Will we eventually run out of graveyards?
Will we eventually run out of graveyards?
No. Typically you only rent a plot in a graveyard for 10-30 years, and unless you or your heir(s) extend the lease, the graves will be dug up and used again. By that time most of the old casket and body have disintegrated to a pile of crumbling bones. Those will either be taken out and fully incinerated, or if the decay is progressed to a point where not much is left to begin with, a thin layer of soil covers the remnants and the new casket will simply be put on top.
It's also getting more and more "fashionable" to get incinerated right away, so that's really a non-issue.
90There are places in the world with a standard practice of forever plots.
For example, I don't think it's common in NZ for plots to be a time period before disinterment.
42New Zealanders have all that room after the elves left, so that makes sense.
18
Does this apply to military cemeteries as well?
5No idea, tbh. I know next to nothing about military stuff.
1
Utterly deranged way of dealing with the dead imo; stick em in the ground for a little bit like they're kimchi? Just skip ahead to the incineration part for me, thanks
2
Why do we even have graveyards? Embalming chemicals leach out and poison water tables, carbon footprint is horrendous, land is wasted for superstitious nonsense. Just cremate and scatter the ashes.
https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/cemeteries-drinking-tap-water-pollution-aquifers-dead-bodies.html , among others.
53I want to be cremated, and then have my ashes condensed into a diamond. I want that diamond to be embedded in the hilt of a sword. I want everybody in my family for generations to be put in the same sword and then in the distant future when the zombies arise, my great great great great grandchild can break the glass and weild the blade honing the power of generations of ancestors in their hand and start lobbing off heads.
46Uhh... Is it too late to change my answer?
15Well, at least you've got dreams
8
Or just bury people without embalming them first? As a non-American I find it super weird that it’s the norm in the US. Why would you still do that anyway?
30Embalming? WTF?! I guess I should have watched Six feet under to learn something
6
Nah don't cremate. Bury the body with no box and no preservation. Get those nutrients right back into the soil as fast as possible.
22Reminds me of something that happened when I was a gravedigger. The indigent get no embalming so we get them in the ground quickly, 2 or 3 days. Even then the smell is powerful sometimes. Anyway, an indigent guys funeral was held up for some reason that escapes me, so they froze him, while his arms were above his head. The story of getting him in that cheap cardboard casket the funeral director told me had me rolling. I don't know how that cheap casket stayed together but when we got it it was in baaad shape. Wish I took a picture.
1
There are other methods becoming more widely available In the US too such as Aquamation (alkaline hydrolysis) which yields similar remains like ashes you can spread and human composting (https://recompose.life/) which don’t emit fossil fuel emissions.
Not for everyone, sure, but I wanted to be composted. I liked that I would become a cubic yard of nutrient rich soil in about 30 days and will be utilized for forest restoration.
The mushroom shroud that breaks you down is also super cool but was pretty out of my price range.
12
Im going to lean to no. The world is incredibly empty, and we are squishy and biodegradable.
Graveyards (well, cemeteries) aren't permanent - permanent compared to human lifetime, but not permanent.
51We're going to the way of Toraja people, do some voodoo magic to make the corpse walk to their grave and then after they decompose just store the skull in a cave nearby.
7
I highly recommend checking out the catacombs in Paris. It gives you a very clear understanding about what humans do to graveyards when they want the space. There are literally millions of skeletons just thrown down there. Some are stacked in interesting ways, like walls of femurs and piles of skulls. But the vast, vast majority are just heaped into big ass piles of random bones.
Personally, visiting them sold me on the idea of cremation. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before your graveyard is getting dug up and they're throwing your remains in a pile with some randos.
43Yeah fuck randos. They smell.
6Being part of a big pile of bones that can freak out tourists is actually convincing me that being buried is better than being cremated.
4of that's an idea youre keen on, you could put it into a... loving will, or equivalent, and your will, anyway dwaath and end of life related documents. also appoint an exuctioner for those that you trust to make those bone post death art poecehappen, or anyway to try their best to make those wishes for coming part of a future grand skellie pyramid arform, or something along those lines, happen.
yiu never know, it may well be possible to make those dreams sooner, after a nk doubt long on the Future and death, than anticipated., and making some arrangements ahead of time can improve your chances, and possibly be a fun exercise in itself. 'tge order of the good death', has some useful resource on the whole planning and documents thing, espially on a North America context.
anyway. happy for you future artistic and collective bone combination ambitions for ' your future postmortem bones. rip. ☠️💀🦴🦴💀💀🦴🦴💀☠️👻👻👻👻👻👻🦴👻
0
Yes, one day the whole world is going to be a big graveyard.
40Kinda already is a big graveyard
3I've got a bunch of bones out in the yard right now
2I'm doing my part!
5
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38The concept is that you get a spot on a graveyard permanently as a muslim, but it is custom to give back the spot when noone is alive, who remembered the deceased relative, so usually in the third or fourth generation.
But why wouldnt a graveyard last "forever"? We have many church graveyards that can be tracked back to early medieval times, so easily a thousand years, in Germany.
19He's still alive, he's 75 but he's still going strong.
1
But muslims don't embalm their deceased bodies, right? They also don't use coffins, so eventually the remains will decompose with nothing remains? How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
5How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
That is very dependent on the temperature, soil, humidity etc. E.g. a regularly wet, huminose soil at moderate temperatures will decompose anything much quicker than dry desert sand.
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4It's also relatively quick. Most graveyards have a hard limit at around 1 year for allowing tombs and mausoleums to be reopened because that's roughly the amount of time for a body to discompose such that it's not a nuisance when it's reopened. Reopening or exhuming a body too soon runs the risk of being a nasty experience for the gravekeepers. But 6 month to a year, you basically have only dirt and bones. Depending on how dry the environment is. Typical western embalming methods, while very efficient on the short term, like preventing decomposition during the next couple of weeks, won't delay natural decomposition after a month or so.
3
No, because most people are cremated these days, and over time bones deteriorate. Plus, we can always make new graveyards.
But the big thing is that old graveyards are often “relocated” — the marked graves are dug up and the contents stacked/put closer together with any gravestones or markers stuck closer together above ground.
16most people are cremated these days
Only in very few countries.
6
Eventually even bones decay, unless fossilized, and fossilized bones are just, well, fancy rocks. So it's not like human remains stick around forever.
15It's not even THAT long. 30-100 years, depending on the environment
7
There was a panic here in Vancouver (known for it's out of control real estate market) this year and burial plots were going for like $90,000 IIRC.
Don't be too poor to die.
14Well now I'm gonna die with $89,000 just to see what'd happen
2You're just gonna have to rent.
1just over the border, more or less (geography isn't neccecarily my subject) , in Washing. State, you know the one, yiu can get ylarrange for your future corpse to undergo a relatively new and novel disposition option known as 'natural organoc reduction', for the comparatively low low price of only.. around 6 to 10 k, alst o checked., includong shrouds, body storage, tests ect.
That's significantly cheaper than the avarage conventional funeral cknsts, not Jay on van iver, but in the bordering region too., and there's no ongoing upkeep costsas, there might be with a plot. after aroind six weeks, its basically done, if you wnat it that way.
And, perhaos as or more importantly the novelty can be an important aspect for some people. A burial method that very ffew others, so far, ahve hmade use of (although very much tested, and regulated, and found genuine) , as can the positiveenvironmental aspects be appealing too to aome.
aTdlr: nyway see www.recompose.life for more details of, one of, the options that could help to circumvent any need to pay any, highly overinflated and likely extortionate, rates for a funeral plot. No buing real death estate required.
1
As many other have stated, grave spaces are often rented or leased. Then the remains are buried in an ossuary or given back to the family.
Quite a few western graveyards are semi-permanant. Only being dug up and moved if the space is to be reused for something else.
My city, for example, moved its early graveyard as the town expanded and now the area is a parking lot.
There is a cool fact as well with churches and graveyards that haven't moved. Generally the church building itself loses height because of the the bodies buried raises the ground levels by a few feet. This has been observed in the UK and America.
8We'll just go 12 feet under
7The Jewish Cemetery of Prague has up to a dozen layers because of the tight Jewish Quarter.
7
Even if we fill every bit of earth with dead bodies, we still have other planets and the empty vacuum of space itself to put them. So no.
4if we cover the planet in them yea but otherwise we would use other methods instead
2