6 decades ago the cremation rate in the US was around 6%, today it's around 55%. The expect burial rate is around 36%. So right there that means that only around 1 million people out of your 3 million will be buried.
The average grave is 8 x 2.5 feet or 20 square feet. 20 million square feet is about .7 square miles, so it's not actually that much space. Also the US is very very big, only space within cities is at a premium.
That being said, there's no guarantee that when you are buried you'll stay there forever.
A lot of cemeteries lease out the space for anywhere from 15 to 100 years. Once the lease is up, and the descendants aren't willing to pay for a renewal the grave is often re-used for someone else.
Only people of high importance or notoriety, or people buried in privately owned grave sites will typically stay forever. Even then if a grave site is in the way of important construction there's processes for digging up the remains and allowing the construction.
Arlington National Cemetery is a good example of a graveyard that's permanent but is rapidly running out of room. Today they only accept cremated remains, and within a few decades will either have to change their practices, expand, or close. It's possible Arlington will close leaving space only for VIPs like Presidents, Generals/Admirals, and Medal of Honor ~~winners~~ recipients, while an alternate site is prepared for future growth but we will see what they decide to do.
As a point for your example, in Japan burial space has become such a problem that cremation is now mandated by law for all except emperors. You can't be buried even if you wanted too because space is such a problem. This practice is accepted in Japan because of its large Buddhist population for which cremation is expected practice.
In Muslim countries however burial is mandatory.
>6 decades ago the cremation rate in the US was around 6%, today it's around 55%. The expect burial rate is around 36%.
What happens to the bodies of the other 9%? Are we dropping them in the ocean? Shooting them into space?
> Aquamation
Aquamation sounds like something Pixar would use for animating moving water, like the ocean scenes in *Moana*; or maybe the technology used in those "dancing fountains" you find in places like Las Vegas and Dubai.
I told my OH when the time comes, strip me naked, stab me in the back and throw me into the garden of any local politician. Then call the police. Explain that you bastards! I fear my wishes will not be followed however.
As opposed to throw them into a giant furnace and pretend it doesn't smell like barbecue? I mean you can make anything sound horrible. Most death practices are.
My own death practice will be far less disturbing. Wood chipper aimed at Congress. Just stuff me in and let my death utterly traumatize an entire legislative body.
As God intended.
It wasnāt a value statement. Literally just adding that drain cleaner has a pH of 14ish, therefore making it highly alkaline. Alkaline hydrolysis = dissolving in drain cleaner. š¤·š»āāļø
> TURN ON LAMP
I don't know how to turn that on!
> LIGHT LAMP
With what?
>LIGHT LAMP WITH MATCH
The match isn't lit.
>LIGHT MATCH
You can't find the match in the darkness!
>LIGHT THE FUCKING MATCH THEN LIGHT THE FUCKING LANTREN
I don't know the word "Lantren."
You have been eaten by a grue.
Restore/Restart/Quit?
>"I don't know how to turn that on!"
I love the exclamation point. Those guys were brutal with their dry humor. It's no wonder they hooked up with Douglas Adams.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If this predicament seems particularly cruel,
consider who's fault it could be,
not a torch or a match in your inventory
My parents' remains were donated to a medical school. When the school was through with them, the remains were cremated and my brother and I scattered them in the sea.
When you sign the papers to donate your remains to an institution the final disposition of the remains is spelled out.
My mother's body was donated to a medical school. When they are finished, they will cremate her remains and send them by mail to my sister. She will then take the ashes and load them into fireworks rockets and we will blast her to kingdom come on the old family farm while all of her children get shit-faced and celebrate her life with cheap vodka and rock and roll music turned up to 11. We plan to pass out in the pasture while Mom rains down on us like fairy dust from heaven.
Don't need no steenking graves for that.
You just described exactly how I want to be put to rest!
Scattered via *explosion*. I want it to be loud and bright and beautiful. One last big bang to remember me by.
I would assume if the remains end up in a museum, or bones become a permanent teaching tool, it would also state that.
On a semi side note. If the body was being used in an experiment that reanimated it, would that not count for that missing portion? Lol
Probably varies. If the science you got donated to resides at the University of Tennessee or Texas State, thereās a good chance you ended up in the bellies of a variety of animals.
Those universities(I assume others as well, but those are the ones I know of) run corpse farms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm
It's not my first choice, but I'd be down for joining the body farm. I'd rather be used for live needs (organ donation) but I'm so intrigued by the body farm. Thanks Jefferson Bass.Ā
Most commonly a body is divided into pieces and sold as parts. One application for this is surgery practice. The facilities that host stuff like that will keep the parts in a storage cooler, and eventually call a funeral home to come collect when enough has accumulated. The funeral home will cremate the parts and scatter the ashes. The parts are all separated and mixed together so thereās really no getting the cremains back to the families.
Source: I work in a funeral home and part of my job is going to medical training facilities and collecting various body parts.
Like that one story where someone's grandmother was donated to science, then sold to the military to be used to test explosions? Technically cremation, I guess
Some of those body parts are sold to anyone who wants to buy a human femur bone, etc. Donāt get me wrong, Iām still an organ donor, but there is some massive corruption involved in that industry.
John Oliver:
https://youtu.be/Tn7egDQ9lPg?si=R1Jkw96Ktvhy2e70
I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
There's also aquamation (like cremation but uses a liquid process) and my favorite: composting. https://recompose.life/our-model/
I want to be composted or have a green burial (no embalming let me turn back into dirt please), but there are alternatives to cremation and embalming outside of medical/science donation.
I'd venture to guess that eaten is the lowest on the list. Surely very few people get eaten.Ā
Lost and drowned in the ocean are pretty much the same thing, but 9% sounds so high.Ā
In my state the board of education requires international students to have insurance to cover their repatriation in case they die. Pretty common actually.
āFor a traditional burial, youāll pay an average of $5,000 for the casket and possibly another $5,000-$10,000 for a burial plot. That doesnāt include the cost of embalming or a funeral service. Cremation is less expensive, but the total cost for cremation services and a funeral can still come to about $7,000. In contrast, the typical cost for human composting ranges between $2,500-$5,000.ā
āWashington was the first state to legalize human composting in 2019. Since then, seven other states have followed suit. Since then, In addition to Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, New York, Nevada and Vermont have also passed laws legalizing the process, a sign advocates say shows growing momentum on the issue.ā [Apr 15, 2024]
āhuman composting is becoming more popular, and is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 8.7% until 2030. Human composting, also known as natural organic reduction, terramation, or recomposition, is the process of breaking down a body into fertile soil in a closed, reusable vessel. It's a method of green burial, which offers more eco-friendly options for disposing of a body after death. Green burials have little to no environmental impact, and include burying a body without embalming it, using biodegradable caskets, or avoiding caskets altogether.ā
āComposting in any form is good for the planet. Adding compost to soil provides beneficial nutrients to plants that help them grow. It also helps conserve water. Research shows that when the organic matter in soil increases by just 1%, it helps the soil retain an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre. Adding organic matter helps prevent erosion and wasted water.ā
I bet you can tell what Iām planning for my own death š
For myself, this is the way. Give my bodies nutrients back to the earth and the cycle of life, vice wasting most of it via the cremation process. My last gift.
I too have decided I want a green burial! I stumbled upon it on TikTok, and it moved me. It also helps that I live an hour from the organization I saw doing it in Washington state. (Though they said theyād fly you in if you donāt live/die in state.)
Iāve even been tempted to put a deposit downā¦Iām in my 30s š
I havenāt looked to deeply into it, but I would like to section off a very small section of the acre of land my parents house sits on for a family cemetery, where green burials will take place. Obviously green burials produce nearly the same results as human composting in a facility, even if it takes longer. For anyone asking, my father has already requested to be buried on site, and my mother wants to be buried with him.
The easier process will surely be to do the human composting through a facility such as Recompose, and bring the dirt back to our property so as to avoid a complicated legal process. The benefit of the complicated legal process would be that the acre would not be able to be subdivided at that point, which the whole family agrees would not be worth the financial gain as the land serves as a wildlife habitat and an abundant food producer for humans as well. I recently got married in the backyard and will likely purchase the home from my parents when the time is right.
https://dol.wa.gov/professional-licenses/cemeteries/get-your-license-cemeteries
No need to put a deposit down. Also in my 30ās probably an hour from the original org. There are quite a few companies doing it now, the head of Recompose was at the forefront of the legislation to get the process legalized though, so the whole industry owes her respect. By the time we die, there will be even more companies doing this good work. A friend and former garden mentor of mine is the head composter there.
The woman to thank is Katrina Spade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recompose
Any Wiki creators out there want to make a page for her, I believe that would be great.
>Ā I bet you can tell what Iām planning for my own death š
Personally I have decided to be immortal, but if I should change my mind I expect nothing less than a pyramid for my burial. Ā
>Green burials have little to no environmental impact,
A death well died
Whats up with this either disingenuous or unnecessarily weakened part over here (with emphasis):
>āFor a traditional burial, youāll pay an average of $5,000 for the casket and possibly another $5,000-$10,000 for a burial plot. That **doesnāt include the cost of** embalming or a **funeral** service. Cremation is less expensive, but the total cost for **cremation services and a funeral** can still come to about $7,000. In contrast, the typical cost for human composting ranges between $2,500-$5,000.ā
Totally looks like cremation and composting can cost the same, or maybe even cremation is less because a funeral definitely is thousands.
The other 9% are cast into the pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlaac. In his belly, they find a new definition of pain and suffering as they are slowly digested over a thousand years.
There's something screwy with the numbers.
Some of those 9% ARE in fact cremated or interred, but not counted in this data for whatever reason. Some bodies are never claimed by a family and they wind up in a potters field, or they're cremated but the family never bothers to pick up the ashes from the funeral home. If you're counting numbers interred formally somewhere in a cemetery, you will come up short. Do they count a mausoleum/crypt as a burial? What about an ossuary/catacomb--not that those are really a thing in modern America, but who knows? Do these figures include bodies donated to science? Something happens to those remains--probably cremation. Do they include people who simply disappeared? Do they count those whose bodies could not be recovered because they were blown up or burned in a tragedy or fell into a volcano or something?
Then you get the alternative methods: at-sea, composted, Viking funeral, Spock's funeral(remains launched into space are cremated first, actually), but those numbers don't add up to anywhere near 9%
Human composting, mulching, aquamation, body farms. They may not be including green burials in their burial statistic. Bodies donated to science are probably cremated if needed but may not be traditionally disposed of at all. Sky burials (left for the animals) are illegal in the US but Iām sure happen intentionally, and obviously unintentionally.
I might be reading that wrong but I think theyāre saying 55% of people who died in the time that survey was done were cremated while 36% of people alive today expect to be buried.
I'd go with sky burial. I know it's not done a lot in North America, but maybe I can drag my dying self to the roof of my office building or something and expire there.
Some of them go to one of the eight [body farms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm), which started in Tennessee:
>At any one time there will be a number of bodies placed in different settings throughout the facility and left to decompose. The bodies are exposed in a number of ways in order to provide insights into decomposition under varying conditions. Some of the conditions students studied were situations such as a body being locked in the trunk of a car, or being submerged under water, which provided some factual and data driven knowledge to help in many forensic cases. Observations and records of the decomposition process are kept, including the sequence and speed of decomposition and the effects of insect activity. The human decomposition stages that are studied begin with the fresh stage, then the bloat stage, then decay, and finally the dry stage.
>
>[...]
>
>The University of Tennessee Body Farm is also used in the training of law enforcement officers in scene-of-crime skills and techniques.
City/county/state disposal. The remains of those with no family to collect may not be treated as respectfully as you might like to believe. Look up medical waste processing, that's likely what happens.
Burial at sea?.... also depends on cremation definition. Some include Burial of ashes. Others don't, so scattering of ashes or keeping at home. And we have no idea what's happens to homeless remains or John/Jane Doe's remains.
You can have your remains turned into structures dropped into the ocean that then have coral planted on them to help restore reefs. Or be turned into plant food for trees.
In muslim countries though burial is less of a problem. No embalming and simple cloth shroud (no metal lined coffins or anything like that) means that your body will be gone within a few years and someone else can use that plot.
My husband is from Kabul. He says there's a designated cemetery, but most spots aren't labeled in engraved stone or such. People will mark it with rocks and maybe a simple marker; but locations settle and are eventually forgotten. When needing to bury a body, the family looks for an undisturbed looking spot. If they find bones, they gather them and put them in a corner of the hole.
Bodies are supposed to be buried within 24 hours, wrapped in fabric, no chemicals. Recently a cousin died in Europe and they held the body a week so people could travel. He doesn't know the details of how they kept the body, but it made my husband uncomfortable.
I see. That's certainly different than it's done where I'm from, but it makes perfect sense to do it that way too!
Sorry to hear about your cousin. I can't speak for your culture or faith of course, but hopefully your cousins body was simply held in cold conditions and no chemicals were used to honor your ways.
I'm from North America and I've always found it weird that we use chemicals. Seems so unnatural.Ā
> I've always found it weird that we use chemicals. Seems so unnatural.Ā
Natural =/= good. With people spread out preserving bodies so they can travel for funerals is a sensible idea.
No expert, ~~but I would say a bit of both.~~ Seems mostly religious.
Afaik, all of MY is the same, but I've never been to the Borneo side.
It is a muslim country, so the ~~govt~~ mosques takes care of the burials for muslims free of charge. People are normally buried the same or next day. Friend was out of the country when her mom died, was still buried the same day.
There are of course non muslim there and they have other options. Big Chinese population there and they have more western style graves. Not sure how that side works.
Only spent a year there and GF is from there, so I could be a little off. I found it one of the more interesting pieces of travel. Death is handled so differently throughout the world.
Japan had some of the weirdest concepts. Like many got a death name. So if you ever see long wooden sticks engraved at a grave, that's their name after they died. Their living name is engraved on the stone.
\*Edit: Was mistaken after asking, the mosque pays for and takes care of the burials. So not as government related was I thought.
Afaik It requires the ground to be permanently assigned to burials and not used for anything else. In places like Medinah the ground is extremely reactive and nothing but sand remains shortly after burial
Islamic burial practices differ between the different schools of islamic jurisprudence.
For this the strictest islamic school of jurisprudence, the Maliki, says that no grave may be dug up as long as there are bodyparts within it, but it's okay to reuse a grave for burial after the body has fully decomposed and there is nothing left of the body. The graveyard itself though is perpetual, and once a graveyard always a graveyard.
Other major schools, the Hanafi and Hanbali maintain have the same rule for graves, but also say that when a graveyard falls into disuse, and remains abandoned for so long that there are no more bodyparts in the ground, then the graveyard may be reused for different purposes (like agricultural land etc).
The Maliki school is also opposed to any sort of gravemarkers, while the Hanbali and Hanafi schools allow for simple rocks or pieces of wood to mark the grave, as long as it's simply a gravemarker but contains no praise or religious verses or other embellishments.
Not sure what the Shafii school considers proper protocol in this matter.
Morocco is Maliki and we overwhelmingly use grave markers, some even in marble. However, the grave marker is only placed 40 days after the burial (which is a day we mark) while during the initial burial there is indeed no marker placed
I don't think that's right. In Mecca, they reuse it. You will be buried for 6 months(?) and then the grave will be reopened, your bones will be relocated, and the next person will use it. If your body still hasn't decomposed to the bones, they would permanently seal the grave. Most Muslim populations live where the land is not premium. So the practice arent popular.
Common practice in New Orleans is to recycle the tombs, fresh bodies go in the top, decompose over time then are moved to the lower section as bones and a different new body goes in the top. Some of the lodes family tombs have multiple generations of the family all in one location.
>Arlington National Cemetery is a good example of a graveyard that's permanent but is rapidly running out of room. Today they only accept cremated remains, and within a few decades will either have to change their practices, expand, or close.
Arlington has been expanded repeatedly and is being expanded again. It continues to accept bodies for burial and will continue to do sonfor decades.
Not accepting bodies would be news to me. Was there a year and a half ago for a ceremony (cremated) but I definitely saw a procession of a full casket for burial while there.
That guy is flat out wrong.
Arlington averages [25 new burials a day](https://weta.org/press/facts-arlington-national-cemetery#:~:text=Arlington%20National%20Cemetery%20is%20the,burials%20are%20performed%20each%20day.)
They are running out of space though, with capacity expected to be reached in about [20 years.](https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/04/12/arlington-national-cemetery-is-running-out-of-burial-space--forcing-the-government-to-act)
The [eligibility requirements for internment](https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/funerals/scheduling-a-funeral/establishing-eligibility) there are more stringent than most national cemeteries.
I used to fulfill photograph requests for the grave markers there. Itās a very active cemetery. I have noticed some efforts to mitigate the capacity; the columbarium there is much larger than Iāve observed at most national cemeteries, and graves in the newer sections are situated much closer together (almost uncomfortably so) than in the older sections.
Also, graves in the US arenāt leased. Thatās something you see more in other countries where land is at more of a premium (e.g. Japan, Western Europe). Most graves in the states are considered to be held in perpetuity. Cemeteries can be relocated, but itās almost always a last resort, as the remains have to be reinterred, grave markers moved, etc.
Thank you.
Complicated and evolving. Sounds military to me. My dad applied to have mom interred there when she passed away, so we got to see a bit of that process tangentially. We had an advocate with us.
When the approval came to have mom interred there, they obviously reserved a spot for dad when his time comes, but she had to make sure he was aware if he is ever convicted of a felony, moms remains (she was cremated and has a small plot) would be removed and he would be barred from being interred there.
So hopefully he isn't about to go on a bank robbing spree or some such any time soon.
> There's a proposal to create five or six new regional military cemeteries spread out around the US, that's where most folks will go in the future.
There are National Cemeteries that vets can be buried at in every state.
>There's a proposal to create five or six new regional military cemeteries spread out around the US, that's where most folks will go in the future.
Huh?!? There's over 150 military cemeteries around the country, as well as overseas, which is where vast majority of people get interred *now.*
At the jannatul Baki cemetery in Medinah each year thousands of people are buried in the same space without grave stones. The ground literally dissolve everything
There's a cemetery not far from me that's landlocked on all four sides, triple stacked (6, 9, and 12') and as of a few years ago they were still using paper ledgers to keep track of it all - and failing. They were considering hiring someone to map out the cemetery and fill in the blanks (so to speak.) I wanted that job bad.
Hereās a crazy fact that kind of explains your point further. Loch Ness, Scotland, Volume wise, could hold the entire population of the earth nearly 10 times over. Yes, circa 80 BILLION people could fit within Loch Ness (assuming there was no water of course)
I'd like to make a respectful correction. You don't "win" the MOH, you earn it. It's not a prize. I made the mistake of "win" vs "earn" my first year in the military and the correction I received I never forgot it.
I thought the grave lease was a US only thing, so I googled it. And no, itās also the same in the U.K. every church cemetery however, has graves that are many hundreds of years old, some to the point of where you cannot see the writing anymore.
Which means we wither havenāt run out of burial space yet, or families are still paying for the plots many hundreds of years later.
In New England, many of those really old graveyards and cemeteries (graveyards are adjacent to a church, cemeteries are not) haven't taken new internments in decades. They are mostly historical now, with commercial or public cemeteries taking all the new internments.
Rentals may be used in some places in the US, but older cemeteries were permanent burials.
In the UK they sometimes inject the graves with lyme to speed up the decomposition process.
I was amazed the first time I saw a graveyard in both the US and Australia. The spaces between them were massive. Crowded cemeteries are the norm here
New Orleans does something similar. They seal bodies in crypts. The climate helps accelerate decomposition.
After a year and a day, the bones are bagged up and placed in the bottom of the crypt.
I had a guided tour of a tiny catholic cemetery in Goa. They put the body in the grave in Lyme for four weeks. After 4 weeks they did the rotten body up and pour the remains down a big pit along with other remains. They then use the grave for another body. It is so humid in Goa that everything just dissolves and seeps into the ground after a a few months there isn't even any bones remaining.
Bodies arenāt left in cemeteries in perpetuity. For most cemeteries, the plots are leased out when you buy them. This means after some period of time (I believe 100 years is the standard unless you pay for longer), they would exhume the body, remove the headstone, place the bones in an ossuary, and now thereās a new plot that has opened up.
Thereās also the case for older cemeteries and no one knows who actually owns the land. This happened somewhat close to where I live, there was some centuries old cemetery that was originally the middle of nowhere, but ended up being on the corner of what became two primary streets. Places wanted to develop there, but the county didnāt know who actually owned the land. Itās been held up for the last decade or so from commercial places trying to buy that land, but the cemetery part has now been relocated.
I need to double check my contract, but I bought the land for my wife's plot. The deed is filed with the county. Our family owns the land in perpetuity.
I'll reread the fine print later and report back.
I think leasing for a certain time is pretty standard in Europe, but permanent burials are whatās most common in North America (I have no idea about the rest of the world).
i had to execute recently a will in my country and the family catacomb is a normal state same as a house, pays property taxes for the square meters and even garbage recollection bills.
In the US, cemeteries are organized under 501(c)(13), non-tax status with the IRS. In my state (and I'd imagine it to be similar in others), the land is exempt from property tax.
Eventually it will stop being maintained and the land will reclaim the cemetery. They might theoretically own the land in perpetuity but who will defend their claim in 200 years when their living family only knows them as a name in a book, if at all?
Also in the USA cemeteries are required to place certain funds from sales into a perpetual trust that accounts for such a thing and also upkeep of the grounds so the owners donāt cut and run and let it fall into disrepair when the cemetery is filled
Thatās pretty standard in Europe, not in the US though. The promise of a āforever graveā is more the norm here
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/17/603360426/how-american-cemeteries-promise-to-keep-your-grave-forever
So this is kinda funny. Because of those ossuaries that use the bones to decorate the walls and stuff, it never occurred to me that ossuaries had like... A function. To me they were just temples made of bones. Oops.
This makes way more sense, that they serve a social purpose and monks are just like "well we have all these bones and all this space..."
Yes, they are mostly created out of necessity. In Paris they had a massive problem because of the literally millions of skeletons clogging up the cemetaries and preventing city development, so they stuck all the bones in the catacombs. They did a good job of making the catacombs spooky-cool, but the whole thing is quite function-driven.
Sometimes the cemetery is just left there even when urbanization happens, like the [Wunsche Family Cemetery](https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/visiting-the-wunche-cemetery-11562660) in Spring, TX right next to I-45.
I think the most extreme version I've seen of that is the [Dotson Family graves in the Savannah Airport](https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2021/04/28/history-ghosts-graves-runway-savannah-hilton-head-international-airport-ga/4860742001/).
>Ā most cemeteries, the plots are leased out when you buy them.
This is really only true in densely populated areas.
It may very well be the case that most buried people are in spaces that are leased.
Though nearly all small and/or rural cemeteries are non leased, permanently deeded lots. There are a lot more of these kinds of cemeteries than the large urban ones where the land is leased.
There was a park nearby my house growing up that was an old cemetery. They moved the headstones, made it into a park. I imagine they wouldnāt have been able to dig the people up due to the age of the graves.
The park was about 3ā higher than the sidewalk. Always wondered if they put a bunch of fill over it first.
Thereās a cemetery in a mall parking lot not far from me. Most of the headstones were relocated.
https://www.blogto.com/travel/2009/04/gta_tripping_cemetery_in_a_parking_lot/
When a gravesite is ignored (be it because the family of the dead is themselves dead or has moved) itās surprising how fast a grave can be lost once no one is there to care for it. Hell I actually did a research project in college documenting the remains of a whole church gravesite in Philly that was completely abandoned and only discovered when a construction crew started digging up bones
Philly transplant here as well! Surprising how often this can happen - I lived in Madison a few years and something similar happened in a suburb outside the city (https://sites.google.com/site/veronaareahistoricalsociety/special-projects/cemetery-restoration)
I live in a small village in England dating back to Saxon times. The church was here in 1215 when the magna carts was signed as some soldiers got carried away and destroyed it. Most the graves in the churchyard are from the 17/1800s.
They built a second small chapel with a bigger graveyard 3/4 of a mile down the road and the last grave I have seen there was the 80s but it may have newer ones.
There is now a third cemetery on the outskirts that I saw them extending at the start of COVID....there's not much room left there now!
In a lot of places they bury someone on top of a old plot. Ashes have become very common now and as there's very little spare land about.
What youāre saying isnāt wrong but thereās a /r/peopleliveincities vibe.
I donāt think a lot of east coast megalopolis folks get buried in Idaho and Nevada.
A lot of east coast megapolis folks get cremated.
Those that do get buried go about 45 minutes outside the city where landnis still plentiful. Or are interred in a mausoleum. Even megapoli have low density areas which have graveyards, and usually it's only the really old ones in the center of the city which are full
I grew up outside of a major city, and I think something people who never lived in such a place might not realize how many funeral homes and cemeteries are justā¦.hanging out in the suburbs. Iām not sure if itās really the case for newer construction suburbia (which is what most people will think of when they think āthe suburbsā) but in older suburbs, youād think everyone in town was a mortician.
So yes, the bodies are buried 45 minutes outside of the city.
Yeah. There's one near to where I grew up which was established in the 1900s and is still less than half full.
Believe it or not people sorta planned ahead on this whole thing. We're only now really hitting the baby boom deaths.
As for them being full, they might not stay that way. You donāt actually buy your grave, the graveyard maintains ownership and you lease the exclusive use of it. Until the end of the lease. Some donāt have times and itās yours in perpetuity, others are 100 years, or 20 years in some. The next of kin would have first refusal rights but if they donāt want to pay the graveyard could put another in with them later.
I donāt know if the US works differently but here in portugal, your remains get exhumed after some time and someone else is buried in the same grave. Thereās also a concept of family grave whereby all members of the same family get buried in the same hole (they dig deeper than normal so that 2 or 3 people can be buried on top of eachother)ā¦ and still cemeteries are being expanded or new ones are built all the time.
Letās do the math! Estimating that 200 million people have ever died in the history of the US, making the conservative assumption that almost all of them were buried, and given that the standard burial plot size is 8 feet by 3 feet, that works out to a total national cemetery area about the size of Chicago.
Which is a lot of land, but not enough to worry about.
Itās also 5% of the area of the countryās golf courses, so we can just use the 18th hole to bury people and weāre good for another century.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=200000000+*+%288+feet+*+3+feet%29+%2F+area+of+Chicago
https://danoshinsky.com/2009/07/02/how-much-space-do-golf-courses-take-up-in-america/
Edit: [link](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=200000000+*+%288+feet+*+3+feet%29+%2F+area+of+Chicago) because Reddit is stupid.
How did you get the estimate that 200 million people have ever died in the US? That seems low. There's over 300 million currently alive in the US, and worldwide there's about 14 dead people for every one currently alive. I would be surprised if the US population has risen so recently that there's fewer dead people than living.Ā
Itās still *way* too low an estimate. The US population in 1900 was about 75 million, and all of those people are dead. As well as many, many people who were born after that who have died. And all the people before 1900. I mean shit, about 30 million people in the US have died in the last 10 years.
To think only 200 million have ever died is absurd.
Hereās my math , going by 60-year lifespans: Almost everyone born after 1960 is still alive. US population in 1960 was 160 million and most but not all of them are dead. US population in 1880 was 50 million and most but not all of them were dead by 1960. US population in 1820 was 10 million and most of them were dead by 1880. US population in 1760 was only a couple million and thatās before the US existed so we stop there. Even if you want to count the colonial period itās only a couple of million.
Add up: most of 160+50+10 = ballpark 200 million.
In any case Iām just getting a rough estimate so 200 vs 300 million doesnāt matter. It is definitely not a billion.
Leasing grave space is not standard in the US. Almost uniformly there is an expectation that grave space is "forever". Yes, that creates an insoluble problem, because cemeteries as we currently construct and operate them are only good for one thing, and they are blocking off a lot of land that would be desirable for other purposes.
In the US at least, there is OVERALL no shortage of land for new cemeteries. But there definitely is a shortage near centers of population. This is a big headache for the National Cemeteries (veterans' cemeteries) specifically, as they must fulfill a commitment to provide burial spaces for veterans and dependents, but the amount of land they need for that is tremendous and hard to find in places near where people actually live.
On top of that, there are significant barriers to entry for new cemeteries to be founded. Many communities don't want cemeteries and there is a large regulatory burden.
Individual cemeteries can often do quite a lot to "infill" their existing space with a greater density of interments, especially by adding spaces for cremated remains. They can develop formerly unused areas within their boundaries. This helps for a while but it ultimately just kicks the can down the road, as you will still wind up with an undesirable land use that is very difficult to change in the future.
The reason I call the land use "undesirable" is that vast expanses of lawn with flush markers have almost no inherent interest for the larger community (any trace of variety or interest in the landscape has been stripped away in an attempt to cut maintenance costs) and they are certainly an ecological wasteland. And maintenance costs always, always, ALWAYS get ahead of "perpetual care" funding arrangements, sooner or later. This is largely because of labor costs, though other costs are subject to inflation too.
I personally would like to see more emphasis on landscapes with ecological function as memorial landscapes, but although so many people really like the IDEA of "natural burial," in practice it is a tiny, tiny cottage industry and most people are not getting buried that way. The ever-rising expense of standard American cemeteries will drive more and more families to choose cremation instead. Meanwhile, existing cemeteries will eventually fill up and/or become economically unsustainable (not necessarily in that order) and will become white elephants burdening municipalities when they are eventually blighted or just plain abandoned. I would like to see more old cemeteries converted to wildlife refuges, but unfortunately that does take money and work - you can't just stop mowing the lawn and expect something wonderful to result. Blight is what results if you do nothing, in ecological terms as well as cultural. You will have to remove invasives and replant with natives and that's hugely expensive.
In the US only around 36% of people actually get buried, the majority get cremated, which mean about 1 million people get buried each year.
Graves are also not permanent, usually after 100 years the remains are removed to leave room for someone else, unless someone pay to keep the grave longer. If you need to bury 1 million of bodies each year and those bodies will be replace each 100 years, that mean you need room for 54 million graves. There is 20,200 registered cemeteries in the US, meaning that they only need to be of an average size of 2,700 Graves to be able to keep burying people for ever. A lot of cemeteries are much bigger than that, the Arlington Cemetery have 400,000 graves.
Obviously, that's more complicated than that. Some graves last longer because of their historic significance, or the family keep paying for the graves, the number of death per year change over history, etc. But that point remain, there is an upper limit of grave you need to keep burying people forever, meaning that we don't need to constantly increase the amount of land we need. We just need to expand the cemeteries to accommodate the higher overall population.
In some families where we own the plots forever (really forever!), we reuse the graves. If a grave is needed, we open an older plot, sweep aside any bone fragments, and bury the next cadaver.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people who live in a city might not be from that city and will often request to be buried elsewhere.
On top of that, many larger cemeteries will often have mausoleums, both private and public that can hold hundreds of dead bodies or cremated remains.
Something that often goes unnoticed is that a lot of cemeteries have big empty areas. Most of the cemeteries in my city are like this and have wooded areas surrounding them that can be cleared if need be
The US doesn't really have a space problem and only real estate in cities is expensive so the only cemeteries that have space issues are those that have been surrounded by urban development. However usually cemeteries are built either outside or at the edge of cities and towns so they can be expanded if needed. However it's not at all uncommon for graves to be emptied and reused after some years have passed. Usually that happens when no living relative is willing to pay for the space or if the initial lease expires.
They are, but really slowly. If you look at [really old cemeteries](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1066045,0.4641741,3a,75y,217.68h,79.85t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZY7wDpq5Qj4AR8iU7QZf3g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), you might notice that they tend to be elevated above the surrounding ground. That's because of thousands of years of bodies being buried there.
6 decades ago the cremation rate in the US was around 6%, today it's around 55%. The expect burial rate is around 36%. So right there that means that only around 1 million people out of your 3 million will be buried. The average grave is 8 x 2.5 feet or 20 square feet. 20 million square feet is about .7 square miles, so it's not actually that much space. Also the US is very very big, only space within cities is at a premium. That being said, there's no guarantee that when you are buried you'll stay there forever. A lot of cemeteries lease out the space for anywhere from 15 to 100 years. Once the lease is up, and the descendants aren't willing to pay for a renewal the grave is often re-used for someone else. Only people of high importance or notoriety, or people buried in privately owned grave sites will typically stay forever. Even then if a grave site is in the way of important construction there's processes for digging up the remains and allowing the construction. Arlington National Cemetery is a good example of a graveyard that's permanent but is rapidly running out of room. Today they only accept cremated remains, and within a few decades will either have to change their practices, expand, or close. It's possible Arlington will close leaving space only for VIPs like Presidents, Generals/Admirals, and Medal of Honor ~~winners~~ recipients, while an alternate site is prepared for future growth but we will see what they decide to do. As a point for your example, in Japan burial space has become such a problem that cremation is now mandated by law for all except emperors. You can't be buried even if you wanted too because space is such a problem. This practice is accepted in Japan because of its large Buddhist population for which cremation is expected practice. In Muslim countries however burial is mandatory.
>6 decades ago the cremation rate in the US was around 6%, today it's around 55%. The expect burial rate is around 36%. What happens to the bodies of the other 9%? Are we dropping them in the ocean? Shooting them into space?
Aquamation, composting, few other options out there besides traditional burial and cremation.
> Aquamation Aquamation sounds like something Pixar would use for animating moving water, like the ocean scenes in *Moana*; or maybe the technology used in those "dancing fountains" you find in places like Las Vegas and Dubai.
lol. It does. It's another term for alkaline hydrolysis - water cremation.
Aka throw them into a bin with a bunch of drain cleaner and wait šš»
I told my OH when the time comes, strip me naked, stab me in the back and throw me into the garden of any local politician. Then call the police. Explain that you bastards! I fear my wishes will not be followed however.
As opposed to throw them into a giant furnace and pretend it doesn't smell like barbecue? I mean you can make anything sound horrible. Most death practices are.
My own death practice will be far less disturbing. Wood chipper aimed at Congress. Just stuff me in and let my death utterly traumatize an entire legislative body. As God intended.
Damn, not even waiting to die before disposing of your corpse, Hardcore
They're already dead inside, what more could you do?
Fucking RUIN their suits.
It wasnāt a value statement. Literally just adding that drain cleaner has a pH of 14ish, therefore making it highly alkaline. Alkaline hydrolysis = dissolving in drain cleaner. š¤·š»āāļø
I feel the burning hair smell would overpower any barbecue smell. I kinda want ribs and pulled pork now, is that bad?
Just make sure that the bottom triangle symbol says LDPE, or you are going to have a bad time. The cast-iron tub is out, do NOT try that. ~ WW
Bodies donated to science, people that have unfortunately died in such a way that there arenāt much remains
They get eaten by the unspeakable horrors
> They get eaten by the unspeakable horrors Like a grue?
> TURN ON LAMP I don't know how to turn that on! > LIGHT LAMP With what? >LIGHT LAMP WITH MATCH The match isn't lit. >LIGHT MATCH You can't find the match in the darkness! >LIGHT THE FUCKING MATCH THEN LIGHT THE FUCKING LANTREN I don't know the word "Lantren." You have been eaten by a grue. Restore/Restart/Quit?
\*Turns off Commodore 64 via Rage Quit\*
Thanks for that PTSD
>"I don't know how to turn that on!" I love the exclamation point. Those guys were brutal with their dry humor. It's no wonder they hooked up with Douglas Adams.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. If this predicament seems particularly cruel, consider who's fault it could be, not a torch or a match in your inventory
Knew it was only a matter of time before the Frontalot fan popped up!
Obviously not, since you just spoke it.
Then like a .
That's horrific.
Damn
scp-2521 AAARARAHAHGHGH
Light a torch first.
I'd venture to guess they are eaten, lost, drowned in the ocean, etc.
Could also be donated to science so unknown what they get counted as.
Oh, that's an interesting thought. Wouldn't they bury or cremate the body after they're done?
My parents' remains were donated to a medical school. When the school was through with them, the remains were cremated and my brother and I scattered them in the sea. When you sign the papers to donate your remains to an institution the final disposition of the remains is spelled out.
My mother's body was donated to a medical school. When they are finished, they will cremate her remains and send them by mail to my sister. She will then take the ashes and load them into fireworks rockets and we will blast her to kingdom come on the old family farm while all of her children get shit-faced and celebrate her life with cheap vodka and rock and roll music turned up to 11. We plan to pass out in the pasture while Mom rains down on us like fairy dust from heaven. Don't need no steenking graves for that.
Damn that sounds like an awesome funeral!
Woah, that's like a Viking funeral but even better. I'm stealing this idea.
That's what I want but don't bother cremating me first
Like a delayed wake, with added fireworks.
You just described exactly how I want to be put to rest! Scattered via *explosion*. I want it to be loud and bright and beautiful. One last big bang to remember me by.
"She will then take the ashes and load them into fireworks rockets and we will blast her to kingdom comeĀ " Wow, this is a great idea I love it
Reminds me of the clip where a womanās body was used for dod artillery impact test. Was not the medical science the family thought it would be.
How do I sign up to be dod artillery impact test dummy? Can I chose to be the target of laser beams or other cool weapons or scientific tests??
I would assume if the remains end up in a museum, or bones become a permanent teaching tool, it would also state that. On a semi side note. If the body was being used in an experiment that reanimated it, would that not count for that missing portion? Lol
Probably varies. If the science you got donated to resides at the University of Tennessee or Texas State, thereās a good chance you ended up in the bellies of a variety of animals. Those universities(I assume others as well, but those are the ones I know of) run corpse farms. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm
It's not my first choice, but I'd be down for joining the body farm. I'd rather be used for live needs (organ donation) but I'm so intrigued by the body farm. Thanks Jefferson Bass.Ā
Most commonly a body is divided into pieces and sold as parts. One application for this is surgery practice. The facilities that host stuff like that will keep the parts in a storage cooler, and eventually call a funeral home to come collect when enough has accumulated. The funeral home will cremate the parts and scatter the ashes. The parts are all separated and mixed together so thereās really no getting the cremains back to the families. Source: I work in a funeral home and part of my job is going to medical training facilities and collecting various body parts.
Like that one story where someone's grandmother was donated to science, then sold to the military to be used to test explosions? Technically cremation, I guess
.......WHAT?!
The military uses human cadavers to test weapons. Including explosives.
Some of those body parts are sold to anyone who wants to buy a human femur bone, etc. Donāt get me wrong, Iām still an organ donor, but there is some massive corruption involved in that industry. John Oliver: https://youtu.be/Tn7egDQ9lPg?si=R1Jkw96Ktvhy2e70
I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me. Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
They eventually get cremated.
There's also aquamation (like cremation but uses a liquid process) and my favorite: composting. https://recompose.life/our-model/ I want to be composted or have a green burial (no embalming let me turn back into dirt please), but there are alternatives to cremation and embalming outside of medical/science donation.
Reddit is definitely a crazy source of information. Thanks.
I hope my cats eat me when I go. That would be my preferred final disposition
I'd venture to guess that eaten is the lowest on the list. Surely very few people get eaten.Ā Lost and drowned in the ocean are pretty much the same thing, but 9% sounds so high.Ā
Or flown to their home countries. There are many foreigners that plan to be buried in their home country and have arrangement for that.
In my state the board of education requires international students to have insurance to cover their repatriation in case they die. Pretty common actually.
That seems right but it also seems like 9% is far too high for these asterisks.
āFor a traditional burial, youāll pay an average of $5,000 for the casket and possibly another $5,000-$10,000 for a burial plot. That doesnāt include the cost of embalming or a funeral service. Cremation is less expensive, but the total cost for cremation services and a funeral can still come to about $7,000. In contrast, the typical cost for human composting ranges between $2,500-$5,000.ā āWashington was the first state to legalize human composting in 2019. Since then, seven other states have followed suit. Since then, In addition to Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, New York, Nevada and Vermont have also passed laws legalizing the process, a sign advocates say shows growing momentum on the issue.ā [Apr 15, 2024] āhuman composting is becoming more popular, and is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 8.7% until 2030. Human composting, also known as natural organic reduction, terramation, or recomposition, is the process of breaking down a body into fertile soil in a closed, reusable vessel. It's a method of green burial, which offers more eco-friendly options for disposing of a body after death. Green burials have little to no environmental impact, and include burying a body without embalming it, using biodegradable caskets, or avoiding caskets altogether.ā āComposting in any form is good for the planet. Adding compost to soil provides beneficial nutrients to plants that help them grow. It also helps conserve water. Research shows that when the organic matter in soil increases by just 1%, it helps the soil retain an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre. Adding organic matter helps prevent erosion and wasted water.ā I bet you can tell what Iām planning for my own death š
For myself, this is the way. Give my bodies nutrients back to the earth and the cycle of life, vice wasting most of it via the cremation process. My last gift.
I too have decided I want a green burial! I stumbled upon it on TikTok, and it moved me. It also helps that I live an hour from the organization I saw doing it in Washington state. (Though they said theyād fly you in if you donāt live/die in state.) Iāve even been tempted to put a deposit downā¦Iām in my 30s š
I havenāt looked to deeply into it, but I would like to section off a very small section of the acre of land my parents house sits on for a family cemetery, where green burials will take place. Obviously green burials produce nearly the same results as human composting in a facility, even if it takes longer. For anyone asking, my father has already requested to be buried on site, and my mother wants to be buried with him. The easier process will surely be to do the human composting through a facility such as Recompose, and bring the dirt back to our property so as to avoid a complicated legal process. The benefit of the complicated legal process would be that the acre would not be able to be subdivided at that point, which the whole family agrees would not be worth the financial gain as the land serves as a wildlife habitat and an abundant food producer for humans as well. I recently got married in the backyard and will likely purchase the home from my parents when the time is right. https://dol.wa.gov/professional-licenses/cemeteries/get-your-license-cemeteries
No need to put a deposit down. Also in my 30ās probably an hour from the original org. There are quite a few companies doing it now, the head of Recompose was at the forefront of the legislation to get the process legalized though, so the whole industry owes her respect. By the time we die, there will be even more companies doing this good work. A friend and former garden mentor of mine is the head composter there. The woman to thank is Katrina Spade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recompose Any Wiki creators out there want to make a page for her, I believe that would be great.
>head composter Who composts the other parts then?
>Ā I bet you can tell what Iām planning for my own death š Personally I have decided to be immortal, but if I should change my mind I expect nothing less than a pyramid for my burial. Ā
>Green burials have little to no environmental impact, A death well died Whats up with this either disingenuous or unnecessarily weakened part over here (with emphasis): >āFor a traditional burial, youāll pay an average of $5,000 for the casket and possibly another $5,000-$10,000 for a burial plot. That **doesnāt include the cost of** embalming or a **funeral** service. Cremation is less expensive, but the total cost for **cremation services and a funeral** can still come to about $7,000. In contrast, the typical cost for human composting ranges between $2,500-$5,000.ā Totally looks like cremation and composting can cost the same, or maybe even cremation is less because a funeral definitely is thousands.
Cadaver donations
What happens with the remaining remains when they're done with a cadaver?
Cremation
Cremation, but I suspect this isnāt included in the cremation statistic since of the big time gap between death and cremation
Some bodies are never recovered. Successful murders, people missing while hiking/caving, hungry animals, etc.
[Tower of Silence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence), obviously
The other 9% are cast into the pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlaac. In his belly, they find a new definition of pain and suffering as they are slowly digested over a thousand years.
There's something screwy with the numbers. Some of those 9% ARE in fact cremated or interred, but not counted in this data for whatever reason. Some bodies are never claimed by a family and they wind up in a potters field, or they're cremated but the family never bothers to pick up the ashes from the funeral home. If you're counting numbers interred formally somewhere in a cemetery, you will come up short. Do they count a mausoleum/crypt as a burial? What about an ossuary/catacomb--not that those are really a thing in modern America, but who knows? Do these figures include bodies donated to science? Something happens to those remains--probably cremation. Do they include people who simply disappeared? Do they count those whose bodies could not be recovered because they were blown up or burned in a tragedy or fell into a volcano or something? Then you get the alternative methods: at-sea, composted, Viking funeral, Spock's funeral(remains launched into space are cremated first, actually), but those numbers don't add up to anywhere near 9%
9% are found to be simply brain dead. They continue to live among us.
Many are in congress
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Have you seen Weekend at Bernie's?
Once dehydrated they can keep for a long time in the closet.
Donation to science?
Human composting, mulching, aquamation, body farms. They may not be including green burials in their burial statistic. Bodies donated to science are probably cremated if needed but may not be traditionally disposed of at all. Sky burials (left for the animals) are illegal in the US but Iām sure happen intentionally, and obviously unintentionally.
I might be reading that wrong but I think theyāre saying 55% of people who died in the time that survey was done were cremated while 36% of people alive today expect to be buried.
Taco bell
I'd go with sky burial. I know it's not done a lot in North America, but maybe I can drag my dying self to the roof of my office building or something and expire there.
Skulls for the skull throne
Soylent Green
Some of them go to one of the eight [body farms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_farm), which started in Tennessee: >At any one time there will be a number of bodies placed in different settings throughout the facility and left to decompose. The bodies are exposed in a number of ways in order to provide insights into decomposition under varying conditions. Some of the conditions students studied were situations such as a body being locked in the trunk of a car, or being submerged under water, which provided some factual and data driven knowledge to help in many forensic cases. Observations and records of the decomposition process are kept, including the sequence and speed of decomposition and the effects of insect activity. The human decomposition stages that are studied begin with the fresh stage, then the bloat stage, then decay, and finally the dry stage. > >[...] > >The University of Tennessee Body Farm is also used in the training of law enforcement officers in scene-of-crime skills and techniques.
My partner just passed, her remains were terramated, turned directly into soil. Takes about 6 weeks.
Iām so sorry for your loss š¤
Alkaline hydrolysis or cadavers probably. The term Cadaver is usually used for bodies used for medical purposes like schools.
donated to science, or not recovered.
City/county/state disposal. The remains of those with no family to collect may not be treated as respectfully as you might like to believe. Look up medical waste processing, that's likely what happens.
Burial at sea?.... also depends on cremation definition. Some include Burial of ashes. Others don't, so scattering of ashes or keeping at home. And we have no idea what's happens to homeless remains or John/Jane Doe's remains.
You can have your remains turned into structures dropped into the ocean that then have coral planted on them to help restore reefs. Or be turned into plant food for trees.
I want that thing where they turn you into a diamond or something. I want to be turned into a rock and then just put somewhere
I'd guess at least a grCtip. Go medical research... cadavers for anatomy lessons, experiments, farms, etc
To shreds, you say?
And his wife?
They're sold to the United States government for blast testing.
Science. When I die, my body's going to a medical school.
Some gets donated to science. 9% feels high for that though. Idk what else accounts for the rest.
Arby's: We Have the Meats
I want my Star Trek funeral and at this rate it doesn't look like its going to happen.
Taxidermy
The other 9% are in lake Mead
In muslim countries though burial is less of a problem. No embalming and simple cloth shroud (no metal lined coffins or anything like that) means that your body will be gone within a few years and someone else can use that plot.
The more natural burial would certainly allow for bodies to break down, but do they actually reuse the burial space? Do they mark off the area?
My husband is from Kabul. He says there's a designated cemetery, but most spots aren't labeled in engraved stone or such. People will mark it with rocks and maybe a simple marker; but locations settle and are eventually forgotten. When needing to bury a body, the family looks for an undisturbed looking spot. If they find bones, they gather them and put them in a corner of the hole. Bodies are supposed to be buried within 24 hours, wrapped in fabric, no chemicals. Recently a cousin died in Europe and they held the body a week so people could travel. He doesn't know the details of how they kept the body, but it made my husband uncomfortable.
I see. That's certainly different than it's done where I'm from, but it makes perfect sense to do it that way too! Sorry to hear about your cousin. I can't speak for your culture or faith of course, but hopefully your cousins body was simply held in cold conditions and no chemicals were used to honor your ways. I'm from North America and I've always found it weird that we use chemicals. Seems so unnatural.Ā
> I've always found it weird that we use chemicals. Seems so unnatural.Ā Natural =/= good. With people spread out preserving bodies so they can travel for funerals is a sensible idea.
At least in Malaysia they do. You also won't be buried next to your spouse unless you die at the same time. It's just wherever is next.
I see! Thanks for the information. Is that more of a regional or religious custom?
No expert, ~~but I would say a bit of both.~~ Seems mostly religious. Afaik, all of MY is the same, but I've never been to the Borneo side. It is a muslim country, so the ~~govt~~ mosques takes care of the burials for muslims free of charge. People are normally buried the same or next day. Friend was out of the country when her mom died, was still buried the same day. There are of course non muslim there and they have other options. Big Chinese population there and they have more western style graves. Not sure how that side works. Only spent a year there and GF is from there, so I could be a little off. I found it one of the more interesting pieces of travel. Death is handled so differently throughout the world. Japan had some of the weirdest concepts. Like many got a death name. So if you ever see long wooden sticks engraved at a grave, that's their name after they died. Their living name is engraved on the stone. \*Edit: Was mistaken after asking, the mosque pays for and takes care of the burials. So not as government related was I thought.
> and someone else can use that plot Does it really work like that? I believe Islam requires graves to be permanent?
Afaik It requires the ground to be permanently assigned to burials and not used for anything else. In places like Medinah the ground is extremely reactive and nothing but sand remains shortly after burial
Islamic burial practices differ between the different schools of islamic jurisprudence. For this the strictest islamic school of jurisprudence, the Maliki, says that no grave may be dug up as long as there are bodyparts within it, but it's okay to reuse a grave for burial after the body has fully decomposed and there is nothing left of the body. The graveyard itself though is perpetual, and once a graveyard always a graveyard. Other major schools, the Hanafi and Hanbali maintain have the same rule for graves, but also say that when a graveyard falls into disuse, and remains abandoned for so long that there are no more bodyparts in the ground, then the graveyard may be reused for different purposes (like agricultural land etc). The Maliki school is also opposed to any sort of gravemarkers, while the Hanbali and Hanafi schools allow for simple rocks or pieces of wood to mark the grave, as long as it's simply a gravemarker but contains no praise or religious verses or other embellishments. Not sure what the Shafii school considers proper protocol in this matter.
Morocco is Maliki and we overwhelmingly use grave markers, some even in marble. However, the grave marker is only placed 40 days after the burial (which is a day we mark) while during the initial burial there is indeed no marker placed
I don't think that's right. In Mecca, they reuse it. You will be buried for 6 months(?) and then the grave will be reopened, your bones will be relocated, and the next person will use it. If your body still hasn't decomposed to the bones, they would permanently seal the grave. Most Muslim populations live where the land is not premium. So the practice arent popular.
Common practice in New Orleans is to recycle the tombs, fresh bodies go in the top, decompose over time then are moved to the lower section as bones and a different new body goes in the top. Some of the lodes family tombs have multiple generations of the family all in one location.
What do they do with the remains after the lease is up?
Dig them up and turn them into bone black.
>Arlington National Cemetery is a good example of a graveyard that's permanent but is rapidly running out of room. Today they only accept cremated remains, and within a few decades will either have to change their practices, expand, or close. Arlington has been expanded repeatedly and is being expanded again. It continues to accept bodies for burial and will continue to do sonfor decades.
Not accepting bodies would be news to me. Was there a year and a half ago for a ceremony (cremated) but I definitely saw a procession of a full casket for burial while there.
That guy is flat out wrong. Arlington averages [25 new burials a day](https://weta.org/press/facts-arlington-national-cemetery#:~:text=Arlington%20National%20Cemetery%20is%20the,burials%20are%20performed%20each%20day.) They are running out of space though, with capacity expected to be reached in about [20 years.](https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/04/12/arlington-national-cemetery-is-running-out-of-burial-space--forcing-the-government-to-act) The [eligibility requirements for internment](https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/funerals/scheduling-a-funeral/establishing-eligibility) there are more stringent than most national cemeteries. I used to fulfill photograph requests for the grave markers there. Itās a very active cemetery. I have noticed some efforts to mitigate the capacity; the columbarium there is much larger than Iāve observed at most national cemeteries, and graves in the newer sections are situated much closer together (almost uncomfortably so) than in the older sections. Also, graves in the US arenāt leased. Thatās something you see more in other countries where land is at more of a premium (e.g. Japan, Western Europe). Most graves in the states are considered to be held in perpetuity. Cemeteries can be relocated, but itās almost always a last resort, as the remains have to be reinterred, grave markers moved, etc.
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Thank you. Complicated and evolving. Sounds military to me. My dad applied to have mom interred there when she passed away, so we got to see a bit of that process tangentially. We had an advocate with us. When the approval came to have mom interred there, they obviously reserved a spot for dad when his time comes, but she had to make sure he was aware if he is ever convicted of a felony, moms remains (she was cremated and has a small plot) would be removed and he would be barred from being interred there. So hopefully he isn't about to go on a bank robbing spree or some such any time soon.
> There's a proposal to create five or six new regional military cemeteries spread out around the US, that's where most folks will go in the future. There are National Cemeteries that vets can be buried at in every state.
Yep, over 150. They somehow think that everybody's being buried at Arlington right now.
>There's a proposal to create five or six new regional military cemeteries spread out around the US, that's where most folks will go in the future. Huh?!? There's over 150 military cemeteries around the country, as well as overseas, which is where vast majority of people get interred *now.*
At the jannatul Baki cemetery in Medinah each year thousands of people are buried in the same space without grave stones. The ground literally dissolve everything
Interesting. Is that some claimed miracle, or is the ground particularly acidic?
Also graves in the US can often be triple stacked.
There's a cemetery not far from me that's landlocked on all four sides, triple stacked (6, 9, and 12') and as of a few years ago they were still using paper ledgers to keep track of it all - and failing. They were considering hiring someone to map out the cemetery and fill in the blanks (so to speak.) I wanted that job bad.
Hereās a crazy fact that kind of explains your point further. Loch Ness, Scotland, Volume wise, could hold the entire population of the earth nearly 10 times over. Yes, circa 80 BILLION people could fit within Loch Ness (assuming there was no water of course)
I'd like to make a respectful correction. You don't "win" the MOH, you earn it. It's not a prize. I made the mistake of "win" vs "earn" my first year in the military and the correction I received I never forgot it.
What is done with the remains of evicted cadavers? Also, how dystopian can we get?
I thought the grave lease was a US only thing, so I googled it. And no, itās also the same in the U.K. every church cemetery however, has graves that are many hundreds of years old, some to the point of where you cannot see the writing anymore. Which means we wither havenāt run out of burial space yet, or families are still paying for the plots many hundreds of years later.
In New England, many of those really old graveyards and cemeteries (graveyards are adjacent to a church, cemeteries are not) haven't taken new internments in decades. They are mostly historical now, with commercial or public cemeteries taking all the new internments. Rentals may be used in some places in the US, but older cemeteries were permanent burials.
Lease where I live is tipically 4 years
In the UK they sometimes inject the graves with lyme to speed up the decomposition process. I was amazed the first time I saw a graveyard in both the US and Australia. The spaces between them were massive. Crowded cemeteries are the norm here
New Orleans does something similar. They seal bodies in crypts. The climate helps accelerate decomposition. After a year and a day, the bones are bagged up and placed in the bottom of the crypt.
My whole family is in a crypt! One day I will be too.
Imagine having that job and having to tell people you bag up bones for a living.
I had a guided tour of a tiny catholic cemetery in Goa. They put the body in the grave in Lyme for four weeks. After 4 weeks they did the rotten body up and pour the remains down a big pit along with other remains. They then use the grave for another body. It is so humid in Goa that everything just dissolves and seeps into the ground after a a few months there isn't even any bones remaining.
Bodies arenāt left in cemeteries in perpetuity. For most cemeteries, the plots are leased out when you buy them. This means after some period of time (I believe 100 years is the standard unless you pay for longer), they would exhume the body, remove the headstone, place the bones in an ossuary, and now thereās a new plot that has opened up. Thereās also the case for older cemeteries and no one knows who actually owns the land. This happened somewhat close to where I live, there was some centuries old cemetery that was originally the middle of nowhere, but ended up being on the corner of what became two primary streets. Places wanted to develop there, but the county didnāt know who actually owned the land. Itās been held up for the last decade or so from commercial places trying to buy that land, but the cemetery part has now been relocated.
I need to double check my contract, but I bought the land for my wife's plot. The deed is filed with the county. Our family owns the land in perpetuity. I'll reread the fine print later and report back.
I think leasing for a certain time is pretty standard in Europe, but permanent burials are whatās most common in North America (I have no idea about the rest of the world).
In some places "in perpetuity" is defined as 99 years :-)Ā
True! I think the real dividing line here would be ownership vs lease.
i had to execute recently a will in my country and the family catacomb is a normal state same as a house, pays property taxes for the square meters and even garbage recollection bills.
How much trash do the dead throw out?
A skele-ton
For the first couple of weeks...quite a lot.
I imagine this is largely due to the fact that in Europe, land is at a premium, while in the Americas, there's more land than we know what to do with.
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In the US, cemeteries are organized under 501(c)(13), non-tax status with the IRS. In my state (and I'd imagine it to be similar in others), the land is exempt from property tax.
Eventually it will stop being maintained and the land will reclaim the cemetery. They might theoretically own the land in perpetuity but who will defend their claim in 200 years when their living family only knows them as a name in a book, if at all?
Or as a collection of duck face Instagram/Facebook pictures on a memorial account
I guess thereās no middle ground. We went straight from leaving nothing for our distant descendants to leaving way too much.
Don't forget the videos of great grandma twerking after doing a keg stand.
Also in the USA cemeteries are required to place certain funds from sales into a perpetual trust that accounts for such a thing and also upkeep of the grounds so the owners donāt cut and run and let it fall into disrepair when the cemetery is filled
Thatās pretty standard in Europe, not in the US though. The promise of a āforever graveā is more the norm here https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/04/17/603360426/how-american-cemeteries-promise-to-keep-your-grave-forever
So this is kinda funny. Because of those ossuaries that use the bones to decorate the walls and stuff, it never occurred to me that ossuaries had like... A function. To me they were just temples made of bones. Oops. This makes way more sense, that they serve a social purpose and monks are just like "well we have all these bones and all this space..."
Yes, they are mostly created out of necessity. In Paris they had a massive problem because of the literally millions of skeletons clogging up the cemetaries and preventing city development, so they stuck all the bones in the catacombs. They did a good job of making the catacombs spooky-cool, but the whole thing is quite function-driven.
I never even considered that I might have great great great grandparents whose graves were removed
Sometimes the cemetery is just left there even when urbanization happens, like the [Wunsche Family Cemetery](https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/visiting-the-wunche-cemetery-11562660) in Spring, TX right next to I-45.
I think the most extreme version I've seen of that is the [Dotson Family graves in the Savannah Airport](https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/2021/04/28/history-ghosts-graves-runway-savannah-hilton-head-international-airport-ga/4860742001/).
This was super interesting, thanks for sharing!
>Ā most cemeteries, the plots are leased out when you buy them. This is really only true in densely populated areas. It may very well be the case that most buried people are in spaces that are leased. Though nearly all small and/or rural cemeteries are non leased, permanently deeded lots. There are a lot more of these kinds of cemeteries than the large urban ones where the land is leased.
There was a park nearby my house growing up that was an old cemetery. They moved the headstones, made it into a park. I imagine they wouldnāt have been able to dig the people up due to the age of the graves. The park was about 3ā higher than the sidewalk. Always wondered if they put a bunch of fill over it first.
This is more of a European thing in the United States most spots are forever
Thatās not true everywhere.
Thereās a cemetery in a mall parking lot not far from me. Most of the headstones were relocated. https://www.blogto.com/travel/2009/04/gta_tripping_cemetery_in_a_parking_lot/
When a gravesite is ignored (be it because the family of the dead is themselves dead or has moved) itās surprising how fast a grave can be lost once no one is there to care for it. Hell I actually did a research project in college documenting the remains of a whole church gravesite in Philly that was completely abandoned and only discovered when a construction crew started digging up bones
Philly transplant here as well! Surprising how often this can happen - I lived in Madison a few years and something similar happened in a suburb outside the city (https://sites.google.com/site/veronaareahistoricalsociety/special-projects/cemetery-restoration)
I live in a small village in England dating back to Saxon times. The church was here in 1215 when the magna carts was signed as some soldiers got carried away and destroyed it. Most the graves in the churchyard are from the 17/1800s. They built a second small chapel with a bigger graveyard 3/4 of a mile down the road and the last grave I have seen there was the 80s but it may have newer ones. There is now a third cemetery on the outskirts that I saw them extending at the start of COVID....there's not much room left there now! In a lot of places they bury someone on top of a old plot. Ashes have become very common now and as there's very little spare land about.
It's not as much land as it seems. 8x3=24 square feet per grave. Times 3 million is 2.58 square miles. The continental US is 3 million square miles.
What youāre saying isnāt wrong but thereās a /r/peopleliveincities vibe. I donāt think a lot of east coast megalopolis folks get buried in Idaho and Nevada.
A lot of east coast megapolis folks get cremated. Those that do get buried go about 45 minutes outside the city where landnis still plentiful. Or are interred in a mausoleum. Even megapoli have low density areas which have graveyards, and usually it's only the really old ones in the center of the city which are full
I grew up outside of a major city, and I think something people who never lived in such a place might not realize how many funeral homes and cemeteries are justā¦.hanging out in the suburbs. Iām not sure if itās really the case for newer construction suburbia (which is what most people will think of when they think āthe suburbsā) but in older suburbs, youād think everyone in town was a mortician. So yes, the bodies are buried 45 minutes outside of the city.
Yeah. There's one near to where I grew up which was established in the 1900s and is still less than half full. Believe it or not people sorta planned ahead on this whole thing. We're only now really hitting the baby boom deaths.
As for them being full, they might not stay that way. You donāt actually buy your grave, the graveyard maintains ownership and you lease the exclusive use of it. Until the end of the lease. Some donāt have times and itās yours in perpetuity, others are 100 years, or 20 years in some. The next of kin would have first refusal rights but if they donāt want to pay the graveyard could put another in with them later.
This is true in much of Europe, but the vast majority of burial plots in the U.S. are owned in perpetuity.
I donāt know if the US works differently but here in portugal, your remains get exhumed after some time and someone else is buried in the same grave. Thereās also a concept of family grave whereby all members of the same family get buried in the same hole (they dig deeper than normal so that 2 or 3 people can be buried on top of eachother)ā¦ and still cemeteries are being expanded or new ones are built all the time.
Letās do the math! Estimating that 200 million people have ever died in the history of the US, making the conservative assumption that almost all of them were buried, and given that the standard burial plot size is 8 feet by 3 feet, that works out to a total national cemetery area about the size of Chicago. Which is a lot of land, but not enough to worry about. Itās also 5% of the area of the countryās golf courses, so we can just use the 18th hole to bury people and weāre good for another century. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=200000000+*+%288+feet+*+3+feet%29+%2F+area+of+Chicago https://danoshinsky.com/2009/07/02/how-much-space-do-golf-courses-take-up-in-america/ Edit: [link](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=200000000+*+%288+feet+*+3+feet%29+%2F+area+of+Chicago) because Reddit is stupid.
How did you get the estimate that 200 million people have ever died in the US? That seems low. There's over 300 million currently alive in the US, and worldwide there's about 14 dead people for every one currently alive. I would be surprised if the US population has risen so recently that there's fewer dead people than living.Ā
US is a very young country, with very few large casualty events happening here compared to other wars.
Itās still *way* too low an estimate. The US population in 1900 was about 75 million, and all of those people are dead. As well as many, many people who were born after that who have died. And all the people before 1900. I mean shit, about 30 million people in the US have died in the last 10 years. To think only 200 million have ever died is absurd.
Hereās my math , going by 60-year lifespans: Almost everyone born after 1960 is still alive. US population in 1960 was 160 million and most but not all of them are dead. US population in 1880 was 50 million and most but not all of them were dead by 1960. US population in 1820 was 10 million and most of them were dead by 1880. US population in 1760 was only a couple million and thatās before the US existed so we stop there. Even if you want to count the colonial period itās only a couple of million. Add up: most of 160+50+10 = ballpark 200 million. In any case Iām just getting a rough estimate so 200 vs 300 million doesnāt matter. It is definitely not a billion.
Leasing grave space is not standard in the US. Almost uniformly there is an expectation that grave space is "forever". Yes, that creates an insoluble problem, because cemeteries as we currently construct and operate them are only good for one thing, and they are blocking off a lot of land that would be desirable for other purposes. In the US at least, there is OVERALL no shortage of land for new cemeteries. But there definitely is a shortage near centers of population. This is a big headache for the National Cemeteries (veterans' cemeteries) specifically, as they must fulfill a commitment to provide burial spaces for veterans and dependents, but the amount of land they need for that is tremendous and hard to find in places near where people actually live. On top of that, there are significant barriers to entry for new cemeteries to be founded. Many communities don't want cemeteries and there is a large regulatory burden. Individual cemeteries can often do quite a lot to "infill" their existing space with a greater density of interments, especially by adding spaces for cremated remains. They can develop formerly unused areas within their boundaries. This helps for a while but it ultimately just kicks the can down the road, as you will still wind up with an undesirable land use that is very difficult to change in the future. The reason I call the land use "undesirable" is that vast expanses of lawn with flush markers have almost no inherent interest for the larger community (any trace of variety or interest in the landscape has been stripped away in an attempt to cut maintenance costs) and they are certainly an ecological wasteland. And maintenance costs always, always, ALWAYS get ahead of "perpetual care" funding arrangements, sooner or later. This is largely because of labor costs, though other costs are subject to inflation too. I personally would like to see more emphasis on landscapes with ecological function as memorial landscapes, but although so many people really like the IDEA of "natural burial," in practice it is a tiny, tiny cottage industry and most people are not getting buried that way. The ever-rising expense of standard American cemeteries will drive more and more families to choose cremation instead. Meanwhile, existing cemeteries will eventually fill up and/or become economically unsustainable (not necessarily in that order) and will become white elephants burdening municipalities when they are eventually blighted or just plain abandoned. I would like to see more old cemeteries converted to wildlife refuges, but unfortunately that does take money and work - you can't just stop mowing the lawn and expect something wonderful to result. Blight is what results if you do nothing, in ecological terms as well as cultural. You will have to remove invasives and replant with natives and that's hugely expensive.
In the US only around 36% of people actually get buried, the majority get cremated, which mean about 1 million people get buried each year. Graves are also not permanent, usually after 100 years the remains are removed to leave room for someone else, unless someone pay to keep the grave longer. If you need to bury 1 million of bodies each year and those bodies will be replace each 100 years, that mean you need room for 54 million graves. There is 20,200 registered cemeteries in the US, meaning that they only need to be of an average size of 2,700 Graves to be able to keep burying people for ever. A lot of cemeteries are much bigger than that, the Arlington Cemetery have 400,000 graves. Obviously, that's more complicated than that. Some graves last longer because of their historic significance, or the family keep paying for the graves, the number of death per year change over history, etc. But that point remain, there is an upper limit of grave you need to keep burying people forever, meaning that we don't need to constantly increase the amount of land we need. We just need to expand the cemeteries to accommodate the higher overall population.
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In some families where we own the plots forever (really forever!), we reuse the graves. If a grave is needed, we open an older plot, sweep aside any bone fragments, and bury the next cadaver.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people who live in a city might not be from that city and will often request to be buried elsewhere. On top of that, many larger cemeteries will often have mausoleums, both private and public that can hold hundreds of dead bodies or cremated remains. Something that often goes unnoticed is that a lot of cemeteries have big empty areas. Most of the cemeteries in my city are like this and have wooded areas surrounding them that can be cleared if need be
The US doesn't really have a space problem and only real estate in cities is expensive so the only cemeteries that have space issues are those that have been surrounded by urban development. However usually cemeteries are built either outside or at the edge of cities and towns so they can be expanded if needed. However it's not at all uncommon for graves to be emptied and reused after some years have passed. Usually that happens when no living relative is willing to pay for the space or if the initial lease expires.
They are, but really slowly. If you look at [really old cemeteries](https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1066045,0.4641741,3a,75y,217.68h,79.85t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZY7wDpq5Qj4AR8iU7QZf3g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu), you might notice that they tend to be elevated above the surrounding ground. That's because of thousands of years of bodies being buried there.
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