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Super-Budget Cryonics at Home   (+3)  [vote for, against]
Use consumer-grade freezer to have a shot in future resurrection.

While standard cryonics vitrifies people in liquid nitrogen, trying to provide high quality preservation, this is not affordable to most people. Nevertheless, we have examples of mammoth brains preserved quite well for tens of thousands of years, just by being under a few tens of degrees below zero.

This suggests that probably we don't need super-low temperature to preserve basic structures, just low enough to have brain in the solid form, as solids generally don't change that much over time, and with high enough technology (with AI that can solve jigsaw puzzles from crystal orientations, that will not be very complex), it would be possible to scan the information off of them after many decades to come.

Decent cryoprotectants like Erythrol being widely available in supermarkets. To protect from oxidation, vacuum bags may be important to use, and also widely available.

Instead of burying, people already can afford to have the brains of their loved ones cryopreserved in consumer-grade freezers. It may even be a cheaper option than burying.
-- Mindey, Mar 13 2020

Wikipedia - Yuka (Mammoth) https://en.wikipedi...wiki/Yuka_(mammoth)
Died: 39,000 years ago Siberia. Brain well-preserved. [Mindey, Mar 13 2020]

LiveScience - Mammoth Mummy Yields Well-Preserved Brain https://www.livesci...brain-revealed.html
"Moreover, the investigators even found traces of nervous tissue — the main component of the nervous system, responsible for reacting to stimuli and communicating impulses to different parts of the body — while examining the brain." [Mindey, Mar 13 2020]

Extend_20consumer_2...untestable_20claims [hippo, Jan 25 2024]

This would allow politicians and journalists to be preserved in large numbers for centuries. Then when science advances they can be thawed out and used to answer the question "How could they be so stupid ?"

Start rounding them up...
-- 8th of 7, Mar 13 2020


Thinking, of writing on the body something along the lines:

If I die, put my head in a home freezer,
if nothing better is available in time, because:
Mammoths brains turned out well preserved
under similar temperature, for 39,000 years.
Disregard cultural norms. Give me a chance.
-- Mindey, Mar 13 2020


// This would allow politicians and journalists to be preserved in large numbers for centuries. //

That could be a problem.
-- Mindey, Mar 13 2020


How so ? Just wait until it becomes legal to hunt them, then thaw them out as needed.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 13 2020


// This would allow politicians and journalists to be preserved in large numbers for centuries.

//// That could be a problem.

////// How so ?

While they may be in ice, what politicians represent, is aggregates of interests, that, may still persist, even after a few decades. Who knows what their financial accounts will have been doing during those years. And, when would their immunities expire?
-- Mindey, Mar 13 2020


They're legally dead, so their accounts pass to their heirs and successors. As to interest groups, they become irrelevant after a century or so. Their immunities expire when they're thawed out, reanmated, and pushed out into the wilderness to take their chances.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 13 2020


// I think of it more as "when." //

That bespeaks a depressing lack of ambition on your part.
-- 8th of 7, Mar 13 2020


// "do not resuscitate"

I HAVE DEFINED WHEN:

Although the evolution of life has taught to strive for survival, I once had though of a goal, which, when achieved, would make me peaceful in my mind. That ultimate goal, is the perfect model of the world, when the data generated by the model coincides exactly with the data generated by the world - when I see no differences between the model and reality, and the world just disappears to me subjectively, and that's the way, I would ideally prefer to 'die' - by truly understanding everything, and making nothing left to know.

UNTIL THEN, PLEASE, DO RESUSCITATE ME, CARE NOT THE PAIN, THE CURIOSITY IS GREATER.
-- Mindey, Mar 13 2020


Cryonics is already super low budget and basically guaranteed not to work. I signed up but am not at all optimistic about it. Immortality through children is the time tested way. I wish it would work, though.

A consumer-grade freezer tends to let everything defrost when the power goes out, maybe a once in 10 years event. Not reliable enough.

I like the idea of home cryonics, as far-fetched as it may be.
-- sninctown, Jan 24 2024


What [sninctown] said, but with a pun included.
-- Voice, Jan 25 2024


What [sninc] said, they defrost too often.

Random power cuts and getting cut off for not paying the electricity due to being too thermally challenged to go to work for a few months so not getting paid are all problems here.

Buy an air ticket to anywhere you can get a sky pass for a glacier with year-round skying instead, take a spade, you'll stay frosty longer and it'll probably cost less on the front end with no back end costs.

//Decent cryoprotectants like Erythrol being widely available//

I prefer bourbon, it tastes better.
-- Skewed, Jan 25 2024


//Cryonics is already super low budget and basically guaranteed not to work//

Yes... if the tech advances far enough to thaw and re-animated a frozen head, then presumably half an hour later it will have advanced further enough to exhume and re-animate a head that has been buried in the earth in a normal grave. And wait a week or so and they will be filter-harvesting crematorium ash from seawater and re-animating the humans from molecular resonance traces in the ash fragments. And then probably hunting them, and cooking them and eating them.
-- pocmloc, Jan 25 2024


See [MaxwellBuchanan]'s Nov 18, 2015 annotation in the linked idea
-- hippo, Jan 25 2024



random, halfbakery