spouse, I wouldn’t want to see them.”
But it IS your choice.
Mangled flesh.
Distorted visage.
Embalming and “restorative art” does come into play for tragic deaths. Sometimes our restorative skills enable us to present an otherwise unpresentable body. And sometimes, we hit a middle ground, where the deceased resembles the person they used to be, but is otherwise distorted, and mangled, and caked with makeup. Sometimes there’s not much we can do.
I suppose the ethical question of “should you look at a mangled corpse?” is purely relative. For some, it’s a dose of reality that plagues their dreams, that haunts their daydreaming. For others, it’s a reality that gives them peace. Knowing, actually seeing the corpse enables them to squelch the ever begging question, “But what if they are still alive? What if that corpse that we buried WASN’T my loved one? What if he/she is still OUT THERE?”
And yet, for others, they are simply happy to hold onto memories of life, having no desire to see the battered visage of their loved one?
What about you?
“Death From Cancer is the Best”
© 2005 Steve Ganz, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio
Dr. Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote recently, “death from cancer is the best.” And I think many of us, if not most of us, would disagree — to one extend or another — with Dr. Smith.
Cancer can create an embarrassment of dependence for it’s dying victim, causing the possibilities of:
Uncontrolled bowel movements,
Intense fatigue
Wasting away (cachexia)
Pain.
And, of course, there’s the equally horrible side effects of chemotherapy and various other cancer treatments:
Nausea and vomiting
Hair loss
And more pain.
So, what in the hell is Dr. Richard Smith talking about? Has he considered how many small caskets cancer has filled? The emotional stress, the exorbitant amount of money spent and the powerless insurance fights? How can an end-of-life that involves so much pain, money, dependence and cachexia be considered a “good death”?
He writes, with a bit of pithiness, about the good death of cancer:
“You can say goodbye, reflect on your life, leave last messages, perhaps visit special places for a last time, listen to favourite pieces of music, read loved poems, and prepare, according to your beliefs, to meet your maker or enjoy eternal oblivion,” he says.
“This is, I recognize, a romantic view of dying, but it is achievable with love, morphine, and whisky. But stay away from overambitious oncologists, and let’s stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer, potentially leaving us to die a much more horrible death.” — Via the BMJ Blog
There’s over 100 different types of cancer and not all cancers are equal; some are are much more deadly and others more painful. And I hope that Dr. Smith’s statement isn’t a blanket, meant to cover all types and forms. If he is making a blanket statement, he’s wrong.
Yet, I think the other metanarratives of “cancer sucks” and “cancer is the enemy” are equally wrong.
Luis Buñuel writes:
“An even more horrible death is one that’s kept at bay by the miracles of modern medicine, a death that never ends. In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.”
We all know that the word “euthanasia” means “a good death”. The antonym of “euthanasia” is “dysthanasia” which means — you guessed it — “a bad death.” On a more practical level, “dysthanasia” is “generally used when a person is seen to be kept alive artificially in a condition where, otherwise, they cannot survive.” The bad death is a modern, medical induced phenomena where every attempt is made to hold back the inevitable; and yet, as Luis Buneul states, it ends up being an “exquisite form of torture.”
Part of the reason that cancer is often seen as bad death is because of the medical community’s attempt to use nearly every means possible to “cure”. Even when the prognosis is terminal, there seems to this held out hope in the miracle of modern medicine. And so, it’s not necessarily the cancer that is “dysthanasia”, but the treatment of it.
It also seems that our hatred towards cancer death is caused by framing cancer in a war narrative, where cancer is seen as “the enemy.” There are some problems when we frame cancer using a war narrative.
In earlier research, investigators found that war metaphors can lead to feelings of guilt and failure in patients who die of cancer, even though they have little control managing it.
…
Hauser says that medical professionals and media outlets should try to help expand the way that people think about the disease. He cites the “watchful waiting,” a passive method of treating prostate cancer, as one such example.
“What would be more beneficial would be changing the sorts of stories about cancer out there to expose aspects of the disease that don’t fit with this enemy conceptualization,” he says. “Blame is being put on the patient, and there’s almost a sense that, if you are dying, you must have given up and not have fought hard enough,” said the study’s author, Lancaster University professor Elena Semino, in a statement Via TIME
Sometimes — not all the time — cancer IS the good death. To start out with the assumption that cancer IS the enemy may rob us from enjoying the final days of our lives. Sure, there are times when cancer is a horrible death and times when it is the enemy, but not always. Cancer is what it is … it’s one way out of thousands that might pave your path to the inevitable. You will die. I will die. We will all die. And it’s very possible that cancer is a gracious way to end.
While we should hate the fact that cancer causes death (yes, cancer sucks), in terms of comparison and contrast, it’s not the absolute worst way to reach the inevitable. And while it mostly sucks, sometimes it might be the best possible option.
