Hope you’ve been saving up because eternal life is expensive
Just like Han Solo in Star Wars, it’s possible to be cryogenically frozen in the hopes of being awoken centuries later – hopefully when the world has sorted itself out.
The Alcor Life Extension Foundation was founded in 1972 in Scottsdale, Arizona. It describes itself as the “world leader in cryonics, cryonics research, and cryonic technology” – which is just a fancy way of saying they freeze stuff really well.
The foundation freezes everything – from complete bodies to individual heads – by lowering body temperatures and then storing them for decades at a time. While the containers themselves look like milk silos, they actually contain liquid nitrogen, which is around -196 C.
While this sci-fi alternative to usual burial methods seems farfetched, Alcor currently has 198 customers signed up, 1,397 members and over 50 years of experience.
However before everyone rushes to their website to book a chilly vacation, you might need some serious coin to be accepted. A full body cryonic preservation is priced at around $220,000. If you want just your head frozen – like a character from Futurama – then it will only cost you $80,000.
Speaking to CNET in 2020, founder Linda Chamberlain said: “Our goals were to start an organization that could save people’s lives and give them an opportunity to be restored to health and function.
“If we’d known how hard it was going to be, we might not have tried to do it. But… once you get started, something about saving lives, you can’t give up.”
She added that legal death is only based on your heart and lungs. She explained: “It doesn’t mean your cells are dead, it doesn’t mean even your organs are dead.
“Our best estimates are that within 50 to 100 years, we will have the medical technologies needed to restore our patients to health and function. I’m an optimist.”
Still, the process is largely based on optimism and there’s no way to know whether it will work or come with its own Pandora’s Box of side effects – but then again, you’re dead, so you’ll never really know.
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