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.
-- DrWorm, Jul 25 2011

Ethermal Resting Place Ethermal_20Resting_20Place
For those who want to stay above it all [theircompetitor, Jul 27 2011]

Boy, that opens up a whole new world of options for the initials USB.
-- normzone, Jul 25 2011


Entirely appropriate for the Petroleum Age. Buried as we lived, wrapped in hydrocarbons.
-- baconbrain, Jul 25 2011


Weird, sick and disgusting.

[+]
-- 8th of 7, Jul 25 2011


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.

I was just thinking of another income stream, as a toll road. Driving across, hit familiar bump. ahh that's Aunt Bessie etc,

And stay way from me with that usb memory stick, I'll settle for a nametag on bit of string..
-- not_morrison_rm, Jul 25 2011


// in thousands of years, future civilizations seeking to learn more about our own // will wonder just what the hell we were thinking.
-- Alterother, Jul 25 2011


...and then burn us for fuel.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 26 2011


//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.

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...
-- spidermother, Jul 26 2011


Could I opt for being frozen in a glacial cave?
-- RayfordSteele, Jul 26 2011


//incorporated into the road base.//

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.
-- not_morrison_rm, Jul 27 2011


I reckon you'd just crush them down. Hardcore is usually rammed or rolled for compaction anyway.

[edit] Although for this idea, you'd fill them with something incompressible, as you say. Clear epoxy?
-- spidermother, Jul 27 2011


Oh, sure. Or, to really confuse the people of the future, bacon.
-- DrWorm, Jul 27 2011


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.

2: Their bodies are not perfectly preserved. Only their bones and teeth are preserved. Flesh, hair, nails, and antlers all disintegrate in the "tar."

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.

4: Sinking bodies into "tar" is a difficult undertaking. Flesh is generally more buoyant than asphalt.

5: Be sure the nametags are made of metal, stone, wood, or bone. Most other materials (including all plastics) will disintegrate in the asphalt.
-- ye_river_xiv, Jul 27 2011


Based on the above anno, it appears "commercial" in the idea title should be understood in the sense of "organized crime."
-- mouseposture, Jul 27 2011


[+] oh yeah, wrap me in bubble wrap first!
-- xandram, Jul 27 2011


// You'd have to fill 'em with something incompressible //

Use only Geography teachers. Their heads are already packed full of a dense, incompressible substance resembling petrified oak.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 27 2011


@ye_river_xiv:

feh
-- DrWorm, Jul 28 2011



random, halfbakery