cremation

Supernova wrote:The idea of cremation has never set well with me, I plan to be buried, I want people to be worried when it rains I'm going to crawl out of the ground and eat them, lol.

wants2laugh wrote:
I dont like the idea of being in the ground slowly rotting with worms/bugs crawling all over me

Alan Smithee wrote:I read somewhere or saw on TV that when the bereaved are sold sealed caskets for their dearly departed (at a tremendous mark up) in the belief that they will preserve the earthly remains better than unsealed caskets, anaerobic bacteria may actually hasten decomposition, causing putrefaction and liquefaction of the body. In fact, pressure from the gasses created by the body's decomposition in a sealed environment has caused remains to explode through the container. Cool!

Hyacinth Girl wrote:I'm all for saving landscape for the living, so cremation is perfectly fine with me. I've never understood why we feel the need to embalm and preserve just for burial--you're dead. Even without cremation, the Jewish method of washing the body and immediate burial in a pine box without embalming, seems better to me, overall; return to the dust from which you came, but I also do understand, too, why Jewish people won't cremate, either, because of the whole Holocaust thing.

Minerva wrote:

It isn't because of the Holocaust although that certainly plays a good argument for it. But cremation has always been against Jewish law since biblical times. The body is sacred, because it is the "temple of the soul" and because it is the medium by which we do goodness in this world.

The Mishnah, which is one of the documents of Hebrew teachings declares the principle of the sanctity of the human body to be without question. When the resurrection comes, which the Jews believe will happen, our bodies will be needed to return from the afterlife. The dead then will walk the earth. Our bodies will be our vessels.

Tattoos and other markings such as piercings are also thought of as desecrations and not supposed to be done.

This isn't the best explanation, but it's the closest I could come to.

However, for the record, I am Jewish but I do believe in cremation. Or just a simple pine box that will disintegrate pretty fast so I can be fertilizer. I don't want to rot in a fancy coffin. No Jewish funeral home will do embalming though. We all believe in get 'em under ASAP because embalming also is considered a desecration of the body.

Alan Smithee wrote:I read somewhere or saw on TV that when the bereaved are sold sealed caskets for their dearly departed (at a tremendous mark up) in the belief that they will preserve the earthly remains better than unsealed caskets, anaerobic bacteria may actually hasten decomposition, causing putrefaction and liquefaction of the body. In fact, pressure from the gasses created by the body's decomposition in a sealed environment has caused remains to explode through the container. Cool!

Suzi wrote:I always worried about being buried alive, so I am real happy with the idea of cremation.

Fear of being buried alive is the fear of being placed in a grave while still alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. The abnormal, psychopathological version of this fear is referred to as taphophobia (from Greek τάφος - taphos, "grave, tomb" and φόβος - phobos, "fear"), which is translated as "fear of graves".

Before the advent of modern medicine, the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer William Tebb collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed.

The 18th century had seen the development of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and crude defibrillation techniques to revive persons considered dead, and the Royal Humane Society had been formed as the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned. In 1896, an American funeral director, T.M. Montgomery, reported that "nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended animation," although folklorist Paul Barber has argued that the incidence of burial alive has been overestimated, and that the normal effects of decomposition are mistaken for signs of life.

There have been many urban legends of people being accidentally buried alive. Legends included elements such as someone entering into the state of sopor or coma, only to wake up years later and die a horrible death. Other legends tell of coffins opened to find a corpse with a long beard or corpses with the hands raised and palms turned upward. Of note is a legend about the premature burial of Ann Hill Carter Lee, the wife of Henry Lee III. On his deathbed in 1799, George Washington made his attendants promise not to bury him for two days.

Literature found fertile ground in exploring the natural fear of being buried alive. One of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories, "The Premature Burial", is about a person suffering from taphophobia. Other Poe stories about premature burial are "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado"—and to a lesser extent, “The Black Cat”.

Fear of being buried alive was elaborated to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements for the construction of a safety coffin to ensure this would be avoided (e.g., glass lids for observation, ropes to bells for signaling, and breathing pipes for survival until rescued).

An urban legend states that the sayings "Saved by the bell" and "Dead ringer" are both derived from the notion of having a rope attached to a bell outside the coffin that could alert people that the recently buried person is not yet deceased; these theories have been proven a hoax.

Alan Smithee wrote:

No fear of reviving in time to know you're being burned alive?