Just have it drill downward, put some more dirt on the coffins, add another layer of coffins, and repeat!
I have always thought extremely strange that we bury our dead.
If you think about it it is not strange at all, it is maybe one of the very early things that differentiated us from animals. We have a concept of death and time, future and loss. We mourn our dead. And I strongly believe that all the rituals that we have established are not meant for the dead but in fact serve the living. It is a way to cope with the loss of a person. And with the ever same ways - casket, flowers, music, burying - we give the mourning something to do and get distracted so that they don’t lose themselves in the sadness. It feels “right” because it feels familiar, everyone does it this way. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time someone dies. How to cope, and how to get rid of the body? Well, there is a societal playbook for that.
There was a dude here on lemmy who actually specialized in American death rites. I think he stopped using lemmy though because of too much negativity, I think people commenting how stupid it is that we don’t just trash our dead on a post was his tipping point. Which is a freaking shame because it sounds like he knew some really fascinating things.
lots of animals mourn their dead, even ritualistically. humans aren’t special in that way. not to mention that, even among humans, burying the dead is not the only practice. many cultures practice marine burials (dumping the corpse in a body of water), or, more popularly, cremation. many carry out these manners of disposal with no ritual at all.
Grief and mourning don’t necessitate a burial. other manners of corpse disposal can allow those who remain to process grief, and some can even provide a location for family and friends to visit in memorium.
Ah, I see, your main issue is specifically with the burying? I assumed you had a problem with any kind of disposal that is not literally using the body for fuel/resources or just trashing it.
Why let all that meat go to waste?
i was thinking, “fuel,” but whatever
Well damn, now I want to start the world’s first corpse-fired power plant
It’s a safe and reliable way to dispose of a corpse that might be diseased, will smell bad as it decomposes, and would certainly attract scavengers if left lying around. The same goes for cremation, it really just depends on local custom.
i feel it necessary to remind you that it’s 2024 (CE, not BCE), and you’re using a computer to communicate on a global telecommunications network which runs on electricity and digital information.
What?!?? I just tap my finger on the glowy thinking rock and demons/faye/angels take my messages to other people’s thinking rocks and bring me their responses. I don’t believe in all that ‘electricity’ witchcraft!
Seriously, yes burial uses a fair bit of space, which is part of the reason cremation is increasing in popularity in many places. Even with burials though, many graveyards reuse plots after some number of years, once the previous body has decomposed to save space. For those wanting a more ecologically friendly method than cremation, there’s the option of resomation too.
Leaving a carcass in the wild would attract scavengers and spread disease, which is prevented by inhumation. Cremation is also an option but requires a large amount of fuel. In early and prehistoric cultures, inhumation was the easy option.
What do you do with the displaced dirt?
Fend off the dirt man.
Is he weak to his own element like Metal Man?
- Profit
Feed the homeless. /s
I mean if you want to be maximally efficient about it just find it abandoned open pit mine in the middle of nowhere. You could dump all of the trash and corpses the human race has ever produced in it and barely even scratch the surface. Just one problem.
How the fuck are you going to pay for all the transportation expenses?
Oh yeah and dignity in death blah blah blah
I often wondered about that. Humans have been around for 100,000 years or so and we’ve been putting people in graves for a much smaller portion of that, but it seems we would have an awful lot of graves at this point. But we don’t. You don’t come across cemeteries very often and when you do they’re not enormous.
SO WHERE ARE ALL THE BODIES?
Did you think graves were perpetual?
I’m sorry to bake your noodle on this one, but when you get buried you’ll get 6 years tops before the site is recycled for the next person.
What?
My great grandfather’s grave is still around and he died in the ‘80s, in a cemetery in a highly populated part of my city. Right next to him is his son that was killed in Vietnam in the ‘60s.
Depends on region of course, but I think most graves are around for much longer than 6 years.
Where I live you usually pay the grave for 20 years at the time of the burial. If you still want to keep it after you have to pay to extend it.
They have vertical graves in many places worldwide actually.
Mm yes but these would be fully automated luxury grave space communal resting places.
That’s called a mass grave
What are you up to?
Or a catacomb
What are you up to?
Their knees in bodies. OP needs to start their plan before they drown.
Na, too wasteful. Instead, just cement everyone into one of those concrete arches that tunnel boring machines poop out behind them and turn those corpses into tunnels. You still get to be buried but you’re also doing something useful in death!
I think cremation or donation to science should be mandatory. you can still visit a grave, just a smaller urn. or set them free in their favorite spot, turned into a tree, diamond, etc. a 3x6 foot plot of land that is now useless is stupid in my opinion. at least going to science they can learn more and train new talent.
When I die, I want my body donated to a university astrophysics lab. I’m either going to space or getting blown up trying!
Mass grave. But if you mean something like that underground bike storage in the Netherlands, than if could be done and would need expanding every so often or have the tombstones moved somewhere else
Go a step further and install every layer of coffins into I big vertical conveyor belt and you can rotate it around to get the next level once one gets too full.
Forbidden tiramisu
That might make it difficult to visit the remains of a loved one, but I suppose you can just chuck your flowers in the pit and eventually they’ll work their way down.
But then you delve too deep and it’s balrogs, innit?
Only if the delving is also greedy
Not wanting to expand the cemetery or build more cemeteries is likely an economic incentive so it could be argued by the balrogs that it was greed.
You win this round, Balrog. You win.
Combine this with the worlds deepest goldmine and we have a winner.
The best is to return the dead to nature.
That’s one heck of a shower thought!
