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Despite many of our best efforts, after the average
person
dies, they are eventually forgotten. Yes, your friends and
family will remember you, but after a few generations
your name will be erased from history as your corpse
disintegrates. Even if you choose to preserve your body—
through
cryogenic freezing or embalmment—you are still
not much more than an outlier and a curiosity.
On the other hand, at the La Brea Tar Pits, mammoths
that
died hundreds of thousands of years ago are studied
reverently, their lives explored in detail and their
perfectly
preserved bodies admired by all who visit the museum.
Simply by falling into tar, these animals have gained
what
countless humans have failed to attain—immortality.
If a company were to excavate a large, deep pit and fill
it
with tar, they could then charge a large sum for a
person's
body to be sunk deep into the pit after their death,
optionally wearing a nametag or some other means of
identification. Then, in thousands of years, future
civilizations seeking to learn more about our own will
happen upon this man-made treasure trove, and the
customers of the commercial tar pit will live on in the
future.
Ethermal Resting Place
Ethermal_20Resting_20Place
For those who want to stay above it all [theircompetitor, Jul 27 2011]
[link]
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Boy, that opens up a whole new world of options for the initials USB. |
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Entirely appropriate for the Petroleum Age. Buried as we lived, wrapped in hydrocarbons. |
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Weird, sick and disgusting. |
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couldn't you do a linear tar-pit, ie a road? It's have to be somewhere with a very low average temperature, and it might need some artificial heating to get the body below the surface to start off with. |
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I was just thinking of another income stream, as a toll road. Driving across, hit familiar bump. ahh that's Aunt Bessie etc, |
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And stay way from me with that usb memory stick, I'll settle for a nametag on bit of string.. |
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// in thousands of years, future civilizations seeking to
learn more about our own // will wonder just what the
hell we were thinking. |
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...and then burn us for fuel. |
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//a road// A friend of mine was wont to exclaim "Hard core!". I explained to her the technical use of the term - generally coarse, cheap, incompressible materials compacted as a construction base. |
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Later, we were watching a documentary describing the use of slave labour to build roads; the bodies of those who had been worked to death were thrown onto the ground, and their bones were incorporated into the road base. Without skipping a beat, my friend said "Hard core!". Maybe you had to be there... |
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Could I opt for being frozen in a glacial cave? |
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//incorporated into the road base.// |
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I'm guessing that's a lot more difficult to do that it looks, as the bones tend to be hollow, like in the Iain M Banks short story of the road of skulls. You'd have to fill 'em with something incompressible. Or, for more fun, helium. |
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I reckon you'd just crush them down. Hardcore is usually rammed or rolled for compaction anyway. |
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[edit] Although for this idea, you'd fill them with something incompressible, as you say. Clear epoxy? |
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Oh, sure. Or, to really confuse the people of the future,
bacon. |
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1: Tar is a wonderful substance created from trees, and has a delicious pine smell. The tar pits are filled with asphalt, a somewhat less wonderful substance that is naturally occuring, smells of petroleum, and is similar to tar only in that it is black, viscous, and waterproof. |
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2: Their bodies are not perfectly preserved. Only their bones and teeth are preserved. Flesh, hair, nails, and antlers all disintegrate in the "tar." |
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3: They did not fall into the "tar." They walked on top of it and got stuck. Months or years later, their remains finally sunk the rest of the way into the asphalt. |
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4: Sinking bodies into "tar" is a difficult undertaking. Flesh is generally more buoyant than asphalt. |
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5: Be sure the nametags are made of metal, stone, wood, or bone. Most other materials (including all plastics) will disintegrate in the asphalt. |
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Based on the above anno, it appears "commercial" in
the idea title should be understood in the sense of
"organized crime." |
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[+] oh yeah, wrap me in bubble wrap first! |
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// You'd have to fill 'em with something incompressible // |
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Use only Geography teachers. Their heads are already packed full of a dense, incompressible substance resembling petrified oak. |
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