8 ms·
I wonder what is the risk of prions diseases. > A 68 kg (150 lbs) body which contains 65% water will require 100 MJ of thermal energy before any combustion wil
by ed_balls 5y ago
I wonder what is the risk of prions diseases.
> A 68 kg (150 lbs) body which contains 65% water will require 100 MJ of thermal energy before any combustion will take place. 100 MJ is approximately equivalent to 3 m3 (105 ft3) of natural gas, or 3 liters of fuel oil (0.8 US gallons). Additional energy is necessary to make up for the heat capacity ("preheating") of the furnace, fuel burned for emissions control, and heat losses through the insulation and in the flue gases.
> As a result, crematories are most often heated by burners fueled by natural gas. LPG (propane/butane) or fuel oil may be used where natural gas is not available. These burners can range in power from 150 to 400 kilowatts (0.51 to 1.4 million British thermal units per hour).
>Crematories heated by electricity also exist in India, where electric heating elements bring about cremation without the direct application of flame to the body.
>Coal, coke, and wood were used in the past, heating the chambers from below (like a cooking pot). This resulted in an indirect heat and prevented mixing of ash from the fuel with ash from the body. The term retort when applied to cremation furnaces originally referred to this design.
More eco-friendly option would be to use pellet or electricity.
- 1-6 5y agoSince prions are found abundantly in the head, just bury or lock away the skulls and treat them like nuclear waste. Compost or cremate the rest of the body.
- Y_Y 5y agoThis is a solved problem! My startup is building modern, cutting-edge catacombs where we're redefining what it means to have a huge, underground maze full of decomposing human heads.
- dependsontheq 5y agoI think your funding should primarily come from Kickstarter, I think that there will be very few lawsuits of people who want to deposit their skull.
- boringg 5y agoDark humor
- rovr138 5y agoI have no idea if this is true or not... and that worries me. I think it's not, but, maybe?
- bserge 5y agoIt's just another Catacombs of Paris, which to be fair has stagnated, so maybe a new agile startup can do better.
- creddit 5y agoIt really is ripe for disruption. Will need significant upfront capital infusions, though, and really the ultimate play is on the cloud or possibly blockchain which has some bootstrapping issues. Watching this space closely.
- walterlb 5y agoGreat! Legacy underground mazes full of decomposing human heads are such a pain.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- prepend 5y agoCatacombs as a Service is really going to take off.
- ssully 5y agoI am in a similar market, but we are turning cadavers into headless server platforms.
- esyir 5y agoAre your digital cants to the omnissiah iso-9001 compliant too?
- jodrellblank 5y agoAlcor will do this for $80,000/head, are your prices competitive?
- agumonkey 5y ago> cutting-edge missed opportunity or subtlety mastery ?
- fileeditview 5y agoSounds like a civilized thing to do. Just hack off the head and store it in some permanent disposal site. Then a few centuries later our ancestors will have to move the nuclear waste because of some leakage and will dig up the skulls. Clearly a savage had lived there amongst the nuclear barrels. Its mind altered by the radiation, chopping off those poor worker heads. If it wasn't clear: /s And yes prions might be dangerous but what you propose seems out of proportion.
- rebuilder 5y agoNow hold on, I think you're on to something. We still haven't solved how to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to our descendants several millenia from now. What better warning than thousands and thousands of skulls piled around the hazmat?
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThere are already things like the Skull Chapel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Chapel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Chapel that are basically tourist traps because of having a bunch of skulls.
- coredog64 5y agoRadioactive prions. It’s like chocolate and peanut butter.
- SllX 5y agoYou could also put them in a jar and start a museum with them.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoActually putting in into nuclear waste solves the problem forever
- rapnie 5y ago>> fuel oil (0.8 US gallons) > eco-friendly For people who drove cars.. mostly a (once-in-a-lifetime) symbolical gesture.
- munk-a 5y agoIt's more gallons than I'll probably use in my lifetime - I've driven maybe five miles in total when debating going for a drivers test and I'm now in my mid-thirties.
- smegger001 5y agoif you only count the amount you have driven in the drivers seat sure, but you have used far far more. You were inevitably a passenger be it in a car, bus train, plane, ship, etc... then there is the fuel used to transport everything you have ever bought. Starting with raw material extraction involving heavy machinery and then at each point on from there in transit between factories and warehouses until it ends up as a finished product at the store or delivered to your door. every step involved a internal combustion engine burning hydrocarbons.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoPrions are scary, but the fact that prions have presumably existed for just as long as life has existed on Earth, there must be something that keeps prions from replicating out of control and causing mass death and extinctions.
- jhgb 5y agoLet's hope that that "something" wasn't smaller populations.
- csharptwdec19 5y agoIt does make one wonder about oral traditions of 'cursed' lands...
- learc83 5y agoThere were smaller populations of humans, but not smaller populations of mammals in general.
- maxerickson 5y agoWith our skill at making meat, I wonder how true that is.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y agoBison are much better at making meat than we ever were, before we all but wiped them out. Google piles of bison skulls for a peek.
- maxerickson 5y agoI think the comparison is hard more than it is obvious. There's an awful lot of humans, pets and livestock.
- 5y ago
- 01100011 5y agoOr a big friggin fresnel lens.
- ajdegol 5y agoThis would be a spectacular way to go! Well, post-go.
- waldothedog 5y agoa post-go go
- Pxtl 5y agoSet up one of those thermal solar power plants that are like a sea of mirrors and a tower with a boiler on top, then raise the body in a cage on a winch to the top. "Head towards the light".
- saagarjha 5y agoThat would be a specular way to go.
- nsm 5y agoIn Iain M. Banks' Culture series, customarily, a ship Mind displaces (teleports) your body to the center of the nearest star on death. That way your atoms contribute to the star and will eventually rise to the surface and spread through the universe. Also takes care of prion diseases.
- tcoff91 5y agoSound's like Orholam's Glare from the Lightbringer series.
- refactor_master 5y agoWhat does any of this have to do with prions though? If anything, the emissions are probably worse from a public health perspective.
- prepend 5y agoCremation will destroy prions. Composting will not. I guess the issue would be with prions from a composting brain getting into food supply. I’m not sure how real of a concern this is as deer with CWD die and decompose and I’m not aware of any transmission in this way.
- beambot 5y agoI was of the impression that Prions are notoriously impervious to heat. They were said to withstand typical disinfecting protocols using an autoclave (250°F for 15-20min). Quick source: > To destroy a prion it must be denatured to the point that it can no longer cause normal proteins to misfold. Sustained heat for several hours at extremely high temperatures (900°F and above) will reliably destroy a prion. https://dwr.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/what-are-prions/ https://dwr.virginia.gov/wildlife/diseases/cwd/what-are-prio... I don't know the specific temperature profile of cremation, but I doubt it is sufficient.
- rtkwe 5y agoCremation actually goes well above that. Cremation happens around 1400-1800F. https://www.cremationresource.org/cremation/how-is-a-body-cremated.html https://www.cremationresource.org/cremation/how-is-a-body-cr...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- prepend 5y agoYou’re right that it withstands heat, but not cremation heat.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
- slim 5y agoMore eco-friendly is direct burial into the soil, I guess