Future Death: The Dead Human Body as Biomass (extra credit)

Attending this lecture i feel that i have gotten a better look into the care of the dead. Dr. John Troyer The deputy director of the Centre for Death & Society focused mainly on cremation. He really wanted to get across this feeling of how cremation is one of the more popular ways for caring for the dead. He started off with informing us about his work, but then eventually started talking about new and innovative ways of caring for the dead. He mentioned that there is an infrastructure inside this idea of care for the dead. he talked about controversial topics regarding burial (what is natural Burial?) and then even discussed the problems with the system right now. He also discussed the use of crematoriums as a energy source that could power 20 houses at once(one of my favorite parts of the lecture). However he mainly focused on informing the audience on the basics and then choose to go deeper into a specific part of care of the dead which again is cremation.


I was surprisingly entertained by the lecture. I went in there scared because of all this talk about death. I remember the first thing Dr.Troyer saying was that he the Centre for Death & Society wasn't a bunch of Gothic fanatics obsessed with death which gave me a big sense of relief. The topic i really enjoyed was his focus on new and innovative ways to care for the dead. Specifically he discussed this machine that feeds off of biomass which can be a very resourceful tool in retrieving the thousands of bodies that are to radioactive to touch in japan right now. I started off thinking care of the dead is a part of life that wasn't necessarily important, however after attending this lecture i realized that this is what so many other people think as well which is why care of the dead is such an important topic. There are 54 crematoriums in NY that handle about 700 bodies, if one were to shutdown for any reason there would be 700 bodies with nowhere to go and then all of a sudden care of the dead would become an important subject. I have a new respect for care of the dead and am excited to learn more about it. At the beginning of this unit i mentioned that i can't see any nightmarish industrial atrocities, however it is becoming clearer what they are now.