1) Strap magnets to Aunt Edna's corpse.
2) Wrap her coffin with a coil of copper wire.
3) Connect the wire leads to the power grid.
4) When Uncle Norbert wears "that ridiculous tie", Aunt Edna will generate electricity that the cemetery can sell to the power company.
5) Hook up all the corpses like this, and change the company name to Fairlawn Power & Light.
-- beauxeault, Nov 27 2000

(??) Yet another shameless rip-off of the halfbakery by Dilbert http://www.dilbert....lbert-20040728.html
Or is it a case of great minds thinking alike? [beauxeault, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Dilbert July 28, 04 http://krux.org/dil...x.php?date=20040728
Another archive [csea, Dec 01 2004]

Philo Taylor Farnsworth's grave http://freepages.ge...farnsworthphilo.jpg
In Provo City, Utah. Given the shape of these grave stones, I wonder if people ever leave remote controls in the grass as a tribute. [jutta, Dec 02 2004]

I think we could get more power out of corpses by just burning them
-- mrthingy, Nov 27 2000


I would have to think mrthingy got'cha on this one... the power generated by burning them saves precious land, is constant, and saves workers comp claims since the 'caretakers' will no longer have to jump up and down on the casket to make it sink below the water line. Now wiring them like a regulator or such, would have default's, such as, what if the mate didn't like the other when they 'crossed over', they couldn't care less now either...no electricity...more diesel generator's at hospitals...more coal, more pollution.
-- Timslogic, Nov 28 2000


It probably would be more efficient use of corpses to connect them in series to a common shaft and use that to power a generator. Not all corpses would respond to the same, er, stimuli, so it would be well to select for sympathetic interments. The landscape consequences likely would result in mausolea(?) connected by large spinning shafts to generating stations. Very tasteful. The best social use of this new power source would be to operate electric chairs, thus serving as an analog to a breeder reactor.
-- hagfish, Nov 28 2000


PeterSealy,

Baked...in the Twilight Zone.

>>In "Long Distance Call" a kid is able to talk to his diseased grandmother via the telephone.<<
-- iuvare, Nov 28 2000


No, it's like that one where a telephone line falls on a fresh grave and the guy keeps trying to call his wife but can't talk yet. She gets scared and when he finally learns to talk, he tells her good-bye.
-- tigerwren, Aug 13 2001


This idea has been copied in the latest edition of the comic Viz in the Gilbert Ratchett cartoon, except with Frank Sinatra spinning in his grave to Robbie Williams' singing.
-- stupop, Mar 04 2002


I like hagfish's idea of a common shaft, but it troubles me that the rogues of the bunch may counter-rotate in relation to the general population... creating much underground heat, causing earthquakes, weather anomalies, and cancelling considerable productive output. We need to consider that only DC power generation would be practical, as generating AC would require synchronizing rotational speed and phase of the corpse prior to placing them online with the main grid, requiring an additional development of a "corpse speed governor". Additionally, the merely mildly perturbed might stop rotating before they reached synchronous phase to the grid. I would suggest, instead, having two common shaft DC generators, wired in opposite polarity. We would then, of course, need to devise a means of testing the rotational direction of the dead prior to interrment (ie: surviving offspring simultaneously picking their noses in public, going out in short skirts and no panties, etc.), enabling us to determine to which common shaft any given corpse shall be connected. Now all corpses, regardless of rotational speed or direction, can produce in harmony.
-- X2Entendre, Nov 30 2002


Amazing, I was just going to post a similar idea, but your formulation is much more concise (and like, three years earlier), so I rest my case. One thing though, the relatives should get a discount on the electricity so they are more encouraged to say/do things that are insulting for the deceased.
-- Brummo, Aug 04 2003


Saw the Dilbert comic linked above, and I just had to pop back in for a second to add the link. Hi, all. Hope everyone is well.
-- beauxeault, Aug 02 2004


Hi, [bx].
-- angel, Aug 02 2004


Does anyone have a link to the dilbert strip mentioned? I have been looking for it for a while. The link provided is dead.
-- energy guy, Dec 01 2004


Try this one [link].
-- csea, Dec 01 2004


Wow, that really was a shameless rip-off. Hi, Mr. Adams, if you're reading this. What's your login name? Are you actually [bx]?
-- Worldgineer, Dec 01 2004


Thanks for the additional link, I was curious too.

I don't think it's necessarily a rip-off, though. Physical "turning in one's grave" jokes have been around for a while - my Mom used to casually mention that "they're now using So-and-so as a fan" - and going from there to a generator isn't that much of a stretch. Note also that Scott Adams is rotating the copper wire under the now-magnetic gravestone, whereas this idea straps magnets to the corpse and rotates them inside the coil.

(This idea is a lot more practical, of course, because you can just pick up the electricity from the stationary coil. But Adams' version looks better in the cartoon.)
And what [angel] said.
-- jutta, Dec 01 2004


Thanks [csea]
(is it pronounced see-see?)
-- energy guy, Dec 01 2004


Gee, I've never pronounced it out loud (!)

But yes, csea is from "C" -my first initial and "Sea" first part of my last name.
-- csea, Dec 02 2004



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