#787 X-Person

Not long ago I wrote an article about the environmental effects of burial. Bodies taking up valuable urban real estate. Cremation releasing toxic gases from mercury fillings.
I suggested someone remove the fillings from my own remains, then compost me. Let nature take its course. Go green.
Well apparently, I’m not the only person thinking about eco-friendly internment. Which, as it turns out, is no interment at all. Or not much.
The method goes by the catchy title, alkaline hydrolysis. Which means, roughly, making liquid using lye. Basically, reducing your body to a slurry.
Can you slurry? Can you picnic? Woh-oh-oh.
Here’s what they do: Place the corpse in a steel container. Add the caustic chemical lye. Stir. The vat is then heated and pressurized, kind of a Kentucky Fried person process, but adding lye.
The remains reduce to a fluid that is sterile, brown, and roughly the viscosity of motor oil. This can then be safely flushed down the public sewer system.
A tiny amount of dry bone residue is left, which can be given to the family for inurnment in a pint-sized urn. Perfect. Who has shelf space these days?
From body to knickknack in just couple of hours.
Just don’t put the urn next to the Cremora.
The process is already being used on cadavers in medical schools. Critics say it’s disrespectful, but dude, digging a hole and stuffing someone in the ground is?
As always, the challenge is going to be coming up with a name that both captures the imagination and resonates with people so they choose it as an option. The funeral industry is actually pumped about the whole idea, lauding it as the first new game-changing technology that has come along in years.
So instead of “lying in state” will they say “stewing in a vat”? Suffice it to say the idea of being boiled, slurried and flushed has some PR work ahead of it.
Reducing granny to a sauce may be kind of charming if she was a good cook.
But seeing a loved one’s whole life go down the drain is a pretty dismal final image.
America, ya gotta love it.