Even in today's modern medical world mistakes are still made, and people are still mistakenly buried alive.
There have been many ideas for devices which alert people to the fact that you have been buried alive (ie. a little bell attached to a piece of string in the coffin which you ring when you wake up) but none simpler than just burying everyone with their mobile phone.
When you awake to find you have been buried alive, you simply call the police, they find out where you're buried, and they come to dig you up.
-- Jim, Aug 08 2000

"Digmeup.com" idea http://www.halfbake.../idea/Digmeup_2ecom
Development from this idea [Jim, Aug 08 2000]

Internet connection for coffins http://www.halfbake...ion_20for_20coffins
Development from this idea [Jim, Aug 08 2000]

Dead Yuppie http://www.very.net...trg/dead_yuppie.htm
Call a buried yuppie in Australia. [Jim, Aug 08 2000]

Poe's "The Premature Burial" http://www.pambytes...emature-burial.html
"Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to admit of being readily opened from within... There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light, and convenient receptacles for food and water...a large bell, the rope of which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin... But, alas? what avails the vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these well-contrived securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation, a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!" [baf, Aug 08 2000]

"Cemeteries. Nothing but serenity and solitude; the singing of birds, the rustling of wind in the trees, and the occasional muted burst of the Theme from Indiana Jones as another call goes to voice mail."
-- jutta, Aug 08 2000


But will your mobile work from under the traditional 6 feet of covering? I suggest installing internet connections and cable modems in coffins instead. That way you could send e-mail to alert people, and then browse websites while you're waiting for them to dig you out.
-- Skinny Rob, Aug 09 2000


Jim: go for it. buried-alive.com is already gone, but accidentally-interred.com is still available. You could provide a full range of e-services to meet everyone's coffin occupancy needs. There could be a "who's waiting to be dug up right now?" section, suggestions for exercises which can be done in confined spaces. Stuff like that. I like it.
-- Skinny Rob, Aug 09 2000


...and you could hook up a webcam (and light) in the coffin for suspected vampires and werewolves, and slasher movie killers, to make sure they're still dead. ;)

More seriously, cemeteries could add another revenue stream by offering low-cost continued cell phone access plans, since the call volume would be essentially zero. Maybe $1/month or so but the first call costs $20,000.
-- beauxeault, Aug 09 2000


In most first-world countries, where mobile phones and internet connections are cheap and plentiful, people don't generally get buried until they've been properly embalmed. If you weren't dead *before* being embalmed, you sure are *now*. In poorer countries, accidental burial is still a potential problem, but the "little bell on a piece of string" solution might be more appropriate for a country where telephones are rare.

Jutta may be onto something with "voice mail for the dead," though...
-- Uncle Nutsy, Aug 09 2000


Embalming (and "viewing" in open coffins) is a costly US-American oddity, not a first world thing. I highly recommend Jessica Mitford's update of her classic from the 60ies, "The American Way of Death Revisited."
-- jutta, Aug 09 2000


Why not just inject all "potential" dead people with a lethal dose of cyanide before burial. Problem solved.
-- blahginger, Aug 10 2000


Sometimes (such as when travelling on public transport) I think that it would be a good idea to bury mobile phone users alive. However after careful reading I realise that this is not exactly what this idea is about.

Rather than a full-blown Internet connection, coffins could just be installed with small, cheap webcams. Then digmeup.com would be a site where hundreds of thousands of webcam images could be viewed. Obviously 99.9999% of these would show corpses, but there might be the occasional picture of someone looking rather panicky. It would be "compulsive browsing" too - you wouldn't want to stop looking through the images for fear that the next one might be someone relying on you to notice that they're alive. The whole thing would of course pay for itself with banner ads.
-- hippo, Aug 10 2000


I think calling the police on your mobile is probably more effective than hoping that someone sees you on one of thousands of webcams. Generally, you want something that lets you call out, rather than other people looking in.
And why do people keep bringing up this idea of having an internet connection to your coffin? The idea here is for a SIMPLE way of alerting people to the fact that you have been buried alive. Good grief.

But if you were going to have thousands of webcams on corpseviewer.com, then maybe a program that checked whether the image had changed between frame refreshes would be used to find people who weren't dead?

PS. I have now added the ideas "Digmeup.com" and "Internet connection for coffins", so any non-mobile-phone-related annotations should be made there. I never thought this idea would get so big :)
-- Jim, Aug 10 2000, last modified Aug 11 2000


And *I* never thought I would forget reading Jessica Mitford in college. Bad Uncle Nutsy! No croissant for *you*! As Jutta quite rightly points out, my foolish "objection" is not a bug but a feature, as it would give the back of the hand to the industry.

I apologize and regret the unfortunate attack of provincialism; it's not like me. And all I can say in my defense is that "properly" in "properly embalmed" *was* supposed to be ironic.
-- Uncle Nutsy, Aug 11 2000


ring ring. ring ring. ring ring. Beep. "Hello I can't come to the phone right now as I'm dead. Please speak after the tone and I'll not get back to you ASAP".
-- ccaamgw, Aug 12 2000


How about hooking up a couple of signal flags [like they use on ships] to the headstone along with a signal flare gun and Morse Code Machine all of which can only be operated from inside the coffin. Just get a dome light in the coffin and you're all set. For the undead they could also have 3 clocks showing say...London, New York and Tokyo times so the Morse code machine can tap out your distress call. You'll have the Army, Navy, Air Force,Marines and Attorneys there in no time flat. If you or yours couldn't afford any of these items then it would be best to remember what McGyver would do. Clap real loud and hope that you can smash a couple of atoms. Works like a charm.
-- thumbwax, Aug 13 2000


in times gone by, when most cemetarys did have flags or bells to alert of accidental burial, many grave diggers ended up in their own graves after local kids would get into large groups and ring all the bells they could find at midnight. gosh, thats the longest run on scentence I've ever written.....probably because its to late to think straight...
-- cybercyph, Aug 14 2000


Decorating the grave with those dancing flowers which were popular about 10 years ago would serve the dual purposes of (obviously) decorating the grave and, if the activating microphone was placed below ground, serving as a buried-alive warning device. So, walking through a graveyard, if you saw one of these flowers jiggling about, you'd know that there was someone underneath trying to attract your attention.
-- hippo, Aug 14 2000


Someone told me that one of the spookiest things about visiting the scene of a major train wreck with lots of fatalities was the constant ringing of dozens of cell phones as the victims' friends and family called over and over, hoping in vain that they'd somehow escaped the accident and would answer the phone as always...
-- egnor, Aug 15 2000


[waugsqueke] Re: "what undertakers do to the body" - are you referring to embalming? - see jutta's annotation above. And a mobile 'phone is pretty close to "a button that alerts 911" anyway. And a mobile 'phone battery will run out after a couple of weeks (switched off). Ha.
-- Jim, Sep 11 2000


When I saw the title of this idea I thought it meant the kind of mobile that hangs from the ceiling.
-- dominus, Sep 12 2000


Gosh... I was reading along, happily chuckling and guffawing, but then egnor's annotation about the train wreck made me kind of sad... :(
-- PotatoStew, Sep 12 2000


In ancient Rome, the deceased would often have a pipe sunk into their coffin so their decendants could keep them fed in the afterlife by pouring down wine and food. If this were practiced nowadays, it would not only allow accidental burials to alert passing mourners, but would also give them an air supply. Of course, the Romans also cremated most of their dead in the earlier part of their history, and had their necropolises well outside of citadel limits.
-- nick_n_uit, Nov 05 2000


I can't see all that much interest, in people that aren't imbalanced, in a site that allows you to log on and watch your loved ones slowly decay.
-- Cheph, Nov 28 2000


It would make one hell of a screensaver
-- fretzman, Nov 29 2000


The thing about ancient Rome reminds me of a curious Victorian practice I heard of. Someone during the Victorian era devised the sealed lead coffin, only to find that the build up of gases from anaerobic decomposition would cause the coffin to explode. So they put in a thin clay pipe to allow excess gases to escape. Soon it was discovered that the decomposition process produced a steady stream of flammable gas which, if lit, would burn continuously with a flame, as a sort of memorial torch. Which seems like a pretty nifty idea.
-- acb, Mar 29 2001


good potential fuel source now bushy wants more waste gases
-- edski, Mar 30 2001


Knowing my luck..they'd dig me up, only to find id gotten a brain tumour from the radiation the aerial gives off......
-- Pretoria, Jan 10 2002


" low battery... low battery Shutting down : Click "
-- popbottle, Jul 17 2013



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